Fairfax County Police Watch: Cops gets jail time

Ex-cop sent to prison for false police reports, striking victim

Robert Sciarrino | NJ Advance Media

By Bill Wichert | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

NEWARK — Former Bloomfield Police Officer Orlando Trinidad said he had wanted to be a husband and a father, own a home and "live the American dream."

But standing before his fiancÃ©e and other supporters on Friday in a Newark courtroom, Trinidad was sentenced to five years in state prison as a result of his conviction last fall on official misconduct and related charges for submitting false police reports about a 2012 arrest.

"I am truly sorry for everything that has transpired," Trinidad said through tears, while wearing a prison uniform and with his hands cuffed in front of him. "I am a different man today as I stand here before you. I am a humbled man."

Trinidad, 34, of Bloomfield, must serve the entire sentence without an opportunity to be released on parole, and he will receive credit for 78 days of time served.

In New Jersey, an official misconduct charge carries a mandatory five-year prison sentence with a five-year period of parole ineligibility.

Trinidad and his co-defendant, former Bloomfield Police Officer Sean Courter, were convicted by a jury on Nov. 5 of making false statements in police reports about the June 7, 2012 arrest of Bloomfield resident Marcus Jeter on the Garden State Parkway.

After reviewing police dashboard videos — including footage of Jeter with his hands raised inside his vehicle — the jury determined the officers' reports falsely claimed Jeter tried to grab Courter's gun while Courter was removing Jeter from the vehicle, and that Jeter struck Trinidad.

Trinidad also was convicted of simple assault for striking Jeter during the incident.

Courter, 35, of Englishtown, is expected to be sentenced at a later date.

During Friday's hearing, Jeter said he continues to struggle with "nightmares" and wakes up in "cold sweats" as a result of the incident. Jeter said he still becomes nervous when he sees a police car.

"I feared for my life that night," Jeter said. "It's a situation that I would never want anybody to be in, and I believe that I didn't do anything to provoke the officers that night."

Jeter noted how he was arrested and faced a possible prison sentence himself before his charges were ultimately dismissed. The stress of that experience caused him to lose some of his hair, Jeter said.

As police officers, Courter and Trinidad "had a responsibility to do what's right and I don't think that they did what's right that night," Jeter said.

Jeter also is pursuing a lawsuit against Bloomfield, Courter, Trinidad and other defendants in regard to the incident.

Citing the "needless physical and psychological injury" caused to Jeter, Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Berta Rodriguez called on Superior Court Judge Michael L. Ravin to impose a seven-year prison sentence with a five-year period of parole ineligiblity.

By striking Jeter during the false arrest and then falsifying the police reports, Trinidad's actions "show a complete lack of respect for Marcus Jeter and the citizens of Bloomfield and Essex County, and a lack of respect for his position as a law enforcement officer," said Rodriguez, who tried the case with Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Frantzou Simon.

But Trinidad's attorney, Frank Arleo, asked the judge to impose a more lenient sentence and waive the requirement for the mandatory five-year prison sentence without parole on the official misconduct charge.

Noting how Jeter refused to get out of his vehicle and other factors, Arleo argued Jeter was not an innocent victim and that Trinidad was acting under strong provocation.

"He was a good cop and now he's lost all that," Arleo said.

Ravin rejected the state's request for a longer prison sentence, but he declined to waive the requirement for the mandatory sentence on the official misconduct charge. The judge found the circumstances of the case did not warrant such a waiver.

The arrest occurred after Courter and Bloomfield Police Officer Albert Sutterlin had responded to a domestic-related call at Jeter's Bloomfield home. His girlfriend's sister called 911 after Jeter threw the girlfriend's cell phone down a staircase during a verbal dispute.

Soon after the officers arrived, Jeter left the residence. Courter has said Jeter was drunk and fled after he had ordered him to stop, but Jeter has said he was not drunk and that Courter indicated he could leave the residence.

Courter later stopped Jeter on the Parkway, followed by Sutterlin, and the officers approached Jeter's vehicle with their guns drawn and ordered him to get out. Trinidad arrived at the scene and struck the front of Jeter's car with his patrol vehicle.

After Courter received approval from a supervisor, he broke the driver's side window and removed Jeter from the vehicle. Courter and Trinidad later claimed in their police reports that Jeter tried to disarm Courter and that he struck Trinidad.

Jeter was charged with eluding, attempting to disarm a police officer, resisting arrest and aggravated assault.

While Jeter's case was still pending, prosecutors only had the dashboard video from Courter's patrol vehicle. Jeter's attorney later obtained the dashboard video from Trinidad's patrol vehicle through an open public records request made with the Bloomfield Police Department.

After reviewing that second dashboard video, prosecutors determined the video was inconsistent with the officers' police reports. The charges against Jeter were then dropped in April 2013 and Courter and Trinidad were indicted in January 2014.

Courter and Trinidad, who had been suspended without pay, ultimately lost their jobs as a result of their convictions.

Sutterlin, who retired in May 2013, pleaded guilty in October 2013 to falsifying or tampering with records. After testifying at the officers' trial, Sutterlin was later sentenced to two years of probation.

On the witness stand at the trial, Sutterlin said he included information in his police reports that Jeter tried to grab Courter's gun and that he struck Trinidad, even though Sutterlin had not witnessed those events. He said he received those details from Courter and Trinidad when he consulted with them about the sequence of events.

Sutterlin said no one had told him to lie about the incident, and that he believed his reports were accurate when he wrote them.

Bill Wichert may be reached at bwichert@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@BillWichertNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Morrogh finds cop he doesn’t love. In other news, hell freezes.

Probe of fatal police shooting goes to federal authorities

By Justin Jouvenal/Post

The Fairfax County prosecutor has turned over the investigation of a fatal police shooting of an unarmed Springfield man to federal authorities, citing complications with the five-month-old case.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh said the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia has agreed to continue the probe into the death of 46-year-old John Geer, who was shot during a standoff with Fairfax County police in August. No one has been charged in the incident.

“There is a conflict of interest that has arisen in the case,” Morrogh said Thursday. “And there is a second potential conflict of interest that has arisen out of my office. . . . This is the prudent thing to do.”

Morrogh declined to describe the nature of the conflicts because the investigation is ongoing. The U.S. attorney’s office said Thursday that it could not confirm or deny any investigation or comment on pending investigations.

Police went to Geer’s Pebble Brook Court home on Aug. 29 because of a report of a domestic disturbance. Geer’s father, Don Geer, said his son was upset because his girlfriend, the mother of his two children, had decided to leave him.

John Geer had thrown his girlfriend’s belongings in the front yard. She called police and told them that Geer had a firearm. Police said they tried for about 50 minutes to persuade Geer to leave the home, but he refused.

Don Geer said he watched the climax of the encounter. He said that he could not hear what officers were saying to his son but that he saw him standing with empty hands resting on top of a screen door at the home’s entrance.

At some point, John Geer began to slowly lower his hands and an officer opened fire, hitting Geer in the chest, his father said. Geer retreated inside and closed the door. A SWAT team eventually entered the home and found Geer dead.

Don Geer said detectives later told him that his son did not have a gun on him at the time of the shooting but that there was a holstered handgun a couple of steps from the front door.

Don Geer said it appeared to him that the shooting was unjustified, but he was unsure what to make of the probe being turned over to federal authorities.

“I don’t know whether that’s good or bad — if I had a better idea of why they are doing it, I could form an opinion,” he said.

Geer and friends of his son have been critical of how long the investigation has taken, but Morrogh said police and prosecutors were working to explore all the evidence. He did not think federal prosecutors would have to start from scratch.

“No one wants these things to linger on,” Morrogh said.

Our ink will outlast his career

Under the reign of former Chief of Police Rhorer the Fairfax County Police arrested a man for not wearing clothes in his house while he made coffee, set up an eye doctor on a gambling charge and then used the SWAT team to kill him. An investigation into the charge that the Doctor’s primary clients were cops has never been investigated. The police gunned down an emotionally unstable man because cop who shot him wrongly assumed the man was trying to escape. He wasn’t. The cops also shot dead four other citizens under highly questionable circumstances. The department under Rhorer was sued multiple times by citizens. So did they fire Rhorer? Naw they promoted him. According to news reports Rhorer draws a salary of $191,168 per year as Deputy Fairfax County Executive as well as a concurrent pension from the Fairfax County police of $173000 per year.

Occupation by force

According to the most recent U.S. Census figures, nearly one in five Fairfax residents (17.5 percent) is of Asian descent while Hispanics make up nearly 16 percent of Fairfax’s overall population. Those numbers drop considerably when applied to the Fairfax County Police Department, where only 4.3 percent of officers are Asian and 4.1 percent Hispanic. White officers make up 84 percent of Fairfax County’s 1,360-member police department, significantly higher than the county’s general population (54 percent white). Almost 90% of the force lives outside the county.