Fairfax County Police Watch: We need a federal Cop czar to make these ruling uniform, otherwise 400 police departments will come up with 400 ruling on Klan Cops

Fired Cop Testifies Over Alleged Racist Texts

By Joan Murray

FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) — A Fort Lauderdale cop fired over alleged racist text messages testified Friday in an effort to get his job back.

Former Police Officer James Wells spoke for the first time about it on Friday after he and two other officers were fired in March 2015. Investigators said the texts were laced with racial slurs.

He insists he is not racist and was trying to convince an arbitrator his dismissal wasn’t fair and he should be reinstated.

Wells said the “n” word he used in the texts was used a lot on the streets and means different things. He also said his African-American friends called him the “n” word.

Wells said when he used the “n” word he was talking about what he referred to as “the worst of the criminals, not a specific race or gender.. the worst of the worst.”

“Do you have a negative image of African Americans” his attorney asked.

“Absolutely not,” replied Wells.

He said the texts are not who he is.

“I enjoy helping people,” he said.

Wells said some of his texts were taken out of context and often he was quoting from the movie “Django Unchained” which deals with slavery.

“The word hurt means I would arrest them,” said Wells.

When pressed by the city attorney to admit what he said was wrong, Wells acknowledged police officers are held to a higher standard.

“I thought I was assured privacy in those conversations,” Wells said about the messages

The texts were turned over to the Fort Lauderdale police department by the ex-fiance of former officer Alex Alvarez who resigned in January 2015. Alvarez was accused of making a racially charged home video that depicted the Ku Klux Klan and African Americans being mistreated.

Just a day before, the man who fired him, Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Frank Adderley, testified in the case. He called the racism scandal the worst thing he had ever seen.

“It was a black eye on the City of Fort Lauderdale,” Adderley said.

Adderley said the messages damaged the trust with the community and the words made it impossible to prosecute some suspects.

Broward prosecutor Tim Donnelly told the arbitrator that his office had to drop 18 cases where Wells was the arresting officer.

Wells maintains he isn’t a racist and the text messages were private conversations made in jest with friends on the force.

The arbitrator isn’t expected to issue a ruling until the spring.

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.