Fairfax County Police Watch: This cop is an idiot and that's his right. Firing him for having the wrong opinion is dangerous and it should not have been done.

Ohio police officer fired after calling Black Lives Matter activist’s suicide a ‘happy ending’

By Yanan Wang March 8

23-year-old Black Lives Matter activist commits suicide

MarShawn M. McCarrel II, a young Ohio activist involved with the Black Lives Matter movement committed suicide on the steps of the Statehouse in Columbus. (WBNS-10TV http://www.10tv.com/)

Like many activists, MarShawn M. McCarrel II was vocal on social media, but not just about his causes. While political commentary certainly had a place in his Facebook status updates, the platform was more often dominated by emotional and philosophical musings.

“Pride will make you miss out on so much,” the 23-year-old Columbus, Ohio, native wrote in January.

“Lost is the man who has more answers than questions,” he reflected a few days later.

And on Feb. 8, a heart-rending Facebook post foretold his fate: “My demons won today. I’m sorry.”

That night, McCarrel stood on the steps of the Ohio statehouse and shot himself dead.

No one — not friends, family or police — could say why he did it. McCarrel was a prominent local activist, having coordinated Black Lives Matter protests following the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. He founded a nonprofit called Pursuing Our Dreams, which provided monthly homemade lunches to the homeless.

Days before his apparent suicide, McCarrel had smiled for pictures taken on the red carpet of the NAACP Image Awards.

Just as he shared much of his life on social media, on social media too was he mourned, with condolences and tributes flooding into the Black Lives Matter Cincinnati Facebook page.

Not all the responses, however, were kind.

While off duty, Fairborn, Ohio, police officer Lee Cyr reacted to the news of McCarrel’s death with the comment “Love a happy ending.”

According to Dayton Daily News, it appeared alongside unsympathetic responses from others — comments reading “What a hypocrite” and “One less to worry about.”

Cyr was placed on administrative leave after an internal complaint alerted the Fairborn Police Department to the comment last month. He has now been fired, WDTN-TV reported on Monday.

The department said in a statement that Cyr’s action violated its social media policy.

[‘My demons won today': Ohio activist’s suicide spotlights depression among Black Lives Matter leaders]

For local activists, the comment highlighted some of the very issues that the Black Lives Matter movement is trying to combat.

“We have received a lot of negative responses,” Tristina Allen, a fellow organizer who knew McCarrel told Dayton Daily News in February. “I think it is completely unacceptable for someone who is supposed to protect and serve to have that comment towards someone who is dead.”

Yanan Wang is a reporter on the Morning Mix team.

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.