Fairfax County Police Watch: Cop who arrested Brooklyn mailman on the job stripped of badge

A police lieutenant who oversaw the roundly condemned arrest of mail carrier Glenn Grays in March has been stripped of his badge and gun. He has not been fired but has been consigned to desk duty, reported Gothamist.

Lt. Luis Machado and three plainclothes police officers arrested Grays on March 17 for the alleged offense of swearing at them when they almost hit his mail truck with their vehicle.

Yelling at a cop is not a crime.

The arrest occurred while Grays was working his mail route. He was cuffed and led away while in the act of delivering a parcel, with his mail truck allegedly left unsecured. Video of the incident that showed the officers arresting Grays and threatening him with injury went viral, leading to widespread denunciation of the police’s actions and leading Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams to condemn the racist subtext of the encounter.

“This could have been another Eric Garner situation if Glenn hadn’t responded as calmly as he did,” Adams said. “And, if they would do that to Glenn in his uniform, they would do that to any person of color in that neighborhood.”

Grays himself has said that, while he thinks the officers should be disciplined, he doesn’t want them to be fired: “I don’t want them to be jobless because they might have family, kids they need to support.”

According to DNA Info, Grays credited the fact that the incident was being filmed with stopping it from escalating further and also said, “It’s sad. I thought when I put on a uniform that I’d be treated a little different, but there’s no difference. I’m just another brother with a uniform.”

It appears that, as the officer in charge, Machado will receive the harshest punishment of the group. It’s unclear whether his relegation to “desk duties” is permanent or what punishment, if any, the other officers involved in the incident will face.

However, as one sharp-eyed Gothamist commenter pointed out, Machado is one handsomely compensated individual, earning a staggering $167,249 in 2015, if figures can be believed. That will take the sting out of any demotion. Let’s hope he didn’t earn that money harassing innocent civilians and counting it as overtime.

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.