Fairfax County Police Watch: More than 400 convictions involving suspected racist cop in Virginia could be overturned

More than 400 convictions involving suspected racist cop in Virginia could be overturned

More than 400 convictions in Virginia could be overturned after prosecutors found evidence the arresting cop was racist.

Jonathan Freitag, 25, is accused of making up reasons to pull people over and planting drugs in their vehicles in Fairfax County, the Washington Post reported.

Freitag has not been criminally charged, though he is being investigated, according to the Post. The allegations were revealed Friday as attorneys worked to free an ex-firefighter sentenced to three years in prison based on a Freitag traffic stop.

Elon Wilson, a former Washington, D.C., firefighter, is the only person still locked up based on Freitag’s suspected misconduct, the Associated Press reported. Wilson’s defense attorneys and county prosecutors both argued for his release Friday.

Freitag stopped Wilson, a 23-year-old Black man, on April 3, 2018, and said he swerved over the center yellow line, according to the Post. Freitag then searched Wilson’s car and allegedly found drugs and a gun.

Facing a maximum of 10 years in prison, Wilson took a plea deal in 2019, in which he maintained his innocence but admitted he’d probably be convicted given the evidence, local radio station WTOP reported. The deal sent Wilson to prison for three years, and he lost his job.

A passenger under age 18 claimed the drugs and gun, the Post reported. That person’s case was later dropped.

The side of a Fairfax County police vehicle is shown. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

Surveillance video of the arrest showed Wilson did nothing illegal, attorneys on both sides told the Post. After multiple, unrelated complaints, internal investigators at the Fairfax County Police Department began reviewing Freitag’s traffic stops.

During that investigation, Freitag admitted that the stops were a “pretext” for searching cars for guns and drugs, according to the Post. Prosecuting attorney Steve Descano said Freitag’s stops showed “potentially racially biased motive and racially biased impact.”

“They looked at 1,400 stops. When you’re looking at the stops, a very clear pattern emerged,” read a court filing from Descano, the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney.

“The officer involved has a long history of improper and unjust stops with a racially disparate impact,” Descano told WTOP.

Descano said Freitag admitted to a third party that he was targeting Black people in the stops, the Post reported. Freitag has denied the allegations of racism.

Prosecutors said Freitag was involved in 932 cases during his three years as a Fairfax cop, according to the Post. Most were low level cases, but seven were felonies. In addition to the estimated 400 convictions, 21 pending cases were tossed.

Freitag resigned from the Fairfax County Police Department in May 2020. He was hired in August 2020 by the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, but canned two weeks ago, according to the Post. The two law enforcement agencies have sparred over who was to blame for his hiring in Florida given his record in the D.C. suburbs.

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.