Fairfax County Police Watch: Two Indio police officers charged in beating of man

By JOSEPH SERNA contact the reporter

Two Indio officers are arrested; one's accused of a beating, the other of covering it up

An Indio police officer has been charged with beating up a man and his partner with covering it up after the confrontation was caught on videotape, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said.

The officers, Charles Holloway and Gerardo Martinez, surrendered Monday after a judge issued warrants for their arrest.

The incident happened early Sept. 12. In a letter to the Desert Sun newspaper, the man arrested by the officers, Ruben Joshua Martinez, 24, said he was "beat, punched, kicked and stomped repeatedly."

In a subsequent interview with the paper from the County Jail in Blythe, he said he was stopped on California 111 as he walked his pit bull. Martinez said he thought the officers were looking for him because of a parole violation related to a burglary conviction from 2009.

He said he ran when he saw Officer Martinez, who he contended had been rough with him before.

The investigation was initiated after Indio Police Chief Richard Twiss reviewed a videotape of the arrest caught on a nearby restaurant's security camera and asked the Sheriff's Department to launch an independent probe. The officers have been on paid administrative leave since the investigation began Sept. 17, Indio police said.

In an interview with the Desert Sun, Ruben Martinez said Officer Martinez held him down and punched him in the face repeatedly and was soon joined by Holloway, who he said kicked him in the face. The manager of the restaurant whose camera captured the incident later turned it over to police.

A restaurant employee who answered the phone Tuesday declined to comment and said the manager who viewed the tape and turned it over was unavailable.

Riverside County Sheriff's Department officials deferred comment to Indio police, which referred questions to the Sheriff's Department.

According to court documents, Holloway was charged with felony assault under the color of authority, and Martinez was charged with misdemeanor accessory after the fact. Both men are free on bail and are due back in court Nov. 21.

Meanwhile, Ruben Martinez remains in jail for the alleged parole violation. Court records show that four days before he was confronted by the officers, a Riverside County sheriff's deputy filed a document supporting the arrest warrant for him.

Ruben Martinez is accused of pointing a gun at his mother and threatening to kill her in 2013 as the family was moving out of their Coachella home. Martinez's mother and her daughter-in-law were carrying some of Martinez's things out front when he pulled a gun on his mother and wanted to know who was moving his things.

His mother dropped the items and locked herself in her bedroom and called police, according to the document. Martinez was charged with making criminal threats and assault with a gun; he has two strikes from previous burglary convictions. He has pleaded not guilty and is due back in court Wednesday.

Martinez's attorney also declined to comment.

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.