by Courtney Pomeroy
Tuesday,
April 27th 2021
WASHINGTON
(7News) — The ex-Fairfax County police officer who is accused of racial
profiling and making unconstitutional traffic stops has been arrested and
charged with driving under the influence in Florida.
Jonathan Freitag, 25, was
taken into custody on April 22 by the Melbourne Police Department. He is also
charged with DUI damage to property and leaving the scene of a crash with
property damage.
All three charges are
misdemeanors, and the Brevard County Sheriff's Office reports that he is due in
court on May 24.
After leaving Fairfax
County in the spring of 2020, Freitag became a Brevard County sheriff's deputy.
He was recently let go from that job, around the same time that Fairfax County
Commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano accused him of making “unconstitutional
stop after unconstitutional stop” with “a racially disparate impact"
during his time as a Virginia cop.
Descano called for 400 convictions linked to Freitag to be thrown
out, including that of a D.C. firefighter who had been imprisoned
for 20 months. Freitag pulled over Elon Wilson on Telegraph Road in 2018 and
found hundreds of oxycodone bills and two guns in the car. Although in court
Wilson’s lawyer would later maintain they belonged to someone else in the car,
Wilson was ultimately sentenced to three years in prison.
But Wilson’s attorney
said earlier this month that a dashcam video that only came to light last year
shows the original reason Freitag said he pulled Wilson over was false.
“It shows that the car
does not go over the solid yellow line. [Freitag] said it did, and it shows
that it didn’t,” said defense attorney Marvin Miller. “He said that it was slow
to stop. The car, when the police blue lights come on, hits the brake, turns on
a signal, stops within 21 seconds.”
Descano says the dashcam
video shows that the evidence in the case was obtained in an unconstitutional
manner.
According to the Brevard
County Sheriff's Office, they received word that he'd resigned from Fairfax
County in good standing.
But, as Fairfax County
Police told 7News in a statement earlier this month, Freitag "separated
from the Department in Spring of 2020 amid an Internal Investigation."
In an April 5 letter to
Fairfax County interim police chief David M. Rohrer, Brevard County Sheriff
Wayne Ivey called Fairfax County PD's involvement in the hiring process
"misleading."
"To say the least,
it is outrageous that an individual such as Mr. Freitag, with a history of
alleged misconduct at the Fairfax County Police Department, had become a member
of our agency and placed in a position that may have negatively impacted our
citizens due to your agency's misrepresentations," Sheriff Ivey wrote.
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