....then your game. Stop hiring goons and John Wayne wanna-be's.
Ill say it again, they're nothing but a bunch of fucking punks and they're out of control
Fired D.C. firefighter to get $390K from Fairfax County over wrongful arrest
Elon Wilson spent 21 months in prison after his arrest by
former Fairfax County Officer Jonathan A. Freitag
Oct 11, 2021
By
Janelle Foskett
WASHINGTON
— A former D.C. Fire and EMS firefighter will receive nearly $390,000 from
Fairfax County, Virginia, to settle a lawsuit alleging a wrongful arrest that
resulted in his 21-month imprisonment.
Elon
Wilson filed a federal lawsuit in July, three months after a judge vacated his
convictions and ordered him freed. The judgment followed an internal
investigation into Jonathan A. Freitag, the Fairfax County officer who arrested
Wilson
The
lawsuit stemmed from an April 2018 incident in which Freitag pulled over
Wilson, ostensibly for crossing a yellow line on the road, failing to pull over
when signaled and having illegally tinted windows, according to court records.
Freitag arrested Wilson after finding oxycodone and handguns in the car. Wilson
said they were not his.
Wilson
was subsequently fired from D.C. Fire and EMS.
In
July 2019, Wilson was sentenced to a little over three years in prison.
Around
the same time, Fairfax internal affairs investigators began reviewing Freitag’s
traffic stops. Freitag ultimately admitted that he had made “pretextual”
traffic stops, using a false reason to pull over a vehicle. In February 2020,
Wilson’s lawyer, Marvin D. Miller, filed a motion seeking information about the
internal affairs investigation.
The Washington Post reported that, in
April 2021, Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Daniel E. Ortiz vacated Wilson’s
convictions and ordered him freed, saying “Freitag’s fabricated grounds for the
stop, police report, and warrant made under oath fundamentally tampered with
the judicial machinery and subverted the integrity of the court itself.”
Following
Wilson’s release, Miller and civil rights lawyer Victor M. Glasberg filed a
federal suit against Fairfax on Wilson’s behalf. Fairfax began settlement
negotiations and, on Oct. 7, agreed to pay Wilson $390,000.
Freitag
had defended his actions in multiple interviews.
How very PC of you….once again, the Fairfax County Police play politics instead of working at policing
Fairfax County Police
Remove Arrest Blotter Over ICE Data Sharing Concerns
Colleen Grablick
Community advocates
said the list violated a new law that limits local law enforcement’s
interactions with immigration enforcement agencies.
Michael Pope / WAMU
Fairfax County’s
police department will no longer publish the names and personal information of
people arrested for crimes, heeding concerns from advocates that the list
endangered immigrant residents.
Earlier this year,
the county’s Board of Supervisors passed a Public Trust and Confidentiality
Policy, cutting off all voluntary cooperation and information sharing between
local agencies and federal immigration authorities. But advocates said the
arrest blotter, which lived on the police department’s website and included
information like names and last known addresses, continued to violate the law,
commonly known as the Trust Policy, by allowing Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officials to target immigrant residents.
“We believe that [the
arrest blotter] violated the Trust Policy, because it’s not necessary to
release that personal information,” says Diane Alejandro, a lead advocate with
ACLU People Power Fairfax. “It just is, more than anything, a shaming list.”
According to Anthony
Guglielmi, a spokesperson for Fairfax County police, the county originally
began publishing that type of information online in 2016 in order to limit the
amount of calls the department received from residents seeking information
about arrests in their neighborhood.
The arrest blotter
came down last Friday, after a review of the practice by ACLU People Power
Fairfax found the blotter to be non-compliant with the Trust Policy, Guglielmi
said. The Washington Post first reported the decision.
The county will still
be running a weekly crime roundup on the department’s website, but will
withhold names and any other information regarding the individuals arrested.
“Important
information will continue to be shared with the community, and arrest data
remains easily accessible via FOIA to residents and reporters,” County
Supervisor Dalia Palchik, one of the nine supervisors that voted in favor of
the Trust Policy policy, wrote in a statement to DCist/WAMU.
Alejandro, who
advocated for the passage of the Trust Policy, say ACLU People Power Fairfax
supports the continuation of a crime roundup, without the names and personal
information of individuals arrested. If someone is truly interested in
gathering that information, she says, there are plenty of ways to dig for it on
the internet — instead of the police proactively offering it.
“It’s not like folks
are being left in the dark,” Alejandro says, adding that arrest information
will still be available to members of the public upon a FOIA request. “I think
that honestly smacks of racism to suggest that the interests of people who just
want to know the name of every person arrested to satisfy their curiosity
should take precedence over the lives of immigrants.”
Unlike in D.C. or
Maryland’s Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, where the police force is
overseen by the top elected official, the Fairfax County Police Department is
under the purview of the Board of Supervisors. The Trust Policy, which passed
the Board of Supervisors by a 9-1 vote in January, applies to all agencies
across Fairfax County’s government. While the provisions of the new law allow
cooperation with ICE officials if it is required or requested, the policy bars
willful or voluntary local information sharing that would help immigration
enforcement track down individuals.
Alejandro says she
does not know of any residents that were targeted directly as a result of the
arrest blotter, but that she and other advocates “know it happens.”
“We don’t need to
hand [the information] to them on a silver platter,” Alejandro says. “We’re not
going to volunteer information to ICE, and this is what the police were doing.”
A spokesperson for
ICE denied that the agency used the Fairfax County’s arrest information to
locate or apprehend any residents.
“ICE Enforcement and
Removal Operations does not use police blotter data to identify immigration
enforcement targets in Fairfax County, Virginia,” the spokesperson wrote in an
emailed statement to DCist/WAMU. “ICE ERO officers use intelligence-driven
leads to identify specific individuals for arrest.”
The removal of the
arrest list marks the latest step in Fairfax County’s efforts to limit the
county’s interactions with federal immigration agencies. In 2020, the county
codified a policy that prevents police officers from asking or disclosing a
person’s immigration status, or using immigration status as a determining
factor when considering to take a person into custody on a misdemeanor charge.
Regionally, Arlington
County officials are also considering ways to decrease local law enforcement’s
engagement with ICE — last week, the Arlington County Board released the draft
of a framework to increase protection of immigrant residents, including
proposals to decrease the local police’s contact with immigration agencies.
Fairfax County should get off its ass and do the same as Newsom.
California
Gov. Newsom signs sweeping police reform bills
More
than three dozen groups representing police officers opposed the legislation,
according to a report
California
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a series of police reform bills Thursday to address
law enforcement misconduct that would strip officers of their badges for a
range of incidents, among other measures.
Surrounded
by lawmakers and the family members of victims killed by police officers,
Newsom signed four bills he touted would increase transparency. During his
remarks, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said there is a "crisis of
trust" when it comes to law enforcement.
"We're
delivering concrete solutions from banning dangerous holds that lead to
asphyxia to multiple other mechanisms that improve accountability and oversight
and transparency," he said.
But more than three dozen groups representing
police officers opposed the legislation, claiming it subjects law enforcement
officers to double jeopardy with vague definitions of wrongdoing and calls for
the use of an oversight panel that would potentially be biased and lacking in
expertise about law enforcement, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Senate
Bill 2 "merely requires that the individual officer ‘engaged’ in serious
misconduct – not that they were found guilty, terminated, or even
disciplined," the California Police Chiefs Association wrote in a letter
to state lawmakers, according to the Times.
Another
bill, Assembly Bill 26, was opposed by the California Association of Highway
Patrolmen, which said it participated two years ago in an effort to change the
state's use-of-force policies, the Times reported.
The
Assembly bill calls for officers to intervene if they suspect a fellow officer
is using too much force against a suspect, but the police group argued that in
fast-moving incidents, an officer arriving at the scene of an incident might
not have enough information to determine if the force is excessive, according
to the newspaper.
With
Newsom's signings, California joins 46 other states that have laws on the books
allowing officers to be fired for acting criminally and for incidents involving
racial bias and excessive force. The reforms also raise the minimum age for
police officers from 18 to 21, ban some restraining techniques and limit the
use of rubber bullets during protests.
"I'm
here as governor of California mindful that we're in a juxtaposition of being a
leader on police reform and a lagger on police reform," Newsom said from a
park gymnasium in the Los Angeles suburb of Gardena. "We have a lot to be
proud of but there's areas where we have nothing to brag about."
While signing the legislation, supporters
chanted "Say his name," in reference to Kenneth Ross Jr., a
25-year-old Black man who was killed in 2018 when an officer shot him at the
same Gardena park where the Thursday event occurred. An investigation
determined the officer, Michael Robbins, acted lawfully when he shot Ross.
Ross'
mother, Fouzia Almarou, said she hopes the bill prevents the loss of life,
particularly for people of color.
"This
bill means a lot because it's going to stop police from attacking and targeting
and being racist towards Black and brown people," she said.
Sandra
Quinto Collins, the mother of Angelo Quinto, brushed back tears as she thanked
lawmakers for passing the reforms. Quinto died when a San Francisco police
officer pressed his knee against his neck during a mental health response call
last year.
"To
lose a son, to lose a brother, sister, dad — that pain, that intensity, that
expression is reflected not just in the words of these two remarkable women and
their families, but we hope reflected in this legislation," Newsom said.
The
bill's signing came after failed negotiations in Congress halted a bipartisan
police reform plan.