On
November 14, 2011 an Alexandria man, a black man, sued two Fairfax County cops
for brutality claiming the cops violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment
and Title 42 of the Civil Rights Act.
The
man said that the two cops bravely used excessive force when they handcuffed
and detained him on June 16, 2010. The man was walking to Rising Hope United
Methodist Mission Church, where he works as a janitor, when he said the cops
assaulted him. He said the cops stopped
him and asked him for identification, which he gave them.
Then
they asked if they could search him, when he asked why they would want to
search him, the two cops handcuffed him and then searched him. One of the cops
claimed that he saw not only cocaine in the man’s mouth; his eyesight was so
good that he even noticed that it was crack cocaine.
Yet
he couldn’t find any in the man’s mouth when he searched him. The, he said, the cop threw him to the ground and on to his stomach
and one of them rammed him knee in his back as the other cop choked him and
then shocked him with a Taser three times.
Then the cops tossed him into a police car
while they searched the ground for evidence, one would think, for anything to
support their actions. When a supervisor came along, the cops released the man
with a warning.
A
black Fairfax County police officer whose white supervisor asked him to shine
the supervisor's shoes was justified in resigning from the police department
because working conditions were "just too oppressive." a state
examiner has rule in 1992. Also in that
year Fairfax County Deputy Police Chief E. Thomas Sines removed himself as a
contender for the department's top job after complaints by female and black
officers about a "good old boy network"
In
August of 1968, Nadine Eckhardt, the wife of a US Congressman, and her two
children, were stopped by Fairfax County Police for no apparent reason other
than the fact that they had visited an encampment of people who had taken part
in a Resurrection City in Dunn Loring.
The
cops rousted them, refused to explain themselves, checked her ID, and then sent
her off on her way. The cops had the
camp under 24-hour surveillance although they couldn’t or wouldn’t explain
why. The chief of police defended the
cops actions by saying that the roust was “A fundamental and essential
necessity for the proper administration of the motor vehicle code”
A
few days later the same cops arrested one man after he left the camp for
carrying an expired license….not driving with an expired license…..carrying an
expired license. They also arrested the
man who came to the police station to posts the first man’s bail. They claimed he used obscene language.