New Carrollton Police Officers File Lawsuit
MyFoxDC.com by Maureen Umeh - July 13, 2010
NEW CARROLLTON, Md. - Four former New Carrollton Police officers say their careers were ruined after they reported corruption inside the department. Now, they have filed a lawsuit . The former officers say they thought they did the right thing by coming forward with information about alleged illegal activity inside the police department. They say instead of being protected, they ended up losing their jobs. They are now fighting to get their reputations back. Jeff Hamilton worked for the New Carrollton Police Department from February 2008 for a year. A lifelong cop, he says he was recruited to help the relatively young police department grow. "I love police work," Hamilton said. "I love the integrity, professionalism and the honor. And a lot of it was lost." But he and three other former officers say there were problems inside the department. "When you get caught in the middle of police corruption, you're stuck, especially if it involves your commanders or your supervisors,” said Hamilton. Hamilton says that reporting the problems ended up costing them their jobs. Attorney Ellen Opper-Weiner represents the four former officers now suing the city. The lawsuit also names Mayor Andrew Hanko, City Administrator Michael Downes and Police Chief David Rice. "They're sworn police officers to uphold the law, and that's what they were trying to do,” said Opper-Weiner. "Three of the officers actually went to the mayor. The mayor did nothing." Court documents say the four reported "illegal activities engaged in by the police officers' superiors” and that eventually three of them "were forced to sign resignation letters after receiving retaliatory threats from their superiors.” The fourth officer, according to the suit, was terminated because of some "very minor rule violations." "One officer witnessed police brutality and did report to her superior,” said Opper-Weiner. The suit does not go into much detail about the alleged criminal activity. The mayor did place Chief Rice on administrative leave back in October 2008 while the Maryland State Police and FBI investigated the department for possible criminal activity. Chief Rice told FOX 5 that one of the accusations against him included the improper selling of impounded vehicles. No charges were ever filed and the chief was reinstated. As for the lawsuit, the police chief told FOX 5 on the phone he could not comment without consulting his attorney. The city's attorney said they had not been served yet, but knew of the potential for the suit. Hamilton says Chief Rice and the department continued to damage his reputation, even after he left the department and his "job-seeking efforts" by making false statements about him. "A career that I worked for 23 years, my life and my family everything that I stood for was crushed,” said Hamilton. The lawsuit seeks more than $8 million in damages. maureen.umeh@foxtv.com
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Police Officers and Alleged Drug Dealers Charged in Drug Case
Department of Justice Press Release
For Immediate Release
July 13, 2010 United States Attorney's Office
Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Contact: (215) 861-8200
Police Officers and Alleged Drug Dealers Charged in Drug Case
PHILADELPHIA, PA—An indictment was unsealed today against Robert Snyder, Mark Williams, and James Venziale, all Philadelphia police officers assigned to the 25th and 39th Districts, as well as Zachary Young, Angel Ortiz, Christal Snyder, and Miguel Santiago, charging them in a drug conspiracy case involving heroin and related offenses, announced U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger. According to the indictment, the defendants planned and executed a scheme to steal heroin from Santiago and then distribute that heroin to another person whom the defendants believed to be a drug dealer and money launderer, but who was, in reality, an undercover special agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Joining in today’s announcement were DEA Special Agent-in-Charge John Bryfonski, FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk, and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. According to the indictment, Young and Ortiz were involved in the distribution of heroin, which they obtained on a periodic basis from Santiago and other sources. In mid-April, Young and Ortiz began to develop a scheme to steal 300 grams of heroin from their supplier, Miguel Santiago. The indictment further alleges that Philadelphia Police Officers Robert Snyder, Mark Williams, and James Venziale abused their authority as police officers and agreed to assist Young and Ortiz in this scheme to steal heroin from Santiago. The indictment alleges that Young and Ortiz discussed with the Snyders, Williams, and Venziale various ways that they could use their positions as police officers to steal the heroin from Santiago. The indictment details how Robert Snyder, Williams, Young, and Ortiz implemented the plan after this discussion. On May 14, 2010, immediately after Santiago’s drug courier delivered 300 grams of heroin to Ortiz, Officers Williams and Venziale—who were on duty and in uniform—stopped Ortiz’s vehicle while he was in possession of the 300 grams of heroin, which had just been supplied to him by Santiago’s courier. With Santiago’s courier watching nearby, Officers Williams and Venziale made it appear as if they were seizing the heroin and arresting Ortiz by handcuffing him outside the vehicle Ortiz had occupied. According to the indictment, Christal Snyder, Robert Snyder’s wife, facilitated the conspiracy by passing information, frequently via telephone or via text message, between Ortiz, and Robert Snyder, Mark Williams, and James Venziale. The indictment alleges that, as a result of the co-conspirators obtaining the 300 grams of heroin without payment to Santiago, Ortiz paid Williams and Venziale approximately $6,000, and paid Christal Snyder an additional amount of currency. In addition to the conspiracy, the indictment charges Young, Ortiz, and Mark Williams with distributing and aiding and abetting the distribution of heroin and with using a telephone in furtherance of a drug conspiracy. Robert and Christal Snyder are charged with conspiracy and with using a telephone in furtherance of a drug conspiracy. James Venziale is charged with conspiracy and with distributing and aiding and abetting the distribution of heroin. Santiago is charged with distributing and aiding and abetting the distribution of heroin. He is the only defendant not charged in the conspiracy count.
Additional information regarding the defendants, all from Philadelphia, is available below:
For Immediate Release
July 13, 2010 United States Attorney's Office
Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Contact: (215) 861-8200
Police Officers and Alleged Drug Dealers Charged in Drug Case
PHILADELPHIA, PA—An indictment was unsealed today against Robert Snyder, Mark Williams, and James Venziale, all Philadelphia police officers assigned to the 25th and 39th Districts, as well as Zachary Young, Angel Ortiz, Christal Snyder, and Miguel Santiago, charging them in a drug conspiracy case involving heroin and related offenses, announced U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger. According to the indictment, the defendants planned and executed a scheme to steal heroin from Santiago and then distribute that heroin to another person whom the defendants believed to be a drug dealer and money launderer, but who was, in reality, an undercover special agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Joining in today’s announcement were DEA Special Agent-in-Charge John Bryfonski, FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk, and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. According to the indictment, Young and Ortiz were involved in the distribution of heroin, which they obtained on a periodic basis from Santiago and other sources. In mid-April, Young and Ortiz began to develop a scheme to steal 300 grams of heroin from their supplier, Miguel Santiago. The indictment further alleges that Philadelphia Police Officers Robert Snyder, Mark Williams, and James Venziale abused their authority as police officers and agreed to assist Young and Ortiz in this scheme to steal heroin from Santiago. The indictment alleges that Young and Ortiz discussed with the Snyders, Williams, and Venziale various ways that they could use their positions as police officers to steal the heroin from Santiago. The indictment details how Robert Snyder, Williams, Young, and Ortiz implemented the plan after this discussion. On May 14, 2010, immediately after Santiago’s drug courier delivered 300 grams of heroin to Ortiz, Officers Williams and Venziale—who were on duty and in uniform—stopped Ortiz’s vehicle while he was in possession of the 300 grams of heroin, which had just been supplied to him by Santiago’s courier. With Santiago’s courier watching nearby, Officers Williams and Venziale made it appear as if they were seizing the heroin and arresting Ortiz by handcuffing him outside the vehicle Ortiz had occupied. According to the indictment, Christal Snyder, Robert Snyder’s wife, facilitated the conspiracy by passing information, frequently via telephone or via text message, between Ortiz, and Robert Snyder, Mark Williams, and James Venziale. The indictment alleges that, as a result of the co-conspirators obtaining the 300 grams of heroin without payment to Santiago, Ortiz paid Williams and Venziale approximately $6,000, and paid Christal Snyder an additional amount of currency. In addition to the conspiracy, the indictment charges Young, Ortiz, and Mark Williams with distributing and aiding and abetting the distribution of heroin and with using a telephone in furtherance of a drug conspiracy. Robert and Christal Snyder are charged with conspiracy and with using a telephone in furtherance of a drug conspiracy. James Venziale is charged with conspiracy and with distributing and aiding and abetting the distribution of heroin. Santiago is charged with distributing and aiding and abetting the distribution of heroin. He is the only defendant not charged in the conspiracy count.
Additional information regarding the defendants, all from Philadelphia, is available below:
- Zachary Young, born in 1959
- Angel Ortiz, born in 1985
- Miguel Santiago, born in 1971
- Robert Snyder, born in 1980
- Christal Snyder, born in 1983
- Mark Williams, born in 1983
- James Venziale, born in 1978
If convicted, Young faces a maximum sentence of 104 years in prison with a mandatory minimum term of five years; Ortiz faces a maximum sentence of 212 years in prison with a mandatory minimum term of five years; Santiago faces a maximum sentence of 120 years in prison with a mandatory minimum term of five years; Robert Snyder faces a maximum sentence of 44 years in prison with a mandatory minimum term of five years; Christal Snyder faces a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison with a mandatory minimum term of five years; Mark Williams faces a maximum sentence of 84 years in prison with a mandatory minimum term of five years; and James Venziale faces a maximum of 80 years in prison with a mandatory minimum term of five years.
The case was investigated by the DEA and the FBI, with the cooperation and assistance of the Philadelphia Police Department. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kathy A. Stark and Maureen McCartney. An indictment is an accusation. Defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The case was investigated by the DEA and the FBI, with the cooperation and assistance of the Philadelphia Police Department. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kathy A. Stark and Maureen McCartney. An indictment is an accusation. Defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Former NYPD Sergeant Gets Probation in Corruption Case
Former NYPD Internal Affairs sergeant William Valerio receives probation, fine in corruption case
The New York Daily News by John Marzulli - July 3, 2010
A former NYPD Internal Affairs sergeant was sentenced Friday to probation and a $5,000 fine for conspiring with a corrupt detective to obtain a fraudulent mortgage.William Valerio admits he helped Detective Luis Batista get bogus documentation of a termite inspection of a home. "I was trying to help a friend and this cost me a career," said Valerio, a 17-year veteran fired from the force. Batista, who was under investigation by the FBI for allegedly protecting a drug gang leader, pressed Valerio to find out who made an Internal Affairs Bureau complaint. But the sergeant did not disclose the information, federal prosecutor Lee Freedman said. Brooklyn Federal Judge Dora Irizarry said Valerio accepted responsibility for his actions. She took a swipe at Batista - recently sentenced to 15 years in prison - calling him a "walking plague."
The New York Daily News by John Marzulli - July 3, 2010
A former NYPD Internal Affairs sergeant was sentenced Friday to probation and a $5,000 fine for conspiring with a corrupt detective to obtain a fraudulent mortgage.William Valerio admits he helped Detective Luis Batista get bogus documentation of a termite inspection of a home. "I was trying to help a friend and this cost me a career," said Valerio, a 17-year veteran fired from the force. Batista, who was under investigation by the FBI for allegedly protecting a drug gang leader, pressed Valerio to find out who made an Internal Affairs Bureau complaint. But the sergeant did not disclose the information, federal prosecutor Lee Freedman said. Brooklyn Federal Judge Dora Irizarry said Valerio accepted responsibility for his actions. She took a swipe at Batista - recently sentenced to 15 years in prison - calling him a "walking plague."
Monday, June 28, 2010
18-Year Veteran Cop Arrested for DUI
Off-duty NYPD vet John Baboolal busted in DUI, suspended without pay
The New York Daily News by John Lauinger - June 27, 2010
A drunken off-duty city cop was busted on the Throgs Neck Bridge Saturday and charged with driving under the influence, authorities said. Police Officer John Baboolal, 41, an 18-year NYPD veteran, was traveling south over the span when he was pulled over by a Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority cop just after 1 a.m., police said. The NYPD suspended Baboolal without pay after his arrest. Baboolal was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court Saturday on a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, a spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney's office said. Baboolal was released without bail and is due back in court next month.
The New York Daily News by John Lauinger - June 27, 2010
A drunken off-duty city cop was busted on the Throgs Neck Bridge Saturday and charged with driving under the influence, authorities said. Police Officer John Baboolal, 41, an 18-year NYPD veteran, was traveling south over the span when he was pulled over by a Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority cop just after 1 a.m., police said. The NYPD suspended Baboolal without pay after his arrest. Baboolal was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court Saturday on a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, a spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney's office said. Baboolal was released without bail and is due back in court next month.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Jury Watches Cop Bashing Handcuffed War Vet
Jury watches video of Housing Officer David London bashing handcuffed Iraq war veteran
The New York Daily News by Oren Yaniv - June 19, 2010
Nobody disputes that the disturbing surveillance video screened for a Manhattan criminal jury Friday shows a housing cop bashing an Iraq war veteran with his baton. The question is whether Housing Officer David London, 45, was committing an act of police brutality or using necessary force to subdue an aggressive suspect. Prosecutors called London's beating of 28-year-old Walter Harvin in July 2008 an assault that the cop tried to cover up. But the defense insisted London's response was appropriate. In the video, captured on security cameras at the upper West Side housing project where Harvin's mother lived, Harvin is seen shoving and scuffling with London, who then beat the ex-soldier even after he was cuffed. The video is the main evidence in the case because Harvin, who returned from Iraq two weeks before the incident and suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome, has vanished. "He keeps hitting Mr. Harvin," assistant DA David Drucker said of the moment when the victim cowers on the floor as London keeps clubbing him. "If it was a boxing match, you'd step in and stop the fight." London then tried "to cover up his misconduct," Drucker claimed, by falsely signing a criminal complaint charging Harvin with two counts of assault. Defense lawyer Stephen Worth said Harvin was resisting and that if the tape had audio, jurors would have heard him threaten to kill the cop. "This is a use of necessary force," Worth said. "Officer London strikes him until he gets compliance." oyaniv@nydailynews.com
The New York Daily News by Oren Yaniv - June 19, 2010
Nobody disputes that the disturbing surveillance video screened for a Manhattan criminal jury Friday shows a housing cop bashing an Iraq war veteran with his baton. The question is whether Housing Officer David London, 45, was committing an act of police brutality or using necessary force to subdue an aggressive suspect. Prosecutors called London's beating of 28-year-old Walter Harvin in July 2008 an assault that the cop tried to cover up. But the defense insisted London's response was appropriate. In the video, captured on security cameras at the upper West Side housing project where Harvin's mother lived, Harvin is seen shoving and scuffling with London, who then beat the ex-soldier even after he was cuffed. The video is the main evidence in the case because Harvin, who returned from Iraq two weeks before the incident and suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome, has vanished. "He keeps hitting Mr. Harvin," assistant DA David Drucker said of the moment when the victim cowers on the floor as London keeps clubbing him. "If it was a boxing match, you'd step in and stop the fight." London then tried "to cover up his misconduct," Drucker claimed, by falsely signing a criminal complaint charging Harvin with two counts of assault. Defense lawyer Stephen Worth said Harvin was resisting and that if the tape had audio, jurors would have heard him threaten to kill the cop. "This is a use of necessary force," Worth said. "Officer London strikes him until he gets compliance." oyaniv@nydailynews.com
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Corrections Officer Arrested After Shooting Spree, 2 Dead
LI corrections officer arrested after shooting spree that left two dead
The New York Daily News - June 16, 2010
Police pulled over Kim Wolfe, 43, a Nassau County Corrections Officer, at 5:45 p.m. after cops say she fled the scene of one of the shootings. Inside the car was a 23-year-old female hostage, who may be the suspect's niece, cops said. 45-year-old Stacie Williams, a nurse's aide, was found shot to death outside Nassau University Medical Center, where she worked the night shift in the maternity ward. Several miles away, a 56-year-old man, a possible relative of Wolfe's, was also found fatally shot. A third man, believed to be the suspect's grandfather, was also injured in the shooting, but survived, AP reported. Police said a gun was found on the suspect after she surrendered peacefully.
The New York Daily News - June 16, 2010
Police pulled over Kim Wolfe, 43, a Nassau County Corrections Officer, at 5:45 p.m. after cops say she fled the scene of one of the shootings. Inside the car was a 23-year-old female hostage, who may be the suspect's niece, cops said. 45-year-old Stacie Williams, a nurse's aide, was found shot to death outside Nassau University Medical Center, where she worked the night shift in the maternity ward. Several miles away, a 56-year-old man, a possible relative of Wolfe's, was also found fatally shot. A third man, believed to be the suspect's grandfather, was also injured in the shooting, but survived, AP reported. Police said a gun was found on the suspect after she surrendered peacefully.
Friday, June 4, 2010
NYPD Cop Was Drunk in Deadly Crash
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly: NYPD officer in deadly crash was wasted
The New York Daily News by WIL CRUZ, KERRY BURKE AND BILL HUTCHINSON - June 3, 2010
Cop driving car that killed him, 2nd police officer was double the legal limit for alcohol: commish Officer Hoyoung Kim is drunk when he crashes his car in the Bronx last month, killing himself and an NYPD buddy and injuring four women they met at a party.
Cop driving car that killed him, 2nd police officer was double the legal limit for alcohol: commish Officer Hoyoung Kim is drunk when he crashes his car in the Bronx last month, killing himself and an NYPD buddy and injuring four women they met at a party.
An off-duty cop was drunk when he crashed his car in the Bronx last month, killing himself and an NYPD buddy and injuring four women they met at a party, police said yesterday. Officer Hoyoung Kim had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16, twice the state's 0.08 legal limit, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters. Kim's colleague at the 32nd Precinct in Harlem, Officer Edwin Paulino, a passenger in the doomed car, was also sloshed with a blood-alcohol level of 0.21, a police source said. Asked if he was stunned by the toxicology reports, Kelly said, "I have no comment." The mother of two sisters critically hurt in the May 16 crash on the Bronx River Parkway lashed out at the deceased cops for taking her daughters on the deadly ride. "I don't understand why the police officer would drive a car knowing he had been drinking," Sabina Ramirez, 47, of the Bronx, said at Jacobi Medical Center, where her daughters, Jazmin, 23, and Iris, 27, remain in critical condition. "I don't know if one of my daughters will ever walk again," said Ramirez, referring to Iris, who suffered a broken pelvis, two fractured legs and a spinal cord injury. Crash victims Shirley Torres, 26, and Melina Ramirez, 27, no relation to the sisters, also remain hospitalized at Jacobi Medical Center. The women, according to their lawyer, accepted a ride home from Kim, 32, after he assured them he was fit to drive, and he and Paulino boasted, "Don't worry, we're cops." Lawyer Ken Litman conceded the women knew the officers had been drinking at the raucous surprise birthday party for a fellow cop in Pelham Bay, but said they wouldn't have gotten into the car if they knew the driver was so intoxicated. The women climbed into the backseat of Kim's 2009 Nissan Altima and Paulino, 25, got in the front passenger seat when they left the party just after 6 a.m. In the days following the accident, colleagues of the officers and even a sergeant at the 32nd Precinct insisted Kim would never drive drunk. Kim's twin brother, Juyoung Kim, appeared solemn when asked about the latest twist in the tragedy. "I do feel bad for the families," he said. "I can't imagine what they're going through, but we're also grieving." With Tanyanika Samuels and Robert Sgobbo kburke@nydailynews.com
Thursday, June 3, 2010
'Disgusting' grope cop guilty
'Disgusting' grope cop guilty
The New York Post by LAURA ITALIANO - June 3, 2010
A disgraced former NYPD community-affairs cop was convicted yesterday of groping two young women he'd offered to "help" with after-school program paperwork for their kids. The attacks -- in upper Manhattan in 2004 and 2008 -- left at least one juror utterly grossed out. "I think he's a scumbag," said the female juror, asking not to be named. "He's disgusting." Jurors heard graphic testimony from both victims, along with a transcript of a DA-recorded phone call in which Wilfredo Rosario oozed to one of the women, "Afterwards, when you have given me your mind, you will give me that body. You understand me?" Rosario, 41, was convicted in January of soliciting oral sex from a woman to whom he was issuing a summons in Riverside Park. He has yet to be tried for his most serious charge -- allegedly raping a fourth woman in 2003. He'll be held pending his sentencing July 1, at which time he faces a maximum of seven years in prison.
The New York Post by LAURA ITALIANO - June 3, 2010
A disgraced former NYPD community-affairs cop was convicted yesterday of groping two young women he'd offered to "help" with after-school program paperwork for their kids. The attacks -- in upper Manhattan in 2004 and 2008 -- left at least one juror utterly grossed out. "I think he's a scumbag," said the female juror, asking not to be named. "He's disgusting." Jurors heard graphic testimony from both victims, along with a transcript of a DA-recorded phone call in which Wilfredo Rosario oozed to one of the women, "Afterwards, when you have given me your mind, you will give me that body. You understand me?" Rosario, 41, was convicted in January of soliciting oral sex from a woman to whom he was issuing a summons in Riverside Park. He has yet to be tried for his most serious charge -- allegedly raping a fourth woman in 2003. He'll be held pending his sentencing July 1, at which time he faces a maximum of seven years in prison.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Policing with Honor
Policing with Honor with Randy Sutton
One cop's search for justice goes online
Randy Sutton, PoliceOne Contributor and author of three books about "policing with honor," takes on corruption with a new website and a steadfast determination
Greed and lust for power are not new human traits, they have been plaguing societies since the earliest civilizations were conceived. They are the components that fuels mans’ weakness and lead to the dark manifestations of corruption and abuse of power. Even those whose values are healthy and who have consistently displayed positive morality can be swayed by their temptations and it is a constant internal battle which must be waged if we are to overcome our thirst for the pleasures and the rewards they promote.
Corruption is a cancer that can erode and destroy organizations, governments, and even entire civilizations. It affects each one of us in myriad ways. We only need to examine the scandalous actions of corporate executives of Enron and Merrill Lynch to see how hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans had their financial security ripped away. Headlines abound of politicians at every level of local, state, and federal government enriching themselves monetarily or furthering their greed for power by selling their influence to the highest bidder while discarding their promises to the public they serve. Perhaps most embarrassing to me personally are the constant headlines in newspapers and television reports of police officers and law enforcement leaders who have given into the temptations of money, sex or power while they failed to live up to their oath “To Serve and Protect.” I’m Randy Sutton and I have fought for justice for more than three decades as a street cop, investigator and police leader for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and in the Princeton, New Jersey Police Department. During my years behind a badge I’ve given life and taken it. I have witnessed courage and cowardice, cruelty and incredible compassion and, as the years have passed, felt both disillusionment in my fellow man and pride in the many acts of benevolence and courage I have witnessed. I am a very fortunate man. I have survived several officer-involved shootings, had the opportunity to touch thousands of lives with my books and articles, spoken to thousands of law enforcement officers around the country on the subject of “policing with honor,” and worked alongside of other officers whose courage and integrity will inspire me forever. But I feel that I have not yet done enough.
Recently, I have been contacted by several police officers who discovered corruption and misconduct at the very top levels of their organization, and knowing their duty they took these suspicions and knowledge to various government and law enforcement leaders believing they would be protected. They were wrong. Not only were these allegations not competently investigated, but the very police leaders involved in the misconduct were given the names of the officers who came forward. What happened to these officers was predictable and unacceptable - their careers were destroyed and their personal lives damaged forever. When I stood before these men and listened to their horrors, I made a promise to them and myself that I would report and expose those responsible and work as an advocate for others whose lives and careers are threatened by greed, power and corruption. I decided to create a forum where honest men and women could expose those in positions of power who have abandoned their public trust to further their own interests. Where honesty, integrity, and the values of courage would be celebrated. I’ve created a website, SearchforJustice.us, to provide citizens, government employees and police officers the forum to report corruption and criminal misconduct — be it governmental or corporate. We will utilize sound investigative techniques to uncover and impartially investigate the allegations and, if verified, to expose the corruption or misconduct journalistically and publicly. We will also provide evidence to law enforcement entities who have legal authority and jurisdiction. The first investigation that “Search for Justice” will be centered around the police force in New Carrollton, Maryland, where the careers of several law enforcement officials were destroyed as they sought to expose the police administration’s corruption and misconduct. The website will also be devoted to justice and those who have the courage to pursue it. Together, we can Search for Justice with a unity of purpose that brings honest people together to stand up for the values that made the United States of America the symbol of strength and compassion that has for centuries drawn people to its shores in search of freedom, of opportunity and of justice.
About the author
Randy Sutton is a 33-year police veteran, having served 19 years with the Princeton (New Jersey) PD and 23 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and currently holding the rank of Lieutenant. His assignments have included patrol, Narcotics Bureau, Federal Task Force, Community Oriented Policing, Field Training, Supervisor of Advanced Training and he has earned Department awards for Valor, Meritorious Service, Exemplary Service, and multiple Life Saving Awards. Randy Sutton is the author of three books: “TRUE BLUE Police Stories by Those Who Have Lived Them,” “A Cop’s Life,” and “TRUE BLUE To Protect and To Serve” He travels extensively, speaking to law enforcement agencies and groups on the subject of ethics and integrity in a presentation entitled “Policing with Honor,” which also is the foundation of his column on PoliceOne.
One cop's search for justice goes online
Randy Sutton, PoliceOne Contributor and author of three books about "policing with honor," takes on corruption with a new website and a steadfast determination
Greed and lust for power are not new human traits, they have been plaguing societies since the earliest civilizations were conceived. They are the components that fuels mans’ weakness and lead to the dark manifestations of corruption and abuse of power. Even those whose values are healthy and who have consistently displayed positive morality can be swayed by their temptations and it is a constant internal battle which must be waged if we are to overcome our thirst for the pleasures and the rewards they promote.
Corruption is a cancer that can erode and destroy organizations, governments, and even entire civilizations. It affects each one of us in myriad ways. We only need to examine the scandalous actions of corporate executives of Enron and Merrill Lynch to see how hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans had their financial security ripped away. Headlines abound of politicians at every level of local, state, and federal government enriching themselves monetarily or furthering their greed for power by selling their influence to the highest bidder while discarding their promises to the public they serve. Perhaps most embarrassing to me personally are the constant headlines in newspapers and television reports of police officers and law enforcement leaders who have given into the temptations of money, sex or power while they failed to live up to their oath “To Serve and Protect.” I’m Randy Sutton and I have fought for justice for more than three decades as a street cop, investigator and police leader for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and in the Princeton, New Jersey Police Department. During my years behind a badge I’ve given life and taken it. I have witnessed courage and cowardice, cruelty and incredible compassion and, as the years have passed, felt both disillusionment in my fellow man and pride in the many acts of benevolence and courage I have witnessed. I am a very fortunate man. I have survived several officer-involved shootings, had the opportunity to touch thousands of lives with my books and articles, spoken to thousands of law enforcement officers around the country on the subject of “policing with honor,” and worked alongside of other officers whose courage and integrity will inspire me forever. But I feel that I have not yet done enough.
Recently, I have been contacted by several police officers who discovered corruption and misconduct at the very top levels of their organization, and knowing their duty they took these suspicions and knowledge to various government and law enforcement leaders believing they would be protected. They were wrong. Not only were these allegations not competently investigated, but the very police leaders involved in the misconduct were given the names of the officers who came forward. What happened to these officers was predictable and unacceptable - their careers were destroyed and their personal lives damaged forever. When I stood before these men and listened to their horrors, I made a promise to them and myself that I would report and expose those responsible and work as an advocate for others whose lives and careers are threatened by greed, power and corruption. I decided to create a forum where honest men and women could expose those in positions of power who have abandoned their public trust to further their own interests. Where honesty, integrity, and the values of courage would be celebrated. I’ve created a website, SearchforJustice.us, to provide citizens, government employees and police officers the forum to report corruption and criminal misconduct — be it governmental or corporate. We will utilize sound investigative techniques to uncover and impartially investigate the allegations and, if verified, to expose the corruption or misconduct journalistically and publicly. We will also provide evidence to law enforcement entities who have legal authority and jurisdiction. The first investigation that “Search for Justice” will be centered around the police force in New Carrollton, Maryland, where the careers of several law enforcement officials were destroyed as they sought to expose the police administration’s corruption and misconduct. The website will also be devoted to justice and those who have the courage to pursue it. Together, we can Search for Justice with a unity of purpose that brings honest people together to stand up for the values that made the United States of America the symbol of strength and compassion that has for centuries drawn people to its shores in search of freedom, of opportunity and of justice.
About the author
Randy Sutton is a 33-year police veteran, having served 19 years with the Princeton (New Jersey) PD and 23 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and currently holding the rank of Lieutenant. His assignments have included patrol, Narcotics Bureau, Federal Task Force, Community Oriented Policing, Field Training, Supervisor of Advanced Training and he has earned Department awards for Valor, Meritorious Service, Exemplary Service, and multiple Life Saving Awards. Randy Sutton is the author of three books: “TRUE BLUE Police Stories by Those Who Have Lived Them,” “A Cop’s Life,” and “TRUE BLUE To Protect and To Serve” He travels extensively, speaking to law enforcement agencies and groups on the subject of ethics and integrity in a presentation entitled “Policing with Honor,” which also is the foundation of his column on PoliceOne.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
East St. Louis Police Officer Sentenced on Civil Rights Conviction
Department of Justice Press Release
For Immediate Release
June 1, 2010 United States Attorney's Office
Southern District of Illinois
Contact: (618) 628-3700
East St. Louis Police Officer Sentenced on Civil Rights Conviction
A. Courtney Cox, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, announced today that on June 1, 2010, ANTONIO C. MCWHERTER, age 47, of Shiloh, Illinois, was sentenced in the United States District Court in East St. Louis for deprivation of civil rights. MCWHERTER pled guilty to the offense on May 27, 2010. MCWHERTER received three years’ probation with four months of home detention, fined $5,000, ordered to pay a $25 special assessment, and was ordered to pay restitution to the victim in the amount of $3,489. The violation occurred on January 30, 2006, in East St. Louis, Illinois, when the defendant, while acting under color of law as a police officer for the East St. Louis Police Department, struck an individual, D.C., in the mouth without legal justification. The assault occurred in the booking area of the East St. Louis Police Department. As part of MCWHERTER’s plea agreement, MCWHERTER agreed to immediately resign from the East St. Louis Police Department. MCWHERTER also agreed not to seek or accept any law enforcement employment, as well as any position or assignment in the military which would require him to supervise, care for, direct, or manage detainees or prisoners. The investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case was handled by Department of Justice – Civil Rights Division Trial Attorneys Patricia Sumner and Jeff Blumberg and Assistant United States Attorney Angela Scott.
For Immediate Release
June 1, 2010 United States Attorney's Office
Southern District of Illinois
Contact: (618) 628-3700
East St. Louis Police Officer Sentenced on Civil Rights Conviction
A. Courtney Cox, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, announced today that on June 1, 2010, ANTONIO C. MCWHERTER, age 47, of Shiloh, Illinois, was sentenced in the United States District Court in East St. Louis for deprivation of civil rights. MCWHERTER pled guilty to the offense on May 27, 2010. MCWHERTER received three years’ probation with four months of home detention, fined $5,000, ordered to pay a $25 special assessment, and was ordered to pay restitution to the victim in the amount of $3,489. The violation occurred on January 30, 2006, in East St. Louis, Illinois, when the defendant, while acting under color of law as a police officer for the East St. Louis Police Department, struck an individual, D.C., in the mouth without legal justification. The assault occurred in the booking area of the East St. Louis Police Department. As part of MCWHERTER’s plea agreement, MCWHERTER agreed to immediately resign from the East St. Louis Police Department. MCWHERTER also agreed not to seek or accept any law enforcement employment, as well as any position or assignment in the military which would require him to supervise, care for, direct, or manage detainees or prisoners. The investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case was handled by Department of Justice – Civil Rights Division Trial Attorneys Patricia Sumner and Jeff Blumberg and Assistant United States Attorney Angela Scott.
Monday, May 31, 2010
NYPD Cop Arrested for Helping Drug Dealers
Pension was in accused NYPD cop Emmanuel Tavarez's sights
The New York Daily News by John Marzulli - May 12, 2010
NYPD cop may have been just days away from scoring a tax-free disability pension when he was busted.
NYPD Officer Tavarez sold out badge to crime crew that posed as cops, feds charge
When NYPD cop Emmanuel Tavarez was busted for helping drug dealers last week, he may have been just days away from scoring a tax-free disability pension. The eight-year veteran had been approved for the pension by a panel of doctors for a line-of-duty knee injury, sources said. The case was on the board's calendar for this morning, but Tavarez won't be there - he's in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Federal drug agents arrested him last week on charges of outfitting robbery crew members with NYPD raid jackets and other police paraphernalia so they looked like real cops. He allegedly took part in stickups of drug dealers. His defense lawyer Lisa Scolari said in court yesterday that Tavarez was originally injured chasing a perp on a bicycle but decided not to retire. He later reinjured his knee, Scolari said - without telling the judge he was seeking a tax-free pension. Scolari said the cop had been a "phenomenal athlete" and was scouted by professional baseball teams. Magistrate Robert Levy approved a $1.8 million bail package but federal prosecutors are appealing the decision. Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Meyer argued Tavarez may flee to the Dominican Republic because he faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted of the robbery conspiracy charges. jmarzulli@nydailynews.com
The New York Daily News by John Marzulli - May 12, 2010
NYPD cop may have been just days away from scoring a tax-free disability pension when he was busted.
NYPD Officer Tavarez sold out badge to crime crew that posed as cops, feds charge
When NYPD cop Emmanuel Tavarez was busted for helping drug dealers last week, he may have been just days away from scoring a tax-free disability pension. The eight-year veteran had been approved for the pension by a panel of doctors for a line-of-duty knee injury, sources said. The case was on the board's calendar for this morning, but Tavarez won't be there - he's in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Federal drug agents arrested him last week on charges of outfitting robbery crew members with NYPD raid jackets and other police paraphernalia so they looked like real cops. He allegedly took part in stickups of drug dealers. His defense lawyer Lisa Scolari said in court yesterday that Tavarez was originally injured chasing a perp on a bicycle but decided not to retire. He later reinjured his knee, Scolari said - without telling the judge he was seeking a tax-free pension. Scolari said the cop had been a "phenomenal athlete" and was scouted by professional baseball teams. Magistrate Robert Levy approved a $1.8 million bail package but federal prosecutors are appealing the decision. Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Meyer argued Tavarez may flee to the Dominican Republic because he faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted of the robbery conspiracy charges. jmarzulli@nydailynews.com
Saturday, May 15, 2010
One Officer Seeks Bail as Ex-Officer Pleads Guilty
One Officer Seeks Bail as Ex-Officer Pleads Guilty
Two police officers — one current and the other former — appeared in the federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Thursday, each to deal with strikingly similar criminal charges related to the misuse of police authority. The former officer, Jorge H. Arbaje-Diaz, pleaded guilty for his participation in robberies of drug dealers set up to look like police raids. The current officer, Emmanuel Tavarez, appeared at a bail hearing on charges that he participated in an unrelated but nearly identical scheme. The overlapping appearances in United States District Court for the Eastern District, in Brooklyn, highlighted how similar the narratives were of a form of police corruption that Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said “unfairly tarnishes the proud reputation of the thousands of law enforcement officers in New York.” Both cases involved violent crews that conducted more than 100 robberies in the Northeast over several years, during which members posed as police officers to gain entry into homes to steal money and drugs, prosecutors said. And both cases included real officers who used police equipment and threats of arrest, prosecutors said. “Though these cases are similar, there are no common defendants, and no evidence indicating that there is a connection,” said Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for Ms. Lynch’s office.
Mr. Arbaje-Diaz, a three-year veteran of the Police Department, had been assigned to the transit bureau in the Bronx when he was arrested, and he resigned from the force in 2008. He spoke tentatively as he pleaded guilty to charges of robbery and drug distribution conspiracy, his words barely audible. He told Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis that he repeatedly robbed drug dealers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, later selling the drugs he would seize. “At times, I committed these robberies while I was wearing my police uniform and badge,” he said. “At times, I would brandish my off-duty revolver and use my N.Y.P.D. handcuffs to restrain victims.” Mr. Arbaje-Diaz is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 16. He faces a sentence of 10 years to life in prison. Even as Mr. Arbaje-Diaz was winding down his case, Officer Tavarez was in the early stages of his own involvement with the federal criminal justice system. Prosecutors have accused Officer Tavarez of outfitting members of his robbery crew with raid jackets that bore the “N.Y.P.D.” insignia, along with badges, handcuffs and bullet-resistant vests. On at least one occasion, prosecutors said, he handed over his own service revolver for use in a robbery. Officer Tavarez, who has been suspended without pay, was making his third appearance since his arrest last week to determine whether he will be released on bail. He was ordered released last week on $1.8 million bail by a magistrate judge, but the government appealed to Judge Sandra L. Townes, calling him a danger to the community and a flight risk. Judge Townes said she would decide whether to release Officer Tavarez during another hearing on Friday.
The New York Times by A. G. SULZBERGER - May 13, 2010
Two police officers — one current and the other former — appeared in the federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Thursday, each to deal with strikingly similar criminal charges related to the misuse of police authority. The former officer, Jorge H. Arbaje-Diaz, pleaded guilty for his participation in robberies of drug dealers set up to look like police raids. The current officer, Emmanuel Tavarez, appeared at a bail hearing on charges that he participated in an unrelated but nearly identical scheme. The overlapping appearances in United States District Court for the Eastern District, in Brooklyn, highlighted how similar the narratives were of a form of police corruption that Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said “unfairly tarnishes the proud reputation of the thousands of law enforcement officers in New York.” Both cases involved violent crews that conducted more than 100 robberies in the Northeast over several years, during which members posed as police officers to gain entry into homes to steal money and drugs, prosecutors said. And both cases included real officers who used police equipment and threats of arrest, prosecutors said. “Though these cases are similar, there are no common defendants, and no evidence indicating that there is a connection,” said Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for Ms. Lynch’s office.
Mr. Arbaje-Diaz, a three-year veteran of the Police Department, had been assigned to the transit bureau in the Bronx when he was arrested, and he resigned from the force in 2008. He spoke tentatively as he pleaded guilty to charges of robbery and drug distribution conspiracy, his words barely audible. He told Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis that he repeatedly robbed drug dealers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, later selling the drugs he would seize. “At times, I committed these robberies while I was wearing my police uniform and badge,” he said. “At times, I would brandish my off-duty revolver and use my N.Y.P.D. handcuffs to restrain victims.” Mr. Arbaje-Diaz is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 16. He faces a sentence of 10 years to life in prison. Even as Mr. Arbaje-Diaz was winding down his case, Officer Tavarez was in the early stages of his own involvement with the federal criminal justice system. Prosecutors have accused Officer Tavarez of outfitting members of his robbery crew with raid jackets that bore the “N.Y.P.D.” insignia, along with badges, handcuffs and bullet-resistant vests. On at least one occasion, prosecutors said, he handed over his own service revolver for use in a robbery. Officer Tavarez, who has been suspended without pay, was making his third appearance since his arrest last week to determine whether he will be released on bail. He was ordered released last week on $1.8 million bail by a magistrate judge, but the government appealed to Judge Sandra L. Townes, calling him a danger to the community and a flight risk. Judge Townes said she would decide whether to release Officer Tavarez during another hearing on Friday.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Cop Pleads Guilty To Stealing Heroin From Drug Dealers At Gunpoint
Cop pleads guilty to stealing heroin from drug dealers at gunpoint
The New York Daily News by John Marzulli - May 14, 2010
An NYPD cop pleaded guilty Thursday to robbing heroin from drug dealers at gunpoint and using his police handcuffs to restrain them. Jorge (Shorty) Arbaje-Diaz, 31, admitted he was part of a crew that pulled stickups in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx. The cop even left his post patrolling the transit system to carry out one robbery in full uniform, the feds said. Arbaje-Diaz resigned from the force after he was arrested in 2008. He faces 20 years in prison. Meanwhile, prosecutors released new details yesterday about a second transit cop accused this week of being a member of a different robbery crew. A suspect fleeing a drug-related robbery in Philadelphia was carrying an NYPD badge bearing Officer Emmanuel Tavarez's number. Tavarez allegedly took part in a heist in New York City that netted more than $100,000 in drug cash.
The New York Daily News by John Marzulli - May 14, 2010
An NYPD cop pleaded guilty Thursday to robbing heroin from drug dealers at gunpoint and using his police handcuffs to restrain them. Jorge (Shorty) Arbaje-Diaz, 31, admitted he was part of a crew that pulled stickups in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx. The cop even left his post patrolling the transit system to carry out one robbery in full uniform, the feds said. Arbaje-Diaz resigned from the force after he was arrested in 2008. He faces 20 years in prison. Meanwhile, prosecutors released new details yesterday about a second transit cop accused this week of being a member of a different robbery crew. A suspect fleeing a drug-related robbery in Philadelphia was carrying an NYPD badge bearing Officer Emmanuel Tavarez's number. Tavarez allegedly took part in a heist in New York City that netted more than $100,000 in drug cash.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Former city cop, snared in FBI sting, going to prison
Former city cop, snared in FBI sting, going to prison
The St. Louis Post- Dispatch by Robert Patrick - April 24, 2010
ST. LOUIS, MO — A judge sentenced former city police Officer Ronald H. Jackson on Friday to 18 months in prison for stealing from a woman in what turned out to be an FBI sting. Jackson, 58, was caught after he and another officer, Christian A. Brezill, pulled over and arrested a woman who was secretly cooperating with the FBI. Jackson had been tipped off that the woman's car trunk held merchandise stolen from a Best Buy store. He and Brezill split the goods, and Jackson gave some to the person who had provided the information, according to court documents and testimony. Brezill, 26, was sentenced last month to two years of probation after cooperating with investigators. Both men, who worked in the Police Department's 6th District, were indicted in October on a single federal felony charge of theft of government property. They pleaded guilty in December. Both will have to repay a total of $1,480 — the value of what they took. Jackson, a 30-year department veteran, retired under charges. Brezill, with roughly 18 months on the force, was fired. Jackson apologized in Friday's hearing to the court, city and Police Department. "I regret my actions. I know they were wrong," he said. Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith insisted that Jackson was the leader and said he is rumored to have committed similar thefts "numerous" times before. FBI Special Agent Anthony Bernardoni testified that he had received a tip in the spring or summer of 2009 that Jackson had been involved in a scheme with a person in the business of buying stolen goods. If a seller wanted too much money, Bernardoni said he was told, the buyer would turn down the deal and arrange for Jackson to pull over the seller's car and just steal the loot. That buyer has never been publicly identified. Jackson's lawyer, Clyde Cahill, insisted that Jackson was not the leader in the theft of the Best Buy goods, which he characterized as the result of both officers' spontaneous impulse to steal. Cahill also argued that Jackson's possession of a firearm during the crime should not be taken into account, since he was armed as part of his police uniform and the weapon did not play a role in the crime. U.S. District Judge Donald Stohr rejected both of Cahill's arguments and sentenced Jackson to 18 months, the bottom of the range of 18-24 months suggested under federal sentencing guidelines. Brezill told the Post-Dispatch last month that Jackson suggested they steal the goods. Brezill said he finally gave in after repeatedly refusing.
The St. Louis Post- Dispatch by Robert Patrick - April 24, 2010
ST. LOUIS, MO — A judge sentenced former city police Officer Ronald H. Jackson on Friday to 18 months in prison for stealing from a woman in what turned out to be an FBI sting. Jackson, 58, was caught after he and another officer, Christian A. Brezill, pulled over and arrested a woman who was secretly cooperating with the FBI. Jackson had been tipped off that the woman's car trunk held merchandise stolen from a Best Buy store. He and Brezill split the goods, and Jackson gave some to the person who had provided the information, according to court documents and testimony. Brezill, 26, was sentenced last month to two years of probation after cooperating with investigators. Both men, who worked in the Police Department's 6th District, were indicted in October on a single federal felony charge of theft of government property. They pleaded guilty in December. Both will have to repay a total of $1,480 — the value of what they took. Jackson, a 30-year department veteran, retired under charges. Brezill, with roughly 18 months on the force, was fired. Jackson apologized in Friday's hearing to the court, city and Police Department. "I regret my actions. I know they were wrong," he said. Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith insisted that Jackson was the leader and said he is rumored to have committed similar thefts "numerous" times before. FBI Special Agent Anthony Bernardoni testified that he had received a tip in the spring or summer of 2009 that Jackson had been involved in a scheme with a person in the business of buying stolen goods. If a seller wanted too much money, Bernardoni said he was told, the buyer would turn down the deal and arrange for Jackson to pull over the seller's car and just steal the loot. That buyer has never been publicly identified. Jackson's lawyer, Clyde Cahill, insisted that Jackson was not the leader in the theft of the Best Buy goods, which he characterized as the result of both officers' spontaneous impulse to steal. Cahill also argued that Jackson's possession of a firearm during the crime should not be taken into account, since he was armed as part of his police uniform and the weapon did not play a role in the crime. U.S. District Judge Donald Stohr rejected both of Cahill's arguments and sentenced Jackson to 18 months, the bottom of the range of 18-24 months suggested under federal sentencing guidelines. Brezill told the Post-Dispatch last month that Jackson suggested they steal the goods. Brezill said he finally gave in after repeatedly refusing.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Prosecutors Probe 3 Cops' Beating of Students
Beating of University of Maryland student by police probed by county prosecutors
The Washington Post by Ruben Castaneda - April 13, 2010
Prince George's prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation of three county police officers who beat an unarmed University of Maryland student with their batons after a basketball game last month in an incident that was caught on video and surfaced publicly Monday, authorities said. County police also ordered an internal affairs investigation of the three officers, Maj. Andy Ellis said. Ellis said the inquiry would also focus on a county officer who filed official charging documents that are contradicted by the video. "The video shows the charging documents were nothing more than a cover, a fairy tale they made up to cover for the officers' misconduct," said Christopher A. Griffiths, a lawyer for the student. "The video shows gratuitous violence against a defenseless individual." Police Chief Roberto L. Hylton said that one of the three officers had been identified and that his police powers have been suspended during the investigation. The other two officers will also be suspended as soon as they are identified, Hylton said. "I'm outraged and disappointed after viewing the video," Hylton said. "That's not the type of professional conduct we promote. Any employee who uses excessive force will be held accountable." Griffiths released the video Monday after county prosecutors dropped charges against John J. McKenna, 21. McKenna and a co-defendant, Benjamin C. Donat, 19, had been charged with felonies on suspicion of assaulting officers on horseback and their mounts. On Friday, a prosecutor dropped charges against Donat, also a U-Md. student. Griffiths is also representing Donat. The incident occurred March 3 near the university's College Park campus after the Maryland men's basketball team defeated Duke. After the game, students took to the streets to celebrate. Twenty-eight people were arrested or cited, sparking a debate between police and students over how and when it is appropriate to break up a group of revelers. At least part of the incident with McKenna was videotaped by another student. The video, which lasts about one minute, is a continuous shot. It was discovered by Sharon Weidenfeld, a private investigator who worked on behalf of McKenna and Donat. The video does not show Donat, although Officer Sean McAleavey's charging documents say the two men acted together. The video shows about two dozen students milling about on Knox Road near Route 1. About a half-dozen of them are pointing their cellphone cameras at riot police who are gathered between the students and Route 1. The video shows McKenna on the sidewalk as he skips and throws his arms in the air. He stops about five feet from an officer on horseback, the video shows. In the video, McKenna's arms appear to be in front of him, but he does not appear to touch the officer or the horse. His hands are empty. McKenna backs up, then two county police riot officers rush toward him from the street, the video shows. The officers slam McKenna against a wall and beat him with their batons. McKenna crumples to the ground. As McKenna falls, a third county police riot officer strikes his legs and torso with his baton. The video shows the officers striking an unresisting McKenna about the head, torso and legs -- more than a dozen blows in all. Because they are wearing riot gear, the officers who hit McKenna are not easily identifiable. In the video, county police officers and officers on horseback from the Maryland-National Capital Park Police are seen nearby. They do not intervene in the incident with McKenna. The officers form a line and move toward the students who had been milling about, the video shows, and the students move back.
Charging documents say McKenna and Donat provoked the beating by attacking officers on horseback. The video clearly shows the officers rushing McKenna and beating him, although the teenager had not touched any of the mounted units. The charging documents also say that the horses injured McKenna and Donat and make no mention of the beating by the officers. The video shows no aggression by the horses. The documents sworn by McAleavey allege that McKenna and Donat were running and screaming in the middle of Route 1, prompting an unruly crowd to form. As two officers on horseback from the Maryland-National Capital Park Police tried to regain order, McKenna and Donat "struck those officers and their horses causing minor injuries," McAleavey wrote. McKenna and Donat "were both kicked by the horses and sustained minor injuries," the charging documents say. Griffiths said Donat was beaten by county police with batons about a block away from where McKenna was beaten. The lawyer said the two do not know each other. Griffiths said both men suffered concussions from police baton blows. McAleavey did not return calls for comment. Lt. Stanley Johnson, a spokesman for the Maryland-National Capital Park Police, said that McKenna and Donat did not attack any of his officers or horses and that none of the department's horses kicked or struck McKenna or Donat. The charges against McKenna were dropped Monday without comment, Griffiths said.
The Washington Post by Ruben Castaneda - April 13, 2010
Prince George's prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation of three county police officers who beat an unarmed University of Maryland student with their batons after a basketball game last month in an incident that was caught on video and surfaced publicly Monday, authorities said. County police also ordered an internal affairs investigation of the three officers, Maj. Andy Ellis said. Ellis said the inquiry would also focus on a county officer who filed official charging documents that are contradicted by the video. "The video shows the charging documents were nothing more than a cover, a fairy tale they made up to cover for the officers' misconduct," said Christopher A. Griffiths, a lawyer for the student. "The video shows gratuitous violence against a defenseless individual." Police Chief Roberto L. Hylton said that one of the three officers had been identified and that his police powers have been suspended during the investigation. The other two officers will also be suspended as soon as they are identified, Hylton said. "I'm outraged and disappointed after viewing the video," Hylton said. "That's not the type of professional conduct we promote. Any employee who uses excessive force will be held accountable." Griffiths released the video Monday after county prosecutors dropped charges against John J. McKenna, 21. McKenna and a co-defendant, Benjamin C. Donat, 19, had been charged with felonies on suspicion of assaulting officers on horseback and their mounts. On Friday, a prosecutor dropped charges against Donat, also a U-Md. student. Griffiths is also representing Donat. The incident occurred March 3 near the university's College Park campus after the Maryland men's basketball team defeated Duke. After the game, students took to the streets to celebrate. Twenty-eight people were arrested or cited, sparking a debate between police and students over how and when it is appropriate to break up a group of revelers. At least part of the incident with McKenna was videotaped by another student. The video, which lasts about one minute, is a continuous shot. It was discovered by Sharon Weidenfeld, a private investigator who worked on behalf of McKenna and Donat. The video does not show Donat, although Officer Sean McAleavey's charging documents say the two men acted together. The video shows about two dozen students milling about on Knox Road near Route 1. About a half-dozen of them are pointing their cellphone cameras at riot police who are gathered between the students and Route 1. The video shows McKenna on the sidewalk as he skips and throws his arms in the air. He stops about five feet from an officer on horseback, the video shows. In the video, McKenna's arms appear to be in front of him, but he does not appear to touch the officer or the horse. His hands are empty. McKenna backs up, then two county police riot officers rush toward him from the street, the video shows. The officers slam McKenna against a wall and beat him with their batons. McKenna crumples to the ground. As McKenna falls, a third county police riot officer strikes his legs and torso with his baton. The video shows the officers striking an unresisting McKenna about the head, torso and legs -- more than a dozen blows in all. Because they are wearing riot gear, the officers who hit McKenna are not easily identifiable. In the video, county police officers and officers on horseback from the Maryland-National Capital Park Police are seen nearby. They do not intervene in the incident with McKenna. The officers form a line and move toward the students who had been milling about, the video shows, and the students move back.
Charging documents say McKenna and Donat provoked the beating by attacking officers on horseback. The video clearly shows the officers rushing McKenna and beating him, although the teenager had not touched any of the mounted units. The charging documents also say that the horses injured McKenna and Donat and make no mention of the beating by the officers. The video shows no aggression by the horses. The documents sworn by McAleavey allege that McKenna and Donat were running and screaming in the middle of Route 1, prompting an unruly crowd to form. As two officers on horseback from the Maryland-National Capital Park Police tried to regain order, McKenna and Donat "struck those officers and their horses causing minor injuries," McAleavey wrote. McKenna and Donat "were both kicked by the horses and sustained minor injuries," the charging documents say. Griffiths said Donat was beaten by county police with batons about a block away from where McKenna was beaten. The lawyer said the two do not know each other. Griffiths said both men suffered concussions from police baton blows. McAleavey did not return calls for comment. Lt. Stanley Johnson, a spokesman for the Maryland-National Capital Park Police, said that McKenna and Donat did not attack any of his officers or horses and that none of the department's horses kicked or struck McKenna or Donat. The charges against McKenna were dropped Monday without comment, Griffiths said.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Fired cop called 'horrible investment'
Fired cop called 'horrible investment'
Schenectady terminates police officer who's been arrested multiple times
The Albany Times Union by Paul Nelson - April 12, 2010
SCHENECTADY, NY -- Officer John Lewis' blemished 16-year career with the Schenectady Police Department, which include multiple arrests for drunken driving and domestic incidents, is over. Mayor Brian U. Stratton announced his decision Monday to accept an independent hearing officer's recommendation to terminate Lewis, who remains behind bars on unpaid leave. He has not been on active duty since March 2008. This marks the second time in 12 years that Lewis has been fired from the police department. Stratton said that despite his many arrests, Lewis, 40, has remained unrepentant. "Perhaps most unforgiving, he has never expressed even the slightest remorse for his actions or made any effort to accept personal responsibility for his conduct," the mayor said during an afternoon news conference in the City Hall rotunda. Stratton said he concluded after reading the report that Lewis "had clearly placed his own interests above those of the public he swore to protect and serve," and that the officer had "time and again acted with complete and utter disregard for the law and for the authority of his superior officers." The hearing officer, Jeffrey Selchick, issued the 85-page report last week. The disciplinary hearings focused on the five times Lewis was arrested from April 2008 to January 2009 on charges of harassment and violation of protective orders for his former wife, insubordination during an alcohol-related driving incident, another alcohol-related incident involving property damage and a domestic incident at his mother's Schenectady home. Lewis' attorney, James Tuttle of Latham, did not immediately return a call Monday seeking comment.
Stratton also bemoaned a ruling in July by Acting State Supreme Court Justice Barry Kramer to close police disciplinary hearings to the public. Under that longstanding system, a hearing officer selected by the city makes recommendations, and if the officer appeals the case goes to an independent arbitrator. The city has been pushing for Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett to preside over disciplinary hearings. The state Public Employment Relations Board also is expected to weigh in on the issue. Bennett and Police Chief Mark Chaires joined Stratton for the news conference. Bennett said Lewis should never be able to wear a police uniform again. "It's not appropriate for John Lewis to continue in law enforcement anywhere," he said. Like Stratton, he mentioned the money and time spent getting rid of Lewis. "None of us is more frustrated with the expense and delay than those of us with the management of the city," Bennett said, adding Lewis' fate "is a profound statement" that officers have to adhere to high standards that police brass expect both on and off the job. Chaires described Lewis as a bad hire who gives the 150-member department a black eye. "John Lewis was an absolutely horrible investment of taxpayer money, he said. "I could not agree with the decision more strongly; it's the right decision."
Lewis has been suspended without pay since late last year. He has 30 days to appeal the mayor's decision, which would then put it into the hands of an arbitrator, according to L. John Van Norden, the city's corporation counsel. This is not the first time Lewis was fired from the force. He previously used the arbitration process to successfully win back his job after being fired in 1998 for using a racial slur at the police station. More recently, he was acquitted in February of drunken-driving charges in Schenectady. In January, prosecutors dropped a contempt charge against Lewis stemming from his alleged violation of an order barring him from contact with his ex-wife, Alison Lewis. He suffered a stab wound in December during a visit with a girlfriend in Massachusetts. That same month, he pleaded not guilty to a 10-count indictment charging him with eavesdropping, stalking, aggravated harassment, computer trespass, computer tampering and tampering with a witness. In that case, Lewis is accused of using a former girlfriend's computer to hack into his ex-wife's e-mail accounts. Lewis also is facing charges stemming from a January 2009 fight with his brother, also a police officer, before damaging their mother's home. In March 2008, a City Court Judge acquitted him of harassment. Prosecutors had argued he fought with his ex-wife over custody of their son. Lewis filed a notice of claim contending the city conspired with his ex-wife to get him fired. Reach Nelson at 454-5347 or at pnelson@timesunion.com
Schenectady terminates police officer who's been arrested multiple times
The Albany Times Union by Paul Nelson - April 12, 2010
SCHENECTADY, NY -- Officer John Lewis' blemished 16-year career with the Schenectady Police Department, which include multiple arrests for drunken driving and domestic incidents, is over. Mayor Brian U. Stratton announced his decision Monday to accept an independent hearing officer's recommendation to terminate Lewis, who remains behind bars on unpaid leave. He has not been on active duty since March 2008. This marks the second time in 12 years that Lewis has been fired from the police department. Stratton said that despite his many arrests, Lewis, 40, has remained unrepentant. "Perhaps most unforgiving, he has never expressed even the slightest remorse for his actions or made any effort to accept personal responsibility for his conduct," the mayor said during an afternoon news conference in the City Hall rotunda. Stratton said he concluded after reading the report that Lewis "had clearly placed his own interests above those of the public he swore to protect and serve," and that the officer had "time and again acted with complete and utter disregard for the law and for the authority of his superior officers." The hearing officer, Jeffrey Selchick, issued the 85-page report last week. The disciplinary hearings focused on the five times Lewis was arrested from April 2008 to January 2009 on charges of harassment and violation of protective orders for his former wife, insubordination during an alcohol-related driving incident, another alcohol-related incident involving property damage and a domestic incident at his mother's Schenectady home. Lewis' attorney, James Tuttle of Latham, did not immediately return a call Monday seeking comment.
Stratton also bemoaned a ruling in July by Acting State Supreme Court Justice Barry Kramer to close police disciplinary hearings to the public. Under that longstanding system, a hearing officer selected by the city makes recommendations, and if the officer appeals the case goes to an independent arbitrator. The city has been pushing for Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett to preside over disciplinary hearings. The state Public Employment Relations Board also is expected to weigh in on the issue. Bennett and Police Chief Mark Chaires joined Stratton for the news conference. Bennett said Lewis should never be able to wear a police uniform again. "It's not appropriate for John Lewis to continue in law enforcement anywhere," he said. Like Stratton, he mentioned the money and time spent getting rid of Lewis. "None of us is more frustrated with the expense and delay than those of us with the management of the city," Bennett said, adding Lewis' fate "is a profound statement" that officers have to adhere to high standards that police brass expect both on and off the job. Chaires described Lewis as a bad hire who gives the 150-member department a black eye. "John Lewis was an absolutely horrible investment of taxpayer money, he said. "I could not agree with the decision more strongly; it's the right decision."
Lewis has been suspended without pay since late last year. He has 30 days to appeal the mayor's decision, which would then put it into the hands of an arbitrator, according to L. John Van Norden, the city's corporation counsel. This is not the first time Lewis was fired from the force. He previously used the arbitration process to successfully win back his job after being fired in 1998 for using a racial slur at the police station. More recently, he was acquitted in February of drunken-driving charges in Schenectady. In January, prosecutors dropped a contempt charge against Lewis stemming from his alleged violation of an order barring him from contact with his ex-wife, Alison Lewis. He suffered a stab wound in December during a visit with a girlfriend in Massachusetts. That same month, he pleaded not guilty to a 10-count indictment charging him with eavesdropping, stalking, aggravated harassment, computer trespass, computer tampering and tampering with a witness. In that case, Lewis is accused of using a former girlfriend's computer to hack into his ex-wife's e-mail accounts. Lewis also is facing charges stemming from a January 2009 fight with his brother, also a police officer, before damaging their mother's home. In March 2008, a City Court Judge acquitted him of harassment. Prosecutors had argued he fought with his ex-wife over custody of their son. Lewis filed a notice of claim contending the city conspired with his ex-wife to get him fired. Reach Nelson at 454-5347 or at pnelson@timesunion.com
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Phony Police Statistics Gives Way to Real Numbers
Crime up 13% in B'klyn's 81st Pct. where whistleblower accused chiefs of lowering felony stats
The New York Daily News by Rocco Parascandola - March 29, 2010
Crime is up 13% at the Brooklyn precinct where a whistleblower cop accused his supervisors of ignoring felonies to artificially lower the area's crime stats. Lawyers for whistleblower Officer Adrian Schoolcraft say the spike in felonies at the 81st Precinct in the first months of the year shows officials are now being more rigorous about how they classify crimes. "It raises the question: How were they taking reports before Adrian came forward, and are they being more careful now that everyone is watching what they do?" said lawyer Kevin Mosley. "Are they doing things now the way they were always supposed to be done?" Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD's top spokesman, disputed that, saying crime was up 26% in the precinct at the end of January, just before the Daily News broke the story, and that it had fallen since then. The News reported last month that Schoolcraft had told the NYPD's Quality Assurance Division that crime statistics were fudged at the Bedford-Stuyvesant precinct to make the crime rate look lower. He provided the division information for 14 crime victims, saying either the victims were ignored or felonies were downgraded to misdemeanors. Of the 10 crime victims interviewed by The News, five backed up Schoolcraft's allegations and two others said they had problems with the precinct. Schoolcraft is under suspension for leaving work an hour early last Halloween without permission. He was subsequently involuntarily placed in a psychiatric facility, a move he contends is retribution for trying to expose wrongdoing. The precinct's commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Steven Mauriello, has told The News he's confident the ongoing internal review of how the precinct files crime reports will clear him of any wrongdoing. Crime in the precinct fell sharply under Mauriello - about 17% in 2008 and last year. It had fallen more gently from 2003 to 2007, and even increased one year. But this year, through March 21 - the latest date for which statistics were available - crime was up 13% compared with the same time period last year, with felony assault up 74%, to 59 from 34. Grand larcenies and robberies were also up, though just slightly. Crime in two nearby precincts, meanwhile, was down substantially: 11.5% in the 73rd (Brownsville) and 10.2% in the 83rd (Bushwick). It was up 6.7% in the 90th (Williamsburg) and 1.3% in the 77th (northern Crown Heights and Prospect Heights.) City Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens) called the precinct's crime spike "very interesting." He said a number of current and retired cops have contacted him since the News first wrote about Schoolcraft to talk about numbers being fudged. He said he is considering holding a hearing on the issue. New Chief of Patrol James Hall, meanwhile, told borough commanders at a recent meeting that he wanted "honest numbers," according to a source.
The New York Daily News by Rocco Parascandola - March 29, 2010
Crime is up 13% at the Brooklyn precinct where a whistleblower cop accused his supervisors of ignoring felonies to artificially lower the area's crime stats. Lawyers for whistleblower Officer Adrian Schoolcraft say the spike in felonies at the 81st Precinct in the first months of the year shows officials are now being more rigorous about how they classify crimes. "It raises the question: How were they taking reports before Adrian came forward, and are they being more careful now that everyone is watching what they do?" said lawyer Kevin Mosley. "Are they doing things now the way they were always supposed to be done?" Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD's top spokesman, disputed that, saying crime was up 26% in the precinct at the end of January, just before the Daily News broke the story, and that it had fallen since then. The News reported last month that Schoolcraft had told the NYPD's Quality Assurance Division that crime statistics were fudged at the Bedford-Stuyvesant precinct to make the crime rate look lower. He provided the division information for 14 crime victims, saying either the victims were ignored or felonies were downgraded to misdemeanors. Of the 10 crime victims interviewed by The News, five backed up Schoolcraft's allegations and two others said they had problems with the precinct. Schoolcraft is under suspension for leaving work an hour early last Halloween without permission. He was subsequently involuntarily placed in a psychiatric facility, a move he contends is retribution for trying to expose wrongdoing. The precinct's commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Steven Mauriello, has told The News he's confident the ongoing internal review of how the precinct files crime reports will clear him of any wrongdoing. Crime in the precinct fell sharply under Mauriello - about 17% in 2008 and last year. It had fallen more gently from 2003 to 2007, and even increased one year. But this year, through March 21 - the latest date for which statistics were available - crime was up 13% compared with the same time period last year, with felony assault up 74%, to 59 from 34. Grand larcenies and robberies were also up, though just slightly. Crime in two nearby precincts, meanwhile, was down substantially: 11.5% in the 73rd (Brownsville) and 10.2% in the 83rd (Bushwick). It was up 6.7% in the 90th (Williamsburg) and 1.3% in the 77th (northern Crown Heights and Prospect Heights.) City Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens) called the precinct's crime spike "very interesting." He said a number of current and retired cops have contacted him since the News first wrote about Schoolcraft to talk about numbers being fudged. He said he is considering holding a hearing on the issue. New Chief of Patrol James Hall, meanwhile, told borough commanders at a recent meeting that he wanted "honest numbers," according to a source.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Texas Cops Admit Questionable Practices
Garland police officer admits to questionable practice with informants
The Dallas Morning News by Tanya Eiserer - March 26, 2010
The Dallas Morning News by Tanya Eiserer - March 26, 2010
teiserer@dallasnews.com
Garland drug officer's cases re-examined after credibility questioned
"You could [infer] all kinds of different things," Morrow testified.
"You could [infer] all kinds of different things," Morrow testified.
Garland police Officer Dennis Morrow admitted during a hearing Thursday that he sometimes had informants sign pay sheets without immediately filling in the amount he paid them – a practice deemed questionable by law enforcement experts – but he denied ever stealing any money. Under questioning by Dallas County prosecutor Tim Gallagher, Morrow testified that he did realize that having informants sign blank pay sheets could create an appearance problem for him. Morrow's testimony came during the continuation of a pretrial hearing in which two colleagues have already testified that he misrepresented what happened during a July drug bust. Morrow has denied any wrongdoing in that raid, and a Garland police internal investigation cleared him. Two Garland officers, Daniel Colasanto and Cliff Wise, have previously testified that Morrow inaccurately wrote in a July police report that Tramane Hooks lunged for drugs in a refrigerator, resulting in his arrest on drug delivery charges. The officers testified that the inaccuracies were part of a pattern by Morrow and that they doubted his credibility. The hearing, which began earlier this month and was postponed until Thursday, is an attempt by defense attorney Bill Wirskye to get drug charges against his client, Patrick Woodard, dismissed. Morrow was the arresting officer when Woodard was arrested in April. Woodard's case is unrelated to Hooks'. As a result of the testimony of Colasanto and Wise, prosecutors have launched a wide-ranging review of all of Morrow's felony drug cases, which number in the hundreds. Morrow, Wise and Colasanto were among a group of Garland officers transferred out of the narcotics unit last year after the Hooks arrest. Although Morrow contends he did nothing wrong with the pay sheets, the lead investigator in the Dallas fake-drug scandal said in an interview after the hearing that the officer's actions could prove to be problematic. David Eldridge, a retired narcotics supervisor with the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that such a practice is "fraught with danger. Both he and his department that's permitting him to do this are headed for problems." During Morrow's testimony Thursday, he said that there were rare occasions when a witness wasn't present when he gave money to a confidential informant, but that he always notified a supervisor when he did so. He also said he sometimes would go to a motel office with an informant and give the manager the money the informants had earned from helping with drug busts. "If they owed the motel guy $180 for the week, then we'd give it to them and they would give them what was left over," Morrow testified. Both practices, Eldridge said, are troubling. "That's what gets these guys in trouble is not properly documenting how the money is spent," he said. Also Thursday, Judge Pat McDowell granted the city of Garland's motion to place documents subpoenaed by Wirskye under a protective order, preventing their release to any third parties, including the media. In seeking the protective order, Garland Assistant City Attorney Michael Betz cited a provision of state law that makes certain police internal affairs records confidential. The hearing in the Woodard case is slated to resume next Thursday.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Very Revealing NYPD Corruption Report
N.Y.P.D. Confidential
The New York Times by Al Baker and Jo Craven McGinty - March 26, 2010
CASE file: His night began in the bars of Staten Island, and by 2 a.m., he was buying crack cocaine. Inside his car, he flicked a lighter and inhaled. He picked up a woman; they got high together. She left after he spotted the authorities.
Case file: A Brooklyn man had a hook with organized crime. He and his wife set up gambling operations at six spots in Manhattan and Nassau County. When they were arrested, along with her parents and 11 others, investigators seized cash, slot machines and cars.
Case file: He would lock his mountain bike in a garage in Jamaica, Queens, then enter a nearby bordello. Once, he even arranged a rendezvous in a pizzeria. Tipped off by a prostitute — probably angered that he did not pay — detectives caught it all on audio and video.
Case file: A Brooklyn man had a hook with organized crime. He and his wife set up gambling operations at six spots in Manhattan and Nassau County. When they were arrested, along with her parents and 11 others, investigators seized cash, slot machines and cars.
Case file: He would lock his mountain bike in a garage in Jamaica, Queens, then enter a nearby bordello. Once, he even arranged a rendezvous in a pizzeria. Tipped off by a prostitute — probably angered that he did not pay — detectives caught it all on audio and video.
These are all relatively minor crimes, the stuff of daily precinct logs rather than ripped-from-the-headlines television drama, but for one thing: In each case, the central character was a cop. That, by at least one way of reckoning, makes them routine: From 1992 to 2008, nearly 2,000 New York Police Department officers were arrested, according to the department’s own annual reports of the Internal Affairs Bureau, an average of 119 a year. The rarely seen internal reports were obtained last month by the New York Civil Liberties Union through the Freedom of Information Law. They show that the number of tips logged each year by Internal Affairs has tripled since 1992, a trend that top police officials attribute to an opening up of the process and more diligent cataloging of public response to police interactions — including compliments as well as complaints. The number of investigations pursued over the same period has dropped by more than half, which Chief Charles V. Campisi, who runs the unit, called “the truest reflection of the corruption the department faces.”
Most of those investigations involved drugs, theft or crimes like fraud, bribery or sex offenses, on and off the job. Inquiries in these categories have largely decreased in recent years, but cases involving abuse of suspects have risen significantly. The 2006 report noted the “unprecedented” rise and gave an example: several officers followed a woman wanted for petty larceny into a store and one “struck her in the head with his firearm for no reason.” “History tells us there always will be bad cops, and the department will never be able to completely control that,” said Christopher T. Dunn, associate legal director of the civil liberties union, who has spent weeks studying the documents. “But what it can control, and what it should be held accountable for, is how it responds to corruption.” For better or worse, the police are left to police themselves, and the reports, which together total more than 600 pages, provide the most comprehensive record available chronicling that imperfect science. They tell a colorful story not only of officers who betray the badge but also of the little-known agency charged with rooting them out. The bureau has long been a Hollywood fascination, and derided among the rank and file as the “rat squad” since so many cases depend on one cop snitching on another. Officers who work there are, therefore, called “cheese eaters,” while rogue officers have been known as “grass eaters” (those who peddle in low-level but pervasive wrongdoing) and “meat eaters” (who are more aggressive or violent). It took its current form in 1993, after Officer Michael Dowd and several colleagues were arrested on Long Island on charges of selling cocaine, prompting a disgusted Raymond W. Kelly, in his first stint as police commissioner, to overhaul the internal affairs process. “I am always concerned about corruption,” Mr. Kelly, who returned as commissioner in 2002, said in an interview. “For me, myself, personally, it is absolutely critical to the good order, to the function of this department, that we have a well-staffed, a well-trained, a proactive Internal Affairs Bureau, and that’s what we have.”
The reports themselves have changed much over the years: from 81 typewritten pages packed with statistics in 1993, to 99 pages of glossy photographs but scant specifics in 2006, to a pair of skimpy 15-page summaries in 2007 and 2008. Year in, year out, they contain head-scratching examples of people sworn to uphold the law breaking it instead. Officers rob banks. They collude with drug dealers. They pilfer credit cards from prisoners to buy groceries, and they take payoffs from street peddlers as protection money. Sex is often at the center of their sins. That man on the mountain bike was Damian A. Conlon, who was a 34-year-old officer on the bicycle patrol in the 103rd Precinct in Queens in 1999. Internal Affairs investigators watched him ride from the station house to the brothel, during his shift, wearing his uniform. They watched him walk inside, heard a manager instruct a prostitute to have sex with him and heard her say not to charge him. Mr. Conlon pleaded guilty to official misconduct, paid a $1,000 fine and quit. For as long as there have been police officers, there have been cycles of corruption: renegades, scandals, reforms — more renegades. In 1884, the Lexow Commission’s inquiry into brothel owners and gambling den runners paying off officers led to Theodore Roosevelt’s being named president of a Board of Police Commissioners. Next was the Becker Scandal of 1912: Lt. Charles Becker hired four gunmen to rub out a gambler who was tipping prosecutors to police payoffs.
The Seabury Investigation of 1930 exposed vice officers shaking down prostitutes, and police officers and politicians in the grip of organized crime. In 1950, a scandal involving a Brooklyn bookmaker named Harry Gross, who had enlisted officers as muscle for his $20-million-a-year operation, led to the resignation of Mayor William O’Dwyer and his police commissioner. The early 1970s brought the Knapp Commission and its tales of pervasive corruption. Two decades later came Officer Dowd — and the birth of the current Internal Affairs Bureau, when Commissioner Kelly declared the operation a mess and chose Walter Mack, a former federal prosecutor, to clean it up. Internal Affairs was given equal footing with the detective, patrol and personnel bureaus, headed by a three-star chief; assignments there were no longer all voluntary. The idea, Mr. Mack said in a recent interview, was “to elevate it, with new personnel, a different management structure, to change what had been perceived, and what was criticized, as an organization not functioning the way it should be.” And to start issuing annual reports. They were sent to the commissioner and his top brass, though more recently they have also gone to the Commission to Combat Police Corruption. As historical documents, the reports do not form a coherent narrative, with many statistics and categories disappearing from year to year without explanation. (The reports turned over to the Civil Liberties Union were also missing 47 pages, which the department said was to protect current or future investigations.) The changes reflect the priorities of each of four police commissioners, the broader crime scene, the improving technology. The 1993 report is old-school — right down to the font of the typewriters — and quotes a study that found the bureau’s predecessor agency “had become ineffective due to a bifurcated system of accountability and control.” The 1994 report reflects the arrival of Commissioner William J. Bratton, trumpeting the need to track and analyze “integrity” issues, and promising to open the “investigatory process” to precinct commanders and others. “In the past, internal affairs operations were shrouded in secrecy, closed off from the rest of the department,” it says. “Much has been done over the last year to change this isolation ideology.”
In 1995, the phenomenon of “testilying” — when officers lie in court — is introduced. The following year’s report adds perjury as a corruption category and has a page titled, “Truth in Testimony,” including a policy from the new commissioner, Howard Safir, that calls for firing any officer who lies, absent exceptional circumstances. The report in 2000, under Bernard B. Kerik, echoes the idea that the CompStat system of mapping crime to fight it can also be used to track “internal crime.” But later reports have less, not more, data; in 2003, for instance, the number of drug tests conducted is not included, and you cannot tell how many of those who failed were uniformed officers. “These reports depict a department that, in the mid-1990s, was candid about its anticorruption work,” said Mr. Dunn, of the civil liberties union. “The recent reports, by contrast, reveal almost nothing, signaling an N.Y.P.D. that seems unwilling to confront corruption.” Commissioner Kelly said the reports had gotten thinner partly because of his longevity in the department and familiarity with Internal Affairs. He meets daily with Chief Campisi, the bureau’s leader, and is regularly briefed on the disposition of its cases, arrests of officers, and the results of integrity testing — undercover setups to see whether officers will do wrong. “Nobody has been more involved in the day-to-day workings of internal investigations than I have,” Mr. Kelly said. “It takes a lot of time to produce a document like that, and it is an internal document — to be driven by a need that we see in the organization for it, rather than just putting together lots of numbers.” The Internal Affairs budget has increased, to $61.8 million this year from $43 million in 2000; Chief Campisi said there are currently 650 uniformed officers, up from 604 in 2000. Among many other things, Internal Affairs has a vehicle enforcement unit that, last year, issued 1,664 summonses to police vehicles whose drivers were misusing their special parking placards by, for example, blocking a loading zone or fire hydrant. The unit is run by two lieutenants and works with two tow trucks, and its work has angered some in the ranks and mystified others. “They seem like they kind of lost their way a bit,” said one former Internal Affairs commander, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of offending colleagues. Page 12 and 13 of the 2006 report feature a photo of a gleaming New York skyline, overlaid with a fever chart whose two diverging lines resemble an alligator’s open mouth. The top line shows the mounting tips that poured in over the years, mainly from civilians, officers and other agencies; the bottom one marks the declining number of cases the bureau pursued. In 1994, Internal Affairs logged more than 14,700 tips and investigated 2,258, or about 15 percent. In 2006, the department received nearly 45,000 tips and investigated 1,057, about 2 percent. Police officials attributed the growth in tips to the 311 system the city started in 2003, the advent of e-mail and a broader willingness among civilians to report problems in general. They noted that tips — which the reports sometimes call “logs,” “complaints” or “allegations” — are not always secret and might include benign items like notices from the Department of Motor Vehicles of insurance lapses, expired tickets or other infractions by people with names similar to officers’; calls from emotionally disturbed people like one who routinely reports a phantom police helicopter flying overhead; items relating to police officers outside the city; reporter questions; and even praise for officers. Chief Campisi said that the 2006 report, which he signed, was wrong to link tips and investigations — “It should have been two charts” — and that earlier reports, particularly those in 1996 and 1998, were poorly written.
Corruption cases are divided into more than a dozen categories in the reports, from violation of departmental regulations to serious felonies. In each of the last 16 years, two-thirds to three-quarters of the offenses involved narcotics, theft and what the department refers to as “other crimes” — like fraud, assault, drunken driving and domestic violence. Narcotics offenses dropped sharply, to 213 cases in 2008, from 653 in 1993. At the same time, cases involving stolen property grew, to 394 in 2008 from 367 in 1993. Meanwhile, “abuse of department regulations,” as the reports call it — drinking or sleeping on duty, say — more than doubled, to 154 in 2008 from 64 in 1993. And the number of instances in which officers were accused of injuring or assaulting suspects or making false arrests soared to more than 180 in each of 2006 and 2007, from 10 in 1993. The number of officers arrested reached a high of 167 in 1995 — as the department itself swelled with the absorption of the Housing and Transit Bureaus — and then fell fairly steadily to 86 in 2004. Since then, despite the shrinking of the ranks and the decline in crime, arrests crept up, to 124 in 2008. The reports also chronicle the Police Department’s routine drug tests; through the years, officers were most often caught having used cocaine. The testing peaked in 1996, with 16,194 random tests, and 61 officers failing. In 2008, 10 officers failed drug tests, but it is difficult to gauge the significance of the number since the report does not say how many tests were administered. Similarly, the reports’ accounts of integrity tests are inconsistent. Only 3 of the 16 annual reports include the number of both tests and failures; the most recent, in 2002, showed 486 tests and 54 failures, including 15 for criminal misconduct, 36 for procedural problems and 3 for supervisory issues. Chief Campisi said the omissions were by design. “I don’t like anyone to know the number of tests we do,” he explained. “Part of our integrity-test program is that by keeping it secret we’re trying to create the impression that every encounter an officer has might be an Internal Affairs Bureau test.” While it has been years since the last major scandal, there is no shortage of individual misconduct cases: two officers charged in separate incidents last fall with killing pedestrians while driving drunk; another indicted in December for helping a friend run a cocaine distribution operation; two more arrested Feb. 9 for using their badges and guns in a perfume heist at a New Jersey warehouse.
And then there is the case of Sgt. William J. Lewis, who was fired March 9 after a 25-year career in the Police Department, the last few years of which he felt hunted by Internal Affairs. Since 2006, he has faced six separate sets of Internal Affairs charges for running afoul of department regulations; in November, he was arrested by federal agents, accused of withdrawing cash in 25 chunks under $10,000 over 25 days to avoid notice by the Internal Revenue Service. The Internal Affairs cases against Mr. Lewis mostly concerned seemingly small stuff: failing to report a change of address, owning a rental property in his precinct, engaging in off-duty employment without authorization. But in 2008, the department accused him of tipping off the operator of Beer Goggles, a Staten Island bar, to an undercover investigation. The case led to a Police Department trial, in which a prime piece of evidence was a computer-generated database of Mr. Lewis’s phone records. Only it turned out the records were inaccurate. Martin G. Karopkin, the department’s deputy commissioner of trials, declared in a written decision that the case was “based on hearsay, conclusions unsupported by evidence and assumptions that do not make sense.” Mr. Lewis was acquitted. He went on trial in federal court in Brooklyn on March 15, six days after losing his job. Internal Affairs investigators were in the courtroom, observing — something Mr. Lewis’s lawyers question, since he no longer was on the force, but Chief Campisi defended as routine to record the culmination of Internal Affairs cases. He was acquitted March 18. Now his lawyers are claiming wrongful termination in hopes of regaining his pension, and are threatening a federal civil rights lawsuit over his treatment by the Internal Affairs Bureau. “In their quest to get an individual, they lose sight of the purposes of their job,” said Eric Franz, one of the lawyers. “In this case, they did incomplete investigations, put forth shoddy evidence and turned a blind eye to exculpatory information.” Mr. Lewis did admit several departmental violations, and was found guilty of others: Failing to properly read and sign the memo books of the police officers under his supervision. Not informing the department that his sister worked in a bar in his jurisdiction. Referring an extermination job in the precinct to a contractor who had worked for him, a conflict of interest. Police officials shrugged off criticism over the handling of his case, confident they had rid the department of a problem officer.
Most of those investigations involved drugs, theft or crimes like fraud, bribery or sex offenses, on and off the job. Inquiries in these categories have largely decreased in recent years, but cases involving abuse of suspects have risen significantly. The 2006 report noted the “unprecedented” rise and gave an example: several officers followed a woman wanted for petty larceny into a store and one “struck her in the head with his firearm for no reason.” “History tells us there always will be bad cops, and the department will never be able to completely control that,” said Christopher T. Dunn, associate legal director of the civil liberties union, who has spent weeks studying the documents. “But what it can control, and what it should be held accountable for, is how it responds to corruption.” For better or worse, the police are left to police themselves, and the reports, which together total more than 600 pages, provide the most comprehensive record available chronicling that imperfect science. They tell a colorful story not only of officers who betray the badge but also of the little-known agency charged with rooting them out. The bureau has long been a Hollywood fascination, and derided among the rank and file as the “rat squad” since so many cases depend on one cop snitching on another. Officers who work there are, therefore, called “cheese eaters,” while rogue officers have been known as “grass eaters” (those who peddle in low-level but pervasive wrongdoing) and “meat eaters” (who are more aggressive or violent). It took its current form in 1993, after Officer Michael Dowd and several colleagues were arrested on Long Island on charges of selling cocaine, prompting a disgusted Raymond W. Kelly, in his first stint as police commissioner, to overhaul the internal affairs process. “I am always concerned about corruption,” Mr. Kelly, who returned as commissioner in 2002, said in an interview. “For me, myself, personally, it is absolutely critical to the good order, to the function of this department, that we have a well-staffed, a well-trained, a proactive Internal Affairs Bureau, and that’s what we have.”
The reports themselves have changed much over the years: from 81 typewritten pages packed with statistics in 1993, to 99 pages of glossy photographs but scant specifics in 2006, to a pair of skimpy 15-page summaries in 2007 and 2008. Year in, year out, they contain head-scratching examples of people sworn to uphold the law breaking it instead. Officers rob banks. They collude with drug dealers. They pilfer credit cards from prisoners to buy groceries, and they take payoffs from street peddlers as protection money. Sex is often at the center of their sins. That man on the mountain bike was Damian A. Conlon, who was a 34-year-old officer on the bicycle patrol in the 103rd Precinct in Queens in 1999. Internal Affairs investigators watched him ride from the station house to the brothel, during his shift, wearing his uniform. They watched him walk inside, heard a manager instruct a prostitute to have sex with him and heard her say not to charge him. Mr. Conlon pleaded guilty to official misconduct, paid a $1,000 fine and quit. For as long as there have been police officers, there have been cycles of corruption: renegades, scandals, reforms — more renegades. In 1884, the Lexow Commission’s inquiry into brothel owners and gambling den runners paying off officers led to Theodore Roosevelt’s being named president of a Board of Police Commissioners. Next was the Becker Scandal of 1912: Lt. Charles Becker hired four gunmen to rub out a gambler who was tipping prosecutors to police payoffs.
The Seabury Investigation of 1930 exposed vice officers shaking down prostitutes, and police officers and politicians in the grip of organized crime. In 1950, a scandal involving a Brooklyn bookmaker named Harry Gross, who had enlisted officers as muscle for his $20-million-a-year operation, led to the resignation of Mayor William O’Dwyer and his police commissioner. The early 1970s brought the Knapp Commission and its tales of pervasive corruption. Two decades later came Officer Dowd — and the birth of the current Internal Affairs Bureau, when Commissioner Kelly declared the operation a mess and chose Walter Mack, a former federal prosecutor, to clean it up. Internal Affairs was given equal footing with the detective, patrol and personnel bureaus, headed by a three-star chief; assignments there were no longer all voluntary. The idea, Mr. Mack said in a recent interview, was “to elevate it, with new personnel, a different management structure, to change what had been perceived, and what was criticized, as an organization not functioning the way it should be.” And to start issuing annual reports. They were sent to the commissioner and his top brass, though more recently they have also gone to the Commission to Combat Police Corruption. As historical documents, the reports do not form a coherent narrative, with many statistics and categories disappearing from year to year without explanation. (The reports turned over to the Civil Liberties Union were also missing 47 pages, which the department said was to protect current or future investigations.) The changes reflect the priorities of each of four police commissioners, the broader crime scene, the improving technology. The 1993 report is old-school — right down to the font of the typewriters — and quotes a study that found the bureau’s predecessor agency “had become ineffective due to a bifurcated system of accountability and control.” The 1994 report reflects the arrival of Commissioner William J. Bratton, trumpeting the need to track and analyze “integrity” issues, and promising to open the “investigatory process” to precinct commanders and others. “In the past, internal affairs operations were shrouded in secrecy, closed off from the rest of the department,” it says. “Much has been done over the last year to change this isolation ideology.”
In 1995, the phenomenon of “testilying” — when officers lie in court — is introduced. The following year’s report adds perjury as a corruption category and has a page titled, “Truth in Testimony,” including a policy from the new commissioner, Howard Safir, that calls for firing any officer who lies, absent exceptional circumstances. The report in 2000, under Bernard B. Kerik, echoes the idea that the CompStat system of mapping crime to fight it can also be used to track “internal crime.” But later reports have less, not more, data; in 2003, for instance, the number of drug tests conducted is not included, and you cannot tell how many of those who failed were uniformed officers. “These reports depict a department that, in the mid-1990s, was candid about its anticorruption work,” said Mr. Dunn, of the civil liberties union. “The recent reports, by contrast, reveal almost nothing, signaling an N.Y.P.D. that seems unwilling to confront corruption.” Commissioner Kelly said the reports had gotten thinner partly because of his longevity in the department and familiarity with Internal Affairs. He meets daily with Chief Campisi, the bureau’s leader, and is regularly briefed on the disposition of its cases, arrests of officers, and the results of integrity testing — undercover setups to see whether officers will do wrong. “Nobody has been more involved in the day-to-day workings of internal investigations than I have,” Mr. Kelly said. “It takes a lot of time to produce a document like that, and it is an internal document — to be driven by a need that we see in the organization for it, rather than just putting together lots of numbers.” The Internal Affairs budget has increased, to $61.8 million this year from $43 million in 2000; Chief Campisi said there are currently 650 uniformed officers, up from 604 in 2000. Among many other things, Internal Affairs has a vehicle enforcement unit that, last year, issued 1,664 summonses to police vehicles whose drivers were misusing their special parking placards by, for example, blocking a loading zone or fire hydrant. The unit is run by two lieutenants and works with two tow trucks, and its work has angered some in the ranks and mystified others. “They seem like they kind of lost their way a bit,” said one former Internal Affairs commander, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of offending colleagues. Page 12 and 13 of the 2006 report feature a photo of a gleaming New York skyline, overlaid with a fever chart whose two diverging lines resemble an alligator’s open mouth. The top line shows the mounting tips that poured in over the years, mainly from civilians, officers and other agencies; the bottom one marks the declining number of cases the bureau pursued. In 1994, Internal Affairs logged more than 14,700 tips and investigated 2,258, or about 15 percent. In 2006, the department received nearly 45,000 tips and investigated 1,057, about 2 percent. Police officials attributed the growth in tips to the 311 system the city started in 2003, the advent of e-mail and a broader willingness among civilians to report problems in general. They noted that tips — which the reports sometimes call “logs,” “complaints” or “allegations” — are not always secret and might include benign items like notices from the Department of Motor Vehicles of insurance lapses, expired tickets or other infractions by people with names similar to officers’; calls from emotionally disturbed people like one who routinely reports a phantom police helicopter flying overhead; items relating to police officers outside the city; reporter questions; and even praise for officers. Chief Campisi said that the 2006 report, which he signed, was wrong to link tips and investigations — “It should have been two charts” — and that earlier reports, particularly those in 1996 and 1998, were poorly written.
Corruption cases are divided into more than a dozen categories in the reports, from violation of departmental regulations to serious felonies. In each of the last 16 years, two-thirds to three-quarters of the offenses involved narcotics, theft and what the department refers to as “other crimes” — like fraud, assault, drunken driving and domestic violence. Narcotics offenses dropped sharply, to 213 cases in 2008, from 653 in 1993. At the same time, cases involving stolen property grew, to 394 in 2008 from 367 in 1993. Meanwhile, “abuse of department regulations,” as the reports call it — drinking or sleeping on duty, say — more than doubled, to 154 in 2008 from 64 in 1993. And the number of instances in which officers were accused of injuring or assaulting suspects or making false arrests soared to more than 180 in each of 2006 and 2007, from 10 in 1993. The number of officers arrested reached a high of 167 in 1995 — as the department itself swelled with the absorption of the Housing and Transit Bureaus — and then fell fairly steadily to 86 in 2004. Since then, despite the shrinking of the ranks and the decline in crime, arrests crept up, to 124 in 2008. The reports also chronicle the Police Department’s routine drug tests; through the years, officers were most often caught having used cocaine. The testing peaked in 1996, with 16,194 random tests, and 61 officers failing. In 2008, 10 officers failed drug tests, but it is difficult to gauge the significance of the number since the report does not say how many tests were administered. Similarly, the reports’ accounts of integrity tests are inconsistent. Only 3 of the 16 annual reports include the number of both tests and failures; the most recent, in 2002, showed 486 tests and 54 failures, including 15 for criminal misconduct, 36 for procedural problems and 3 for supervisory issues. Chief Campisi said the omissions were by design. “I don’t like anyone to know the number of tests we do,” he explained. “Part of our integrity-test program is that by keeping it secret we’re trying to create the impression that every encounter an officer has might be an Internal Affairs Bureau test.” While it has been years since the last major scandal, there is no shortage of individual misconduct cases: two officers charged in separate incidents last fall with killing pedestrians while driving drunk; another indicted in December for helping a friend run a cocaine distribution operation; two more arrested Feb. 9 for using their badges and guns in a perfume heist at a New Jersey warehouse.
And then there is the case of Sgt. William J. Lewis, who was fired March 9 after a 25-year career in the Police Department, the last few years of which he felt hunted by Internal Affairs. Since 2006, he has faced six separate sets of Internal Affairs charges for running afoul of department regulations; in November, he was arrested by federal agents, accused of withdrawing cash in 25 chunks under $10,000 over 25 days to avoid notice by the Internal Revenue Service. The Internal Affairs cases against Mr. Lewis mostly concerned seemingly small stuff: failing to report a change of address, owning a rental property in his precinct, engaging in off-duty employment without authorization. But in 2008, the department accused him of tipping off the operator of Beer Goggles, a Staten Island bar, to an undercover investigation. The case led to a Police Department trial, in which a prime piece of evidence was a computer-generated database of Mr. Lewis’s phone records. Only it turned out the records were inaccurate. Martin G. Karopkin, the department’s deputy commissioner of trials, declared in a written decision that the case was “based on hearsay, conclusions unsupported by evidence and assumptions that do not make sense.” Mr. Lewis was acquitted. He went on trial in federal court in Brooklyn on March 15, six days after losing his job. Internal Affairs investigators were in the courtroom, observing — something Mr. Lewis’s lawyers question, since he no longer was on the force, but Chief Campisi defended as routine to record the culmination of Internal Affairs cases. He was acquitted March 18. Now his lawyers are claiming wrongful termination in hopes of regaining his pension, and are threatening a federal civil rights lawsuit over his treatment by the Internal Affairs Bureau. “In their quest to get an individual, they lose sight of the purposes of their job,” said Eric Franz, one of the lawyers. “In this case, they did incomplete investigations, put forth shoddy evidence and turned a blind eye to exculpatory information.” Mr. Lewis did admit several departmental violations, and was found guilty of others: Failing to properly read and sign the memo books of the police officers under his supervision. Not informing the department that his sister worked in a bar in his jurisdiction. Referring an extermination job in the precinct to a contractor who had worked for him, a conflict of interest. Police officials shrugged off criticism over the handling of his case, confident they had rid the department of a problem officer.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Atlanta Cop Indicted on Drug and Firearms Charges
Department of Justice Press Release
For Immediate Release
March 24, 2010
United States Attorney's Office
Northern District of Georgia
Contact: (478) 752-3511
Atlanta Police Officer Indicted on Drug and Firearms Charges
ATLANTA, GA—LUCIUS T. SOLOMON, III, 31, of Atlanta, Georgia, a police officer with the City of Atlanta Police Department, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on drug and firearm offenses. SOLOMON made his initial appearance before United States Magistrate Judge Alan Baverman this afternoon. United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said, “Any police officer who violates his oath to protect the community and instead takes part in criminal activity should expect the same outcome as a criminal. Corrupt police officers do not stand for justice. They stand for themselves. And the thousands of dedicated law enforcement officers who do their job every day will continue to work to weed out those who act corruptly.” FBI Atlanta Acting Special Agent in Charge Kenneth Moore said, “It is extremely disheartening when a rogue law enforcement officer disregards his oath of office and chooses to engage in such criminal conduct as is alleged in the indictment of Officer Solomon. The FBI, however, understands the importance of maintaining integrity within the law enforcement community and the value of maintaining the public's trust and that such acts by the few can often erode that much needed public trust.” Atlanta Police Department Interim Police Chief George Turner stated, “I was outraged to learn that one of our own officers was engaged in illegal activity of this magnitude. In partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we cooperated fully in investigating and apprehending Officer Solomon. The Atlanta Police Department appreciates the investigation conducted by the FBI and making this indictment. This department will not tolerate any misconduct or illegal behavior by our sworn officers. APD will continue to sponsor and support any investigative initiatives that identify police officers who engage in illegal activity. This indictment should serve as a reminder to everyone including police officers that no one is above the law.” According to United States Attorney Yates, the indictment and evidence presented in court today: On three separate occasions-October 30 and December 9, 2009, and January 23, 2010-SOLOMON attempted to aid and abet drug deals involving at least five kilograms of cocaine. In each instance, he knowingly possessed a firearm in furtherance of the drug trafficking crime. SOLOMON is also charged with attempting to broker a cocaine deal on or about March 9, 2010. At his initial appearance, prosecutors told the Magistrate Judge that SOLOMON allegedly provided protection for individuals he believed to be drug dealers and on March 9, 2010, he attempted to broker a five-kilo cocaine deal on behalf of individuals he believed to be drug dealers but in fact were undercover FBI agents. A bond hearing for SOLOMON has been set before Judge Baverman at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, March 26, 2010. Members of the public are reminded that the indictment contains only allegations. A defendant is presumed innocent of the charges and it will be the government's burden to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This case is being investigated by special agents of the FBI, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, and the City of Atlanta Police Department. Assistant United States Attorneys Jeffrey Brown, Elizabeth Hathaway, and Zahra Karinshak are prosecuting the case. For further information please contact Sally Q. Yates, United States Attorney, or Charysse L. Alexander, Executive Assistant United States Attorney, through Patrick Crosby, Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Attorney's Office, at (404) 581-6016. The Internet address for the HomePage for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia is www.justice.gov/usao/gan.
For Immediate Release
March 24, 2010
United States Attorney's Office
Northern District of Georgia
Contact: (478) 752-3511
Atlanta Police Officer Indicted on Drug and Firearms Charges
ATLANTA, GA—LUCIUS T. SOLOMON, III, 31, of Atlanta, Georgia, a police officer with the City of Atlanta Police Department, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on drug and firearm offenses. SOLOMON made his initial appearance before United States Magistrate Judge Alan Baverman this afternoon. United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said, “Any police officer who violates his oath to protect the community and instead takes part in criminal activity should expect the same outcome as a criminal. Corrupt police officers do not stand for justice. They stand for themselves. And the thousands of dedicated law enforcement officers who do their job every day will continue to work to weed out those who act corruptly.” FBI Atlanta Acting Special Agent in Charge Kenneth Moore said, “It is extremely disheartening when a rogue law enforcement officer disregards his oath of office and chooses to engage in such criminal conduct as is alleged in the indictment of Officer Solomon. The FBI, however, understands the importance of maintaining integrity within the law enforcement community and the value of maintaining the public's trust and that such acts by the few can often erode that much needed public trust.” Atlanta Police Department Interim Police Chief George Turner stated, “I was outraged to learn that one of our own officers was engaged in illegal activity of this magnitude. In partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we cooperated fully in investigating and apprehending Officer Solomon. The Atlanta Police Department appreciates the investigation conducted by the FBI and making this indictment. This department will not tolerate any misconduct or illegal behavior by our sworn officers. APD will continue to sponsor and support any investigative initiatives that identify police officers who engage in illegal activity. This indictment should serve as a reminder to everyone including police officers that no one is above the law.” According to United States Attorney Yates, the indictment and evidence presented in court today: On three separate occasions-October 30 and December 9, 2009, and January 23, 2010-SOLOMON attempted to aid and abet drug deals involving at least five kilograms of cocaine. In each instance, he knowingly possessed a firearm in furtherance of the drug trafficking crime. SOLOMON is also charged with attempting to broker a cocaine deal on or about March 9, 2010. At his initial appearance, prosecutors told the Magistrate Judge that SOLOMON allegedly provided protection for individuals he believed to be drug dealers and on March 9, 2010, he attempted to broker a five-kilo cocaine deal on behalf of individuals he believed to be drug dealers but in fact were undercover FBI agents. A bond hearing for SOLOMON has been set before Judge Baverman at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, March 26, 2010. Members of the public are reminded that the indictment contains only allegations. A defendant is presumed innocent of the charges and it will be the government's burden to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This case is being investigated by special agents of the FBI, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, and the City of Atlanta Police Department. Assistant United States Attorneys Jeffrey Brown, Elizabeth Hathaway, and Zahra Karinshak are prosecuting the case. For further information please contact Sally Q. Yates, United States Attorney, or Charysse L. Alexander, Executive Assistant United States Attorney, through Patrick Crosby, Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Attorney's Office, at (404) 581-6016. The Internet address for the HomePage for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia is www.justice.gov/usao/gan.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Feds Arrest NY Detective for Witness Tampering
For Immediate Release
March 25, 2010 United States Attorney's Office
Southern District of New York
Contact: (212) 637-2600
Sleepy Hollow Detective Faces New Federal Charge for Witness Tampering
PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and JOSEPH M. DEMAREST JR., the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced today that JOSE QUINOY, a Detective with the Sleepy Hollow, New York, Police Department, was charged last night in a Superseding Indictment with one count of witness tampering, in addition to the two counts of civil rights violations on which he was previously indicted. The new count charges that on or about April 4, 2008, QUINOY attempted to corruptly persuade a witness to testify falsely regarding one of the incidents alleged in the original Indictment, which charged QUINOY with assaulting and causing bodily injury to two persons, one on October 17 and one on December 17, 2006, after they had been handcuffed and restrained by a police officer. If found guilty, QUINOY faces a maximum penalty on this new count of 20 years in prison and a fine. On the original counts of the Indictment, QUINOY faces a maximum penalty on each count of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or twice the gain or loss resulting from the crime. QUINOY, 37, is a resident of Tarrytown, New York. Assistant United States Attorneys CYNTHIA K. DUNNE and DAVID J. KENNEDY are in charge of the prosecution. The charges contained in the Indictment are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
March 25, 2010 United States Attorney's Office
Southern District of New York
Contact: (212) 637-2600
Sleepy Hollow Detective Faces New Federal Charge for Witness Tampering
PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and JOSEPH M. DEMAREST JR., the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced today that JOSE QUINOY, a Detective with the Sleepy Hollow, New York, Police Department, was charged last night in a Superseding Indictment with one count of witness tampering, in addition to the two counts of civil rights violations on which he was previously indicted. The new count charges that on or about April 4, 2008, QUINOY attempted to corruptly persuade a witness to testify falsely regarding one of the incidents alleged in the original Indictment, which charged QUINOY with assaulting and causing bodily injury to two persons, one on October 17 and one on December 17, 2006, after they had been handcuffed and restrained by a police officer. If found guilty, QUINOY faces a maximum penalty on this new count of 20 years in prison and a fine. On the original counts of the Indictment, QUINOY faces a maximum penalty on each count of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or twice the gain or loss resulting from the crime. QUINOY, 37, is a resident of Tarrytown, New York. Assistant United States Attorneys CYNTHIA K. DUNNE and DAVID J. KENNEDY are in charge of the prosecution. The charges contained in the Indictment are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Off-Duty Cop Charged With DWI After Crash
Off-duty NYPD cop charged with DWI after crashing into parked car
The New York Daily News by Rocco Parascandola - March 20, 2010
A boozed-up off-duty cop capped St. Patrick's Day by slamming his car into a parked Nissan in Queens, according to court papers. Officer Matthew Woods, a five-year vet who works narcotics, was not injured Wednesday night when his Subaru flipped from the force of the collision. "I was driving home," Woods told cops at the scene. "I don't know what happened." Woods admitted he had been drinking before the 11:16 p.m. smashup at at 65th Place and Queens Blvd. in Woodside, according to court papers. He was driving solo - and no one was in the parked car. Woods refused to take a Breathalyzer test. Court papers said he had bloodshot eyes and his breath reeked of alcohol. He was charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and with criminal mischief. The NYPD did not release information about the arrest until Friday. Woods was arraigned Thursday and released. He could not be reached for comment. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, asked about the arrest, said, "I don't have any details on that." Woods is just the latest in a string of officers busted for driving drunk. The Daily News reported last week that at least 55 city cops have been caught behind the wheel while liquored up since 1999. All pleaded down to non-felony charges - and nearly all have remained on the job. Just last month, Officer Roniel Dilone smashed into a parked car in the Bronx, badly injuring his passenger. And Officer Raphael Ospina plowed his Chrysler into a garbage truck in midtown, flipped over and smacked into Tiffany's jewelry store. Ospina broke three ribs, and two friends in the car were also hurt. rparascandola@nydailynews.com
The New York Daily News by Rocco Parascandola - March 20, 2010
A boozed-up off-duty cop capped St. Patrick's Day by slamming his car into a parked Nissan in Queens, according to court papers. Officer Matthew Woods, a five-year vet who works narcotics, was not injured Wednesday night when his Subaru flipped from the force of the collision. "I was driving home," Woods told cops at the scene. "I don't know what happened." Woods admitted he had been drinking before the 11:16 p.m. smashup at at 65th Place and Queens Blvd. in Woodside, according to court papers. He was driving solo - and no one was in the parked car. Woods refused to take a Breathalyzer test. Court papers said he had bloodshot eyes and his breath reeked of alcohol. He was charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and with criminal mischief. The NYPD did not release information about the arrest until Friday. Woods was arraigned Thursday and released. He could not be reached for comment. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, asked about the arrest, said, "I don't have any details on that." Woods is just the latest in a string of officers busted for driving drunk. The Daily News reported last week that at least 55 city cops have been caught behind the wheel while liquored up since 1999. All pleaded down to non-felony charges - and nearly all have remained on the job. Just last month, Officer Roniel Dilone smashed into a parked car in the Bronx, badly injuring his passenger. And Officer Raphael Ospina plowed his Chrysler into a garbage truck in midtown, flipped over and smacked into Tiffany's jewelry store. Ospina broke three ribs, and two friends in the car were also hurt. rparascandola@nydailynews.com
Friday, March 19, 2010
Suspended Suffern Cop Arrested Again
Suspended Suffern cop arrested again on forged prescription charges
The Journal News by Steve Lieberman -March 19, 2010
WOODBURY, NY — A suspended Suffern police officer already charged in Rockland has been arrested on felony counts of forging prescriptions to get pain killers, Woodbury police said Friday. Michael Lourenso, 35, of Monroe has been out on disability since December after injuring his leg while on duty, authorities said. He was arrested Thursday on charges of forging prescriptions in December and February to obtain painkillers at a pharmacy in Highland Mills, Lt. Arthur Abbott said today. Police charged Lourenso with two counts each of second-degree forgery and second-degree possession of a forged instrument. Lourenso, who surrendered, was released pending a court hearing on Wednesday, Abbott said. Ramapo police arrested Lourenso in February on the same felony charges of getting painkillers from a Montebello pharmacy with a forged prescription, including writing out the doctor's name. Following Lourenso's arrest in February, Suffern Police Chief Clarke Osborn placed the officer on administrative leave with pay pending potential disciplinary charges. Lourenso is paid more than $90,000 annually as an officer, Osborn has said. Lourenso worked for several police departments — including Highland Falls and Croton-on-Hudson — before being hired in Suffern a few years ago. He graduated from the Rockland Police Academy in 2004 as an officer with Highland Falls. Osborn said today that Lourenso's status with the department has not changed.
The Journal News by Steve Lieberman -March 19, 2010
WOODBURY, NY — A suspended Suffern police officer already charged in Rockland has been arrested on felony counts of forging prescriptions to get pain killers, Woodbury police said Friday. Michael Lourenso, 35, of Monroe has been out on disability since December after injuring his leg while on duty, authorities said. He was arrested Thursday on charges of forging prescriptions in December and February to obtain painkillers at a pharmacy in Highland Mills, Lt. Arthur Abbott said today. Police charged Lourenso with two counts each of second-degree forgery and second-degree possession of a forged instrument. Lourenso, who surrendered, was released pending a court hearing on Wednesday, Abbott said. Ramapo police arrested Lourenso in February on the same felony charges of getting painkillers from a Montebello pharmacy with a forged prescription, including writing out the doctor's name. Following Lourenso's arrest in February, Suffern Police Chief Clarke Osborn placed the officer on administrative leave with pay pending potential disciplinary charges. Lourenso is paid more than $90,000 annually as an officer, Osborn has said. Lourenso worked for several police departments — including Highland Falls and Croton-on-Hudson — before being hired in Suffern a few years ago. He graduated from the Rockland Police Academy in 2004 as an officer with Highland Falls. Osborn said today that Lourenso's status with the department has not changed.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Ex-NYC Detective Gets 15 Years for Rape
Ex-NYC detective gets 15 years for Greenburgh rape
The Journal News by Shawn Cohen - March 12, 2010
WHITE PLAINS, NY — A retired New York City police detective who slipped a sleeping pill to a woman he met in a bar, then raped her at a Greenburgh motel, was sentenced today to 15 years in prison, the Westchester District Attorney's Office said. Jose Arroyo, 47, faced up to 25 years after he was convicted in November of two felony counts of rape: for sexually assaulting a physically helpless person who was uncapable of consent, and facilitating a sex crime using drugs. He was also found guilty of felony assault, but acquitted of kidnapping charges. Arroyo slipped zolpidem — the active ingredient in the sleeping pill Ambien — into the drink of a 31-year-old Texas woman at Doyle's Pub in the Bronx in November 2008. He took the unconscious woman to the Alexander Motel on Tarrytown Road, where he had sex with her and took 16 photos of her nude body. He then left for his job as a bouncer at a White Plains bar, where he showed her driver's license to male co-workers as a "before" picture and the nude photographs as "after" pictures. Arroyo, an ex-Marine who used to train and recruit security guards, insisted that he never drugged the woman and that they had consensual sex. SPCOHEN@LOHUD.COM
The Journal News by Shawn Cohen - March 12, 2010
WHITE PLAINS, NY — A retired New York City police detective who slipped a sleeping pill to a woman he met in a bar, then raped her at a Greenburgh motel, was sentenced today to 15 years in prison, the Westchester District Attorney's Office said. Jose Arroyo, 47, faced up to 25 years after he was convicted in November of two felony counts of rape: for sexually assaulting a physically helpless person who was uncapable of consent, and facilitating a sex crime using drugs. He was also found guilty of felony assault, but acquitted of kidnapping charges. Arroyo slipped zolpidem — the active ingredient in the sleeping pill Ambien — into the drink of a 31-year-old Texas woman at Doyle's Pub in the Bronx in November 2008. He took the unconscious woman to the Alexander Motel on Tarrytown Road, where he had sex with her and took 16 photos of her nude body. He then left for his job as a bouncer at a White Plains bar, where he showed her driver's license to male co-workers as a "before" picture and the nude photographs as "after" pictures. Arroyo, an ex-Marine who used to train and recruit security guards, insisted that he never drugged the woman and that they had consensual sex. SPCOHEN@LOHUD.COM
Friday, March 12, 2010
Former Police Detective Confirms Cover-Up
Department of Justice Press Release
For Immediate Release
March 11, 2010 U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs (202) 514-2007/TDD (202) 514-1888
Former New Orleans Police Detective Pleads Guilty; Confirms Danziger Cover-Up
WASHINGTON, D.C. —A second former New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) officer has pleaded guilty to covering up a deadly police shooting in the days after Hurricane Katrina, the Justice Department today announced. Jeffrey Lehrmann, a former NOPD detective who currently works as a special agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony (a charge for concealing a known felony), for failing to report a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the investigation of a police-involved shooting on the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans. The Sept. 4, 2005, shooting left two civilians dead and four others seriously injured. On Sept. 4, 2005, days after Hurricane Katrina, two police-involved shootings occurred on the Danziger Bridge. The east side shooting resulted in the death of one civilian and the wounding of four others. A second shooting on the west side resulted in the death of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old severely disabled man. Madison’s brother, Lance, was arrested on eight counts of attempting to kill police officers, only to be later released without indictment. The police maintained that they fired at the civilians in self-defense, after the civilians fired at police. However, last month, former NOPD Lieutenant Michael Lohman pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring with other officers to cover up what he had determined was a “bad shoot” on the bridge. Today, defendant Lehrmann admitted that he also knew of and participated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the investigation of the shooting. Lehrmann, of Anthem, Ariz., entered his plea in federal court in New Orleans today before U. S. District Court Judge Lance M. Africk. The defendant faces a possible maximum sentence of three years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Sentencing is scheduled for June 10, 2010. “We should all be able to trust that our law enforcement officers will protect us from harm in times of crisis. But amid the devastation that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, officers involved in covering up this deadly police shooting committed a disgraceful violation of the public trust,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “We will continue to aggressively investigate the events that occurred on the Danziger Bridge.” U.S. Attorney Jim Letten added, “This morning in court, a former New Orleans police officer pleaded guilty, admitting to concealing a conspiracy among a group of officers to obstruct justice in the investigation of the police shooting on the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans which left two civilians dead and four other seriously injured. Although today’s guilty plea marks the second conviction in this important, ongoing investigation, it is important to note that this officer was the first to enter into an agreement with the United States and provide cooperation. The citizens we serve must know that as this investigation continues, our U.S. Attorney’s Office, along with the FBI and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, will do everything in our power to bring to justice all of the individuals responsible for the injustices which occurred on the bridge on Sept. 4, 2005.” FBI Special Agent in Charge David Welker stated, “The FBI is uniquely tasked to investigate potential violations of the civil rights of the citizens of the United States. Today’s guilty plea is a clear message that the intensity of the investigation is increasing. The FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office and DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will continue to aggressively pursue the evidence wherever it leads.” According to court documents, Lehrmann learned from an NOPD supervisor (referred to in court documents as “the investigator”) that an officer on the bridge had “shot an innocent man.” Upon hearing that comment, Lehrmann concluded that the shooting on the bridge was a “bad shoot,” meaning that it was legally unjustified. Lehrmann admitted that he participated with his supervisors in the creation of a report that included false statements by the officers involved in the shooting; false claims about a gun that had in fact been planted by the investigator; and fabricated statements from witnesses who did not really exist. Lehrmann also admitted that the report of the Danziger Bridge investigation included false statements alleged to have been given by two of the victims of the police shooting. According to the factual basis produced at the time of the plea, Lehrmann admitted that the report of the incident contained a false claim that the investigator had returned to the bridge the day after the shooting and had found a gun in the grass below where a family had been shot. In fact, according to Lehrmann, that story was “a lie.” According to Lehrmann, sometime after the shooting, he and two sergeants drove with the investigator to the investigator’s home, where the investigator retrieved a bag from his garage. When the investigator was asked what was in the bag, he responded, “a ham sandwich.” Lehrmann then looked in the bag and saw a gun that would be used in the Danziger Bridge investigation. Once the investigator assured Lehrmann and the sergeants that the gun was “clean,” meaning that it could not be traced to another crime, they all went along with the plan to plant the gun. This case, which is ongoing, is being investigated by the New Orleans Field Office of the FBI, and is being prosecuted by Deputy Chief Bobbi Bernstein and Trial Attorney Forrest Christian of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia K. Evans of the Eastern District of Louisiana.
For Immediate Release
March 11, 2010 U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs (202) 514-2007/TDD (202) 514-1888
Former New Orleans Police Detective Pleads Guilty; Confirms Danziger Cover-Up
WASHINGTON, D.C. —A second former New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) officer has pleaded guilty to covering up a deadly police shooting in the days after Hurricane Katrina, the Justice Department today announced. Jeffrey Lehrmann, a former NOPD detective who currently works as a special agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony (a charge for concealing a known felony), for failing to report a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the investigation of a police-involved shooting on the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans. The Sept. 4, 2005, shooting left two civilians dead and four others seriously injured. On Sept. 4, 2005, days after Hurricane Katrina, two police-involved shootings occurred on the Danziger Bridge. The east side shooting resulted in the death of one civilian and the wounding of four others. A second shooting on the west side resulted in the death of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old severely disabled man. Madison’s brother, Lance, was arrested on eight counts of attempting to kill police officers, only to be later released without indictment. The police maintained that they fired at the civilians in self-defense, after the civilians fired at police. However, last month, former NOPD Lieutenant Michael Lohman pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring with other officers to cover up what he had determined was a “bad shoot” on the bridge. Today, defendant Lehrmann admitted that he also knew of and participated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the investigation of the shooting. Lehrmann, of Anthem, Ariz., entered his plea in federal court in New Orleans today before U. S. District Court Judge Lance M. Africk. The defendant faces a possible maximum sentence of three years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Sentencing is scheduled for June 10, 2010. “We should all be able to trust that our law enforcement officers will protect us from harm in times of crisis. But amid the devastation that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, officers involved in covering up this deadly police shooting committed a disgraceful violation of the public trust,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “We will continue to aggressively investigate the events that occurred on the Danziger Bridge.” U.S. Attorney Jim Letten added, “This morning in court, a former New Orleans police officer pleaded guilty, admitting to concealing a conspiracy among a group of officers to obstruct justice in the investigation of the police shooting on the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans which left two civilians dead and four other seriously injured. Although today’s guilty plea marks the second conviction in this important, ongoing investigation, it is important to note that this officer was the first to enter into an agreement with the United States and provide cooperation. The citizens we serve must know that as this investigation continues, our U.S. Attorney’s Office, along with the FBI and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, will do everything in our power to bring to justice all of the individuals responsible for the injustices which occurred on the bridge on Sept. 4, 2005.” FBI Special Agent in Charge David Welker stated, “The FBI is uniquely tasked to investigate potential violations of the civil rights of the citizens of the United States. Today’s guilty plea is a clear message that the intensity of the investigation is increasing. The FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office and DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will continue to aggressively pursue the evidence wherever it leads.” According to court documents, Lehrmann learned from an NOPD supervisor (referred to in court documents as “the investigator”) that an officer on the bridge had “shot an innocent man.” Upon hearing that comment, Lehrmann concluded that the shooting on the bridge was a “bad shoot,” meaning that it was legally unjustified. Lehrmann admitted that he participated with his supervisors in the creation of a report that included false statements by the officers involved in the shooting; false claims about a gun that had in fact been planted by the investigator; and fabricated statements from witnesses who did not really exist. Lehrmann also admitted that the report of the Danziger Bridge investigation included false statements alleged to have been given by two of the victims of the police shooting. According to the factual basis produced at the time of the plea, Lehrmann admitted that the report of the incident contained a false claim that the investigator had returned to the bridge the day after the shooting and had found a gun in the grass below where a family had been shot. In fact, according to Lehrmann, that story was “a lie.” According to Lehrmann, sometime after the shooting, he and two sergeants drove with the investigator to the investigator’s home, where the investigator retrieved a bag from his garage. When the investigator was asked what was in the bag, he responded, “a ham sandwich.” Lehrmann then looked in the bag and saw a gun that would be used in the Danziger Bridge investigation. Once the investigator assured Lehrmann and the sergeants that the gun was “clean,” meaning that it could not be traced to another crime, they all went along with the plan to plant the gun. This case, which is ongoing, is being investigated by the New Orleans Field Office of the FBI, and is being prosecuted by Deputy Chief Bobbi Bernstein and Trial Attorney Forrest Christian of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia K. Evans of the Eastern District of Louisiana.
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