I wasnt privy. One member of the task force during Jenkins leadership, Detective John Clewell, was not charged with any crimes. Once it left my shop they had reduced the punishment.. They told me they were disturbed that he was being portrayed as a "monster". Jenkins also tells me that any time an officer's misconduct gets picked up by Internal Affairs or by an outside law enforcement agency, it was routine for the involved officers to meet up, to tailor their stories to avoid punishment. Jenkins had to affirm under oath in front of a federal judge that what the document said was true. In another man's house, the GTTF broke into a safe and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. But that day, Jenkins drove toward the edge of town, bobbing in and out of traffic and running red lights, until he pulled over near a wooded area off Liberty Heights Avenue. ET on HBO. When the officers circled back later, the two were still outside holding beers. He says something that I've never heard anyone admit out loud. It's no wonder people come out meaner than when they come in.". I think about Shawn Whiting, a former heroin dealer who went to prison for years after the officers robbed him. Washington (AFP) - A police officer described as perhaps the most corrupt in the history of the Baltimore police department was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday. "I just go through this on a daily basis, scared of police, wondering when they gonna stop you, trying to plant drugs on you or something like that. In an incident to which Jenkins would later plead guilty, the officers handcuffed two men. Then he said something that struck Ward as bizarre: He said he was going to take the marijuana to his home, and burn it all. officers Wayne Jenkins, Ryan . "Wayne is truly sorry for his actions. In the police academy, his peers saw a leader. He is working on a book about the Gun Trace Task Force, to be published by Random House. Plainclothes officers must constantly be checked by leadership, Barksdale said, with commanders inquiring about irregularities in their work and excessive overtime pay. He's opening a consulting service called Stepp Right Consultants, to give guidance and insight to men and women who are about to enter the federal penal system. In 2018, Jessica wrote a piece which detailed the explosive trial at a Baltimore federal courthouse that revealed the unit's crimes, She then turned that story into a new seven-part podcast series called Bad Cops which you can listen to in its entirety below. "I'm so sorry to the citizens of Baltimore.". His supplier needed to offload two garbage bags of pharmaceutical drugs stolen from people who had themselves looted pharmacies. Then 34, he was already an admired leader of aggressive street squads and would go on to head the elite Gun Trace Task Force, one of the Baltimore Police Departments go-to assets in the fight against violent crime. He's due to be released in 2038. While no one should forget for an instant that Jenkins and his officers caused untold harm to Baltimore citizens, I don't find it helpful to try to write him off as a "monster". Had the officers done things by the book, the cash and drugs would be registered with evidence control. "This is not the man I know," she wrote. Sergeant Wayne. It was during these games that Stepp heard Jenkins boasting about the large drug stashes he often came across during his work as a plainclothes police officer. Have we raised the possibility of a wire? Pineau asked. You guys willing to go kick in the dudes door and take the money? Jenkins said. The matter was referred to the police integrity unit of the Baltimore states attorneys office for investigation. He tells me that the first time he ever stole money, he was just a rookie. The topic: Can we get Wayne Jenkins? The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Barksdale, the former deputy commissioner who crafted department strategies from 2007 to 2012, leaned heavily on plainclothes units. At trial, Jenkins and his boss denied any knowledge of who attacked OConnor. It's propped up on top of a suitcase sitting on top of a plastic tub, and I'm holding my recorder and microphone at the ready. We'll never be the same again.". Jenkins earned praise outside the department, too. It was difficult for me to understand and parse all of Jenkins' denials, now. A two-year federal investigation into the GTTF resulted in all eight officers, and one Philadelphia officer, getting charged with several offenses, including racketeering, in 2017. His account and Jenkins claim that hed found the gun is evocative of testimony by two of Jenkins officers in the 2018 Gun Trace Task Force trial. "Immediately, we get together and you go over your story. The unit began looking into a case involving Jenkins, in which he had run down a young man with his unmarked Dodge Avenger early in 2014. "I'm grateful, very grateful.". It was a red flag. He admitted to knowing . "It was a front for a criminal enterprise," Stepp said of the Gun Trace Task Force. Can this US city go 72 hours without a murder? He's also at work on a memoir, which he says will reveal the contents of videos and photos he took of Jenkins that were never released publicly. Prosecutors investigated and even presented evidence to a grand jury but concluded they didnt have enough evidence to obtain an indictment. So I kind of had a mental, like maybe a messed up moral code.". And of course, Jenkins is also hoping for a sentenced reduction of some kind. "I'm here because of greed," he said. My hope - maybe a naive one - was that hearing one of these men speak candidly about how he crossed over to the dark side would help the public better understand the casual, day-to-day corruption that can happen in policing. Video, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Read the full story of Baltimore's Gun Trace Task Force, Inside one of America's most corrupt police squads, Harry and Meghan told to 'vacate' Frogmore Cottage, Fungus case forces Jack Daniels to halt construction, Rare Jurassic-era bug found at Arkansas Walmart, China and Belarus call for peace in Ukraine, Ed Sheeran says wife developed tumour in pregnancy, NFL hopeful accused of racing in deadly car crash, Beer and wine sales in Canada fall to all-time low, Dozens of girls treated after new Iran poisonings. OConnor had been sloppy drunk, they testified, and his friends said they would get him home. Sure enough, no report was ever made. They ordered us to f--- them up; we f---ed them up, one of the responding officers, Robert Cirello, now retired, said later in an interview with The Sun. The BBC is not naming these three former supervisors, since none of them has been charged with a crime in connection with this case. Plenty of times he's gone behind me and found them.. I'm staring at my cell phone in the dark. As backup arrived, Jenkins spotted a man named George Sneed across the street. The departments Internal Affairs chief at the time says then-Deputy Commissioner Darryl De Sousa intervened to prevent the punishment. The bottles were winged at us. Right away I learn that Jenkins is an incredibly fast talker. Or harm you or even kill you.". They urged his supervisors to get him back to work and focused, according to an internal police department investigation conducted after the indictments. I am Agent and Representative as to Mr Jenkins. He said together, they'd sold about $1m worth of narcotics. But Davis, Baltimores police commissioner from 2015 to 2018 and a veteran of two other departments, calls plainclothes units necessary and critical to the crime fight. They go looking for guns and drugs, he said, and often are successful. All seven members were soon in handcuffs. After outlining this, Ward said, Jenkins reconsidered. He gave me a few reasons. Until this point, I'd only heard Jenkins on secretly taped FBI recordings, wiretapped phone calls, body camera footage and at the hearing in June 2018 when a federal judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Baltimore detectives convicted in shocking corruption trial Stepp grew up in Middle River, where he was friends with Jenkins's older brother. In federal court, Mickey Oakley argued that the officers who arrested him including Jenkins and future Gun Trace Task Force member Daniel Hersl had lied about the circumstances leading up to the arrest and had illegally searched his home. It was nicknamed The Barn an apparent homage to the offices of a corrupt police unit on the television series The Shield. The show, modeled after a 1990s Los Angeles Police Department scandal, featured a strike team that roughed up suspects, lied about their investigations and took a cut of their drug busts. Back before our interview, Jenkins' representative wanted me to speak to some of his old high school friends. And yet, here we are, me in my closet "studio" and him at the front of a line of 20 to 30 other inmates, all waiting for their turn on the prison phone. Jenkins lied to them, saying he was a federal agent. "I got 25 years. Just as she was completing her podcast series on the story, she got a very unexpected call from prison. Attorneys in the integrity unit had approached another officer involved in the arrest, asking him pointed questions about whether Jenkins had lied about the drugs. I've been reporting on Jenkins, and the elite Gun Trace Task Force squad he once led, for nearly four years. In reality, he says, they were making arrests by any means necessary. Finally, in March 2015, Internal Affairs chief Rodney Hill informed Jenkins that he was being charged internally with misconduct, neglect of duty and failure to supervise the officer in his charge, according to a leaked copy of the case file obtained by The Sun. Four years after the Gun Trace Task Force officers were arrested, he says he sees no difference on the streets of Baltimore. The jury was shown axes, machetes and pry bars, as well as black masks that were found in Jenkins' van after his arrest. I have to try to untangle his answers as he moves from subject to subject, sometimes so fast I can't keep up. From 2006 to 2009, Jenkins was the subject of at least four lawsuits alleging misconduct. Some tried to complain, but were ignored. But during the subsequent investigation, Frieman told detectives that he never saw a gun in Simons hand and that rather than being in imminent danger he was around a corner and out of sight when Jenkins ran down Simon. A surveillance video suggesting Jenkins may have planted drugs in a suspects car did make its way to the police integrity unit of the Baltimore States Attorneys Office in 2014. While researching the We Own This City true story, we confirmed that the real Wayne Jenkins had spent three years in the Marines before joining the Baltimore Police Department in 2003. Then-Police Commissioner Anthony Batts had created a Force Investigation Team to inspire public trust that police leaders were keeping an eye on officers use of force. But when the sun came up on 1 March 2017, the city awoke to a vastly different reality. He told me that frequently, when he or his fellow officers didn't feel like submitting the drugs they seized or doing arrest paperwork, they'd simply confiscate people's drug stashes and let them go. He popped the trunk and carried the drugs into the garage. Credit: U.S. Attorney's Office. But the police departments Internal Affairs office still had an open file on the case. At the time, Stepp was running his own bail bond company, Double D Bail Bonds. He and other officers had raided a car wash, recovering more than a kilogram of drugs and $4,000 from a hidden desk compartment which could be opened only using magnets within a fish tank. He woke up on a frigid city street with his jaw shattered, and couldn't eat solid food for months. In March, HBO announced a new miniseries by David Simon, the creator of the classic Baltimore true crime series, 'The Wire'. Baltimore leaders have agreed to pay a $6 million settlement to the family of a driver who was killed during a 2010 police chase involving Gun Trace Task Force officers. They said he prepared an arsenal of weapons and tools to begin carrying out burglaries. Weeks later, I search these locations myself to see if I can find anything. It feels a little bit like splitting hairs. the dim light of the Baltimore Police Departments downtown nerve center, Sgt. The actions of former Baltimore police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins and his team of plain-clothed officers in the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) are explored in We Own This City. They'd known one another's families as children. Jenkins was a member of the Baltimore police department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a plain-clothed unit tasked with finding guns and drugs in bulk in a bid to tackle the city's high murder. Several of the former officers also took the stand - now wearing prison jumpsuits instead of uniforms - and detailed the tactics encouraged by their leader, Jenkins. Jenkins must serve three years of supervised release after his custodial sentence. And Jenkins, whod been identified as a rising talent early in his career, was celebrated among department brass and rank and file officers as a leader with an uncanny knack for delivering the goods. One such warning came in 2010 from a Baltimore man caught drug dealing. Read about our approach to external linking. The spouse of the third left a message telling me I could take what Jenkins told me and "stuff it". She described how the unnamed officer talked about Jenkins: Hes probably the best drug detective in the city. Last month, Mr De Sousa was indicted for failure to pay his taxes by the same prosecutors who brought the GTTF case. April 25, 2022 5:45 PM EDT. Not likely, Ward thought. Now, the lawyers were sitting with Paul Pineau, chief of staff to then Baltimore States Attorney Gregg Bernstein, according to an account of the meeting obtained by The Sun. Credit: Baltimore Police. He was serving his sentence at the Edgefield Federal Correctional Facility in South Carolina until 2020. By Justin Fenton June 12, 2019 More in the series Part 1 The rise of Wayne. Jenkins says that the veteran goaded him into taking money. He was also the ringleader of a criminal enterprise of police officers who were robbing people and dealing drugs. However, the focus on quantity rather than quality led Jenkins and the seven other GTTF officers to start planting evidence, take money from the homes they invaded, and even resell the drugs they seized back onto the streets. He says he couldn't risk it as a father with a young family. In February 2017, Jenkins was charged with two counts of racketeering conspiracy; racketeering, aiding and abetting; racketeering; two counts of robbery and aiding and abetting; and two counts of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. Five of the former officers, including Jenkins, pleaded guilty. But when the officers exited the elevators on the building's second floor, they were met by an FBI SWAT team. De Sousa handled the discipline, and they had worked a deal, Hill said, according to a transcript of the interview. It was Jenkins, fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore. The pair also stole valuables, like high-end wrist watches, in break-ins. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The plaintiffs prevailed in three of them, either through a jury verdict or the citys decision to settle the case. Officers in plainclothes units often operate in the shadows of a police department. 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