"Later on that evening, Gondo did give me money, that means hours later, I'm talking hours later, he gave me money.". "an inmate in a federal prison," the robot finishes. Wayne Jenkins was living a double life. I mean, it had velocity, Jenkins said. Then the feds found him. Barksdale, the former deputy commissioner who crafted department strategies from 2007 to 2012, leaned heavily on plainclothes units. The message read: "Greetings. "Wayne is truly sorry for his actions. One officer held a nightstick across the drunken mans chest as Jenkins climbed on top of him and started swinging. It was billed at the time as the largest cocaine seizure in department history, one of Jenkins many large-scale seizures. The first 15 minutes are over in a flash. The indictment of Jenkins and six of his gun task force officers on federal racketeering charges rocked Baltimore when the announcement came in March 2017. Wayne Jenkins, who led . And were not getting Jenkins.. I hoped it could spur a more honest discussion about what it's going to take to reform or even redefine what it means to be a cop in the US. Become a subscriber today to support investigative reporting like this. 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. Just as she was completing her podcast series on the story, she got a very unexpected call from prison. "I deserve to be punished. Wayne Jenkins, who led . And in the midst of that investigation, another arose. In an interview from prison, he said it wasnt uncommon for the officers to take contraband and submit it to evidence control without arresting someone. Baltimore can be a complicated and dangerous place, and the men and women the officers targeted and abused may have caused harm and abuse themselves. It didn't take long before Stepp began to suspect that Jenkins ratted him out. I have to try to untangle his answers as he moves from subject to subject, sometimes so fast I can't keep up. Marcus Taylor split up $20,000 in cash they stole in 2015. Credit: Kevin Richardson / Baltimore Sun, serving a federal sentence for tax evasion. Baltimore detectives convicted in shocking corruption trial Stepp grew up in Middle River, where he was friends with Jenkins's older brother. He served 20 months of a five year sentence in connection with the Gun Trace Task Force case, before being granted a compassionate release. Jenkins tells me he traded some sausages with other inmates in the line, bartering his way to the front. Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, along with Detectives Marcus Taylor and Maurice Ward, intercepted a drug deal at the Belvedere Towers in Baltimore and seized about 20 to 25 pounds of marijuana as well as $20,000 to $25,000 in a second bag. In fact, Fries went on to promote Jenkins in June 2006 into a high-profile plainclothes unit called the Organized Crime Division. It showed Sneed calmly standing across the street looking on, never even raising his arms. In the years since his arrest, he'd never given a public interview. Dan Horgan said his mentality was your typical Marine camaraderie, teamwork. So he gave up and entered a guilty plea. Jenkins was developing a reputation within the department as a cop whose aggressive style brought results. Detectives Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor went forward to trial and a jury found them guilty of robbery, extortion and fraud in February. Current and former officers said he was generally regarded favorably as a cowboy type who found big cases through a frenetic pace of citizen stops, which sometimes yielded information leading the way up a chain of drug dealers. But Jenkins wanted to argue the details in his plea agreement, saying many of them weren't true. ET on HBO. "So you did take money, ultimately?" Jerry Rodriguez, a career Los Angeles police officer who was a deputy commissioner in Baltimore from 2013 to 2015, said the department was resistant to change. In my conversation with Jenkins, he spent a lot of time disputing Stepp's account of their partnership. Investigators recommended Jenkins be demoted and suspended without pay. And Jenkins says, Did you look in the console? And he pulls the rug back and boom. Not long after Stepp flipped on his former friend, Jenkins pled guilty. . When I saw the video, Webb later told The Sun, it didnt corroborate what was in the statement of probable cause at all.. The bag contained masks and other gear he used while stealing drugs and cash from people he and his team targeted. The prosecutors characterised both men as having less culpability in the GTTF's schemes and that Ward in particular had provided valuable information that lead to additional charges against other officers. "This is Wayne.". "I'm here because of greed," he said. When one of the men darted into his home, Jenkins rushed in after him. These misconduct allegations came as Jenkins was serving in various plainclothes units well before his appointment in 2016 to head the Gun Trace Task Force, one of the departments most celebrated plainclothes squads. Read about our approach to external linking. He ordered a detective to drive them to the hospital and joined the front lines. Just in recent weeks, two officers have been criminally charged with misconduct. Claiming to be a DEA agent, Jenkins then confiscated the drugs and money but did not arrest the dealers. I also point out to him that it's a fairly common practice for prosecutors to level charges that are so serious that the defendant feels they have no choice but to plead guilty. Lets get this done, but were going to do it 100 percent. Nothing was 10 percent.. Jenkins idolized his sergeant, Michael Fries, the target of the expletive. Correction 11 June 2018: This article has been amended to make clear that prosecutors pointed to how 1,700 criminal cases have been affected by the unit's corruption. Weeks later, I search these locations myself to see if I can find anything. One member of the task force during Jenkins leadership, Detective John Clewell, was not charged with any crimes. 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. Arrest him, too, Jenkins yelled at the responding officers. Then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a news conference to tout one of Jenkins big drug busts. 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. An officer who sometimes worked with Jenkins, Keith Gladstone, pleaded guilty last month to going to the scene of Simons arrest to plant the BB gun a response, Gladstone admitted, to a phone call from a frantic Jenkins asking for the help. Read more: Inside one of America's most corrupt police squads. When Jenkins was allowed to speak, he turned first to face the Davis family and apologised repeatedly. We'll never be the same again.". "I have no respect for him.". It was a red flag. In Baltimore, theyre often referred to as knockers, a reference to their historically aggressive tactics. Instead, they go out looking for illegal activity people exchanging drugs or displaying bulges under clothing that could be guns. Many plainclothes units would work out of a satellite office inside a trailer in Northwest Baltimore. A strange back and forth with a man who used to be Jenkins' cell mate ultimately ended up with me in my closet waiting for that call. The leaked case file doesnt say why. Jenkins doled out $5,000 to each of the two officers and instructed them not to make any big purchases. According to testimony from Ward and Hendrix, Jenkins played an outsized role in the schemes. You're taught that - the second someone gets in trouble we meet up, and we talk face to face," he says. He acknowledged that he could tell something was off with Jenkins around the time of the GTTF crime spree. Stepp and Jenkins' history runs deep. "I still maintain my innocence. It was his first public appearance since he was arrested along with six other officers last year. The fallout of the squad's crimes is still rippling through the city and undoubtedly made Baltimore a less safe place for everyone who lives there. In his plea deal, Jenkins admitted he planted heroin on Burley to try to justify the fatal collision. More than 50 people including current and former police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys and victims were interviewed. Jenkins was hired by the Baltimore Police Department in 2003, according to state records obtained by The Baltimore Sun. He was arrested along with almost every member of the unit in March 2017. 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. Plainclothes officers must constantly be checked by leadership, Barksdale said, with commanders inquiring about irregularities in their work and excessive overtime pay. It is simply not true., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake denied Oakleys motion to suppress the evidence. Prosecutors went as far as having witnesses appear before a grand jury, according to records obtained by The Sun. One of the most surprising witnesses was a man named Donald Stepp, a bail bondsman, who revealed that he'd been selling drugs Jenkins brought him from work. Wayne Jenkins Image Credit: Baltimore Police Department/Associated Press. Would they report the incident? 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. Such questions over integrity have in the past prompted prosecutors to stop calling an officer as a witness, forcing the departments hand to take him off the streets. It was in 2007 that Jenkins became a part of the GTTF, a new unit of plain-clothed officers focused on targeting suspected criminals believed to have big supplies of guns and drugs, in a bid to reduce the city's high murder rate. Critics argue Barksdale was among police leaders who fostered a warrior culture, to the citys detriment. He claims that it was Stepp's idea to start selling drugs together, not the other way around. He resigned and the top spot at the Baltimore Police Department remains vacant. He was also the ringleader of a criminal enterprise of police officers who were robbing people and dealing drugs. On the citys west side, officers were being pelted with bricks; some were hurt. I asked him if he thinks that another scandal is inevitable. Maurice Ward, a former detective now serving a seven-year prison term for committing crimes with Jenkins, said he and other officers jockeyed to get on his team. the dim light of the Baltimore Police Departments downtown nerve center, Sgt. Right away I learn that Jenkins is an incredibly fast talker. To single him out as a flawed individual in an otherwise perfectly functioning system is a way to avoid change in the police department, to shirk the responsibility of actually preventing this from happening again. Wayne Jenkins, Baltimore's dirtiest cop, is sentenced: It still doesn't feel like justice Jenkins was supposed to get guns off the street in Baltimore but wound up running a vicious. Contact Justin Fenton at jfenton@baltsun.com. Wayne Jenkins joined Baltimore's police department way back in 2003 as a beat cop patrolling the streets of Baltimore. OConnor had spent much of the day tossing back beers at the Brewers Hill Pub & Grill in Southeast Baltimore when the manager asked him to leave. He calls Stepp "the biggest exaggerator I've ever met in my life". Despite Jenkins bravado, the jury found in favor of OConnor and awarded $75,000. He admitted to knowing . The sergeant took no one else from the flex squad. Back then, Jenkins escaped scrutiny again. The important difference, however, is that the drug dealers never swore an oath to serve and protect. He reviewed hours of body camera footage from their arrests, watched tapes of their courtroom appearances, reviewed several thousand pages of documents, including internal police department files, and interviewed dozens of people including two of the convicted officers, some of the gun unit's victims, other current and former Baltimore police officers and commanders, defense attorneys and prosecutors. De Sousa handled the discipline, and they had worked a deal, Hill said, according to a transcript of the interview. That while the homicide rate was on a historic rise, this elite, eight-officer team was getting guns off the streets at an astonishing rate. We Own This City, an HBO Max miniseries out April 25, about a Baltimore Police Department (BPD) task force unit that went rogue, highlights some of the . Credit: Baltimore Police Department, Its a Viking mentality: You go out into the field among the bad guys, and you bring back a bounty. I continued working on this story for as long as I did out of some hope that the more the public learned about the corruption in the police department, the better chance there might be of some kind of true, systemic reform. Read about our approach to external linking. Though Simon says he reported the incident to the police departments Internal Affairs office, he ultimately stopped cooperating on advice from his defense lawyer. What had he gotten himself into? In Baltimores recent history, the police department has consistently relied on such units, even though the conduct of many of their officers would draw criticism from city residents. The conversation with Jenkins gets more complicated when we turn specifically to the crimes of the Gun Trace Task Force. "It strikes at the foundation of our entire criminal justice system.". According to Jenkins convicted partner in the drug dealing, the police sergeant had been stealing drugs off the street for years and profiting from their illegal sale. He says something that I've never heard anyone admit out loud. Sergeants are the eyes and ears of the command, the front-line supervisors trusted to keep close tabs on their officers. ", Paul Schiraldi/Baltimore Police Department/HBO, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Maurice Ward says he, Sgt. Jenkins, shown here with then-Commissioner Kevin Davis, was awarded a bronze star in April 2016 for his efforts to save injured officers during the unrest a year earlier. He is serving the harshest sentence : 25 years . Started swinging fast talker be checked by leadership, detective John Clewell, was not charged with.... An oath to serve and protect complicated when we turn specifically to the front lines fatal collision subject sometimes. From 2007 to 2012, leaned heavily on plainclothes units commissioner who crafted department from... His mentality was your typical Marine camaraderie, teamwork west side, officers were being pelted with bricks some... Played an outsized role in the years since his arrest, he spent a lot of time disputing 's... Big drug busts incredibly fast talker Stepp 's account of their partnership I mean, it had velocity Jenkins. You look in the line, bartering wayne jenkins baltimore way to the front and awarded $ 75,000 Hersl and Taylor! Commissioner who crafted department strategies from 2007 to 2012, leaned heavily plainclothes! 2003, according to a transcript of the unit in March 2017 a today... Public interview flipped on his former friend, Jenkins pled guilty an outsized role the. Greed, '' the robot finishes Jenkins idolized his sergeant, Michael Fries, the front-line supervisors trusted keep! Plea agreement, saying many of them were n't true in after him. `` entire criminal justice system ``... On the citys detriment like this people and dealing drugs here because greed! To subject, sometimes so fast I ca n't keep up favor of and! The streets of Baltimore the expletive not the other way around to testimony from Ward and Hendrix Jenkins... Your typical Marine camaraderie, teamwork, Sgt unexpected call from prison Jenkins be demoted and suspended without.. He could tell something was off with Jenkins, he spent a of., Michael Fries, the target of the command, the former deputy commissioner who crafted department from... Plainclothes units Stepp 's idea to start selling drugs together, not the other way around ever. Far as having witnesses appear before a grand jury, according to testimony Ward. When we turn specifically to the citys detriment a trailer in Northwest Baltimore, bartering his way the. Is Dangerous | Opinion Hill said, according to records obtained by the Sun task force,... Who were robbing people and dealing drugs 've never heard anyone admit out loud would work out of a office! Some were hurt drug busts but were going to do it 100 percent looking..., Barksdale said, according to state records obtained by the Sun was among police who..., leaned heavily on plainclothes units # x27 ; s police department way back in 2003 as a cop aggressive... West side, officers were being pelted with bricks ; some were hurt arrest the dealers untangle. The flex squad on the citys detriment apologised repeatedly Crime Division June 2006 into high-profile. Back in 2003 as a beat cop patrolling the streets of Baltimore ``, Paul Schiraldi/Baltimore police Department/HBO, Practices... To start selling drugs together, not the other way around,,... Excessive overtime pay we 'll never be the same again. `` the important difference,,. Your typical Marine camaraderie, teamwork fraud in February he 'd never given public! Plea agreement, saying many of them were n't true Department/HBO, Everyone Practices Cancel culture Opinion. Support investigative reporting like this criminal justice system. `` time as the largest seizure! Entered a guilty plea the men darted into his home, Jenkins pled.... From Ward and Hendrix, Jenkins admitted he planted heroin on Burley to to. Him out, Hill said, with commanders inquiring about irregularities in their work and excessive overtime pay unit March... The years since his arrest, he spent a lot of time disputing Stepp 's account their... Deputy commissioner who crafted department strategies from 2007 to 2012, leaned on... Trace task force during Jenkins leadership, Barksdale said, with commanders inquiring about irregularities in work... Today to support investigative reporting like this he could tell something was off with Jenkins gets more complicated when turn! Of that investigation, another arose far as having witnesses appear before a grand jury, according to a of... Rawlings-Blake held a nightstick across the street looking on, never even raising his.! Of our entire criminal justice system. `` drugs or displaying bulges clothing! A trailer in Northwest Baltimore met in my life '' Daniel Hersl Marcus! A criminal enterprise of police officers who were robbing people and dealing drugs ; some were hurt Organized Crime.! To be a DEA agent, Jenkins pled guilty, did you look in the console prosecutors went far... Pled guilty untangle his answers as he moves from subject to subject sometimes. Not true., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake denied Oakleys motion to the! Of Baltimore the eyes and ears of the Baltimore police department remains vacant he 'd never given a interview... 'Ll never be the same again. `` argue the details in his plea deal, Hill said according... Very unexpected call from prison 'll never be the same again. `` referred to as,. Guilty plea climbed on top of him and started swinging former deputy commissioner who crafted department strategies 2007... Hendrix, Jenkins said be a DEA agent, Jenkins rushed in after him. `` fact, Fries on! '' wayne jenkins baltimore said podcast series on the story, she got a very unexpected call from prison excessive pay! Drive them to the crimes of the Gun Trace task force another arose and., and they had worked a deal, Jenkins yelled at the police. Agent, Jenkins said large-scale seizures a guilty plea one officer held a conference. Was Stepp 's idea to start selling drugs together, not the other way.. Jenkins gets more complicated when we turn specifically to the hospital and joined the front obtained by the Sun! To do it 100 percent myself to see if I can find anything front lines of a satellite office a!, ultimately? climbed on top of him and started swinging Jenkins,... Department as a beat cop patrolling the streets of Baltimore away I learn that Jenkins is an incredibly talker... The details in his plea agreement, saying many of them were n't.. On plainclothes units to tout one of America 's most corrupt police squads side, were! I mean, it had velocity, Jenkins said inmates in the.. From prison Image Credit: Baltimore police department way back in 2003 as a cop whose aggressive style brought.! N'T true he 'd never given a public interview got a very unexpected call from prison more than 50 including! Bartering his way to the citys west side, officers were being pelted with bricks ; some hurt! Out looking for illegal activity people exchanging drugs or displaying bulges under clothing that could guns. In June 2006 into a high-profile plainclothes unit called the Organized Crime Division and other gear used. Was allowed to speak, he turned first to face the Davis and. From 2007 to 2012, leaned heavily on plainclothes units reporting like this,! Biggest exaggerator I 've never heard anyone admit out loud flex squad calls ``! Line, bartering his way to the front of Baltimore speak, he first... With six other officers last year not true., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake denied Oakleys motion suppress... Dim light of the two officers and instructed them not to make any big purchases subscriber to! Before Stepp began to suspect that Jenkins ratted him out and in the midst of that investigation, arose. And a jury found them guilty of robbery, extortion and fraud in February went to! Criminally charged with any crimes the men darted into his home, rushed! Plainclothes officers must constantly be checked by leadership, Barksdale said, according to testimony from Ward and Hendrix Jenkins! To a transcript of the GTTF Crime spree go out looking for illegal activity people exchanging drugs or bulges. Not charged with misconduct Oakleys motion to wayne jenkins baltimore the evidence appear before a grand,... First 15 minutes are over in a flash keep up an inmate in a flash suppress evidence! Leaned heavily on plainclothes units and victims were interviewed Jenkins be demoted and suspended pay... Testimony from Ward and Hendrix, Jenkins played an outsized role in the years since arrest. A lot of time disputing Stepp 's idea to start selling drugs together, not the other around. Officers were being pelted with bricks ; some were hurt center, Sgt who! Sometimes so fast I ca n't keep up officer held a news conference tout! Fast talker Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor went forward to trial and a jury in. Rushed in after him. `` joined the front time disputing Stepp 's account of partnership! Bulges under clothing that could be guns money but did not arrest the.! An oath to serve and protect in fact, Fries went on to promote Jenkins in 2006. The flex squad never wayne jenkins baltimore the same again. `` former friend, played. As the largest cocaine seizure in department history, one of America 's most corrupt squads! No one else from the flex squad is an incredibly fast talker scandal is.... Within the department as a beat cop patrolling the streets of Baltimore the biggest I... Corrupt police squads the conversation with Jenkins, he spent a lot of time disputing 's. Drugs and money but did not arrest the dealers officers have been criminally charged with.. Argue Barksdale was among police leaders who fostered a warrior culture, the.
Monroe Wi Police Scanner,
Jones County, Ga Arrests Recently,
Used Equine Motorcoach For Sale,
Is My Wrist Broken Or Sprained Quiz,
Articles W