As Jenkins is telling me this, he is naming names. He was like King Kong, the officer, who still works for the police department, recalled. In the annals of the Baltimore Police Department, Wayne Jenkins name was not being associated with wrongdoing. 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. Here's what the public was led to believe about the Gun Trace Task Force, before the FBI arrested almost every member of the squad: That in a city still reeling from the civil unrest that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody, the GTTF was a bright spot in a department under a dark cloud. Victims like Bumgardner and Whiting had the courage to speak out. 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. Jenkins is currently in prison. Right away I learn that Jenkins is an incredibly fast talker. 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. He kept $10,000 for himself, saying he planned to install a front-end crash bar so his department-issued vehicle wouldnt get damaged in his frequent collisions. She described how the unnamed officer talked about Jenkins: Hes probably the best drug detective in the city. Simon's new project will tell a fictionalised version of the Gun Trace Task Force saga, and began filming on the streets of Baltimore over the summer. But Stepp had an ace up his sleeve - for months, he'd been documenting their crimes on his cell phone. Oh, yeah. For the past four years, Jessica Lussenhop has been reporting on the rise and fall of a corrupt squad of Baltimore police officers. 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. He admitted to knowing . Far from it. They claimed they didnt see who did it. But he added, All disciplinary decisions were put through the proper consideration by command staff and BPD legal department. 2023 BBC. "It was a front for a criminal enterprise," Stepp said of the Gun Trace Task Force. In Baltimore, theyre often referred to as knockers, a reference to their historically aggressive tactics. When the phone rings, I put the call on speaker and hear a robotic, pre-recorded female voice: "You have a prepaid call. In our conversation, Jenkins says that that's not true - members of the squad did steal money that day, but from somewhere else in the house. Some of his men also have acknowledged stealing well before they came together on the Gun Trace Task Force in 2016. Stepp testified that the arrangement was so lucrative, he stuck with it for years before getting arrested himself in December 2017. It feels a little bit like splitting hairs. I have so many questions to ask, and I'm not sure if this will be my one and only opportunity to speak to him. Credit: U.S. Attorney's Office. "I ain't have a trial because the simple fact is I knew [the court] would believe them over top of me," he told the jury. A squad of veteran police officers stood accused of committing numerous robberies, as well as extortion and overtime fraud. But there was just enough room for doubt Sneed had been off camera briefly that Jenkins could argue the video didnt show the full story. They urged his supervisors to get him back to work and focused, according to an internal police department investigation conducted after the indictments. The spouse of the third left a message telling me I could take what Jenkins told me and "stuff it". In court, Ward apologised to the victims, to his family and to the Baltimore Police Department, as well as to his co-defendants. His punches came fast Jenkins was a trained boxer and OConnor soon felt the warmth of blood spilling down his cheek. He admitted to knowing . Nobody said yes or no, instead expressing ambivalence. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Arrest him, too, Jenkins yelled at the responding officers. We knew he wasn't the straight-and-narrow cop that all cops are supposed to be," he said. These units often operated with little supervision. You never know until you get on this side, including me, what you do to families.". Their work is not to be confused with undercover operations, in which police officers assume a different identity and worm their way into a criminal organization. "Life in prison with three small children. Ex-police sergeant Wayne Earl Jenkins apologised in court for the crimes he committed while heading an elite squad called the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF). 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. Stepp was on home confinement for six months with an ankle monitor until this summer. It was there that the full extent of the officers' misconduct became public. Jenkins said hed tried to be nice, but now they were going to jail. None of the cases led to any police department discipline for Jenkins, his personnel records show. Jenkins released the men and told them hed follow up with them later. Former Baltimore Police Department Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, currently inmate number 62928-037 at a federal prison in Kentucky, is on the line. Jenkins was given a 25-year prison sentence on June 7, 2018, which he is currently in the midst of serving at a federal prison in Kentucky. Gillian Whitfield recalled Jenkins as sweet and always willing to lend a hand. One was that he felt he'd been railroaded into his plea agreement by the US prosecutors (the Maryland US Attorney's Office declined to comment). "Especially because we're short on time, is there anything that you kind of want to just say right off the bat?" Just how long ago Jenkins began stealing isnt clear. "We're not stupid. Jenkins signed a plea agreement in 2017 that detailed seven robberies that he participated in along with other members of the unit, as well as his drug dealing partnership with Donald Stepp, the former bail bondsman and cocaine dealer who testified at trial. When Jenkins was allowed to speak, he turned first to face the Davis family and apologised repeatedly. He's doing, as he likes to say, "rather swell". He says Stepp pressured him into it. This kind of mindset assumes that the victims of the Gun Trace Task Force - many of them black and poor - deserved what happened to them. In Jenkins' plea, it says that "in April 2015 following the riots after the death of Freddie Gray, Jenkins brought DS prescription medicines that he had stolen from someone looting a pharmacy so that DS could sell the medications". You didnt catch me in nothing.. 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. On the off-ramp, I find four empty dime bags scattered along a section of sidewalk with no foot traffic. Now, the recommended punishment was significant: a demotion, a transfer and suspension for 15 to 20 days, including a period without pay, Hill told the television network Al-Jazeera. On the citys west side, officers were being pelted with bricks; some were hurt. I asked Wayne Jenkins several times why he wanted to do the interview with me. You will not be charged for this call. He was scared. Sergeants are the eyes and ears of the command, the front-line supervisors trusted to keep close tabs on their officers. Later on, he claims, they'd throw the drugs out the window or down a sewer grate. Not all the allegations against Jenkins came from lawsuits. Five of the former officers, including Jenkins, pleaded guilty. 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. Jenkins rushed off to join them. "I have no respect for him.". He served 20 months of a five year sentence in connection with the Gun Trace Task Force case, before being granted a compassionate release. He names the veteran he says coached him into stealing for the first time. But then, about an hour later, the phone rings again. He reminds me that the US Attorney's office found him more credible than Jenkins. At the trial four years later, Jenkins and his fellow officers claimed that the witness had been throwing bottles at them, but security camera footage shown at the trial proved what Jenkins claimed was not true. 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 . The jury found against the officer who broke Sneeds jaw but cleared Jenkins. Prosecutors urged the judge to sentence him to the maximum 30 years, adding that the unit's corruption affected 1,700 criminal cases. officers Wayne Jenkins, Ryan . ", Explaining the tactics of the GTTF, he also told the publication: "This is a saying we state: 'Don't let probable cause stand in the way of a good arrest. HBO's new true-crime drama stars Jon Bernthal as Jenkins, with the show examining Jenkins' rise in the city's police department and eventual arrest after a two-year federal investigation into the GTTF. "He perverted the criminal justice system.". Any attempts to make the force become less of a warrior and more of a guardian was looked at terribly, he said. Just in recent weeks, two officers have been criminally charged with misconduct. They employed tactics that straddled and sometimes clearly crossed the line that divides aggressive policing and trampling on civil rights. Claiming to be a DEA agent, Jenkins then confiscated the drugs and money but did not arrest the dealers. 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. BALTIMORE One of the main players in the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force corruption scandal is asking for compassionate release from prison. In his plea deal, Jenkins admitted he planted heroin on Burley to try to justify the fatal collision. Jenkins names two specific locations where he says the drugs get tossed: a train bridge near the Eastern District police station, and a wooded highway off-ramp on the way to the Northern District police station. He took pictures of himself and Jenkins together inside the police department, where Stepp would sometimes pick up drugs. But most people who worked with him police and prosecutors asserted to The Sun they had no idea he and his officers were involved in criminal behavior. The Parkville American Legion Post named him its Officer of the Year. Jenkins joined Baltimore's police department in 2003, first becoming a beat cop and patrolling the streets of Baltimore. All of the other officers would have to be inaccurate in their testimony if it is to be believed that Detective Jenkins was manufacturing information for the affidavit, she said. I got gangster charges, racketeering charges, things they usually give the mob, who were burying bodies in cement.". In a 26 page letter hand written from his cell at the Federal Corrections institution in South Carolina, former Baltimore Police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins tells a judge that he saved a . More than 50 people including current and former police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys and victims were interviewed. In 2010, when Deputy Commissioner Anthony Barksdale wanted a special squad to go after elusive suspects, Jenkins was picked for the group. But nothing more. But Whiting is not so optimistic. It showed Sneed calmly standing across the street looking on, never even raising his arms. The drop-offs included marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, all of which Stepp did his best to sell. He had a criminal case to fight, and his freedom was more important. 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. She said she found Hersl in particular to be very credible.. One officer recalled Jenkins taunting colleagues waiting in line to submit evidence at police headquarters, bragging about how many guns he was getting off the street. It was the perfect crime. 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. One officer held a nightstick across the drunken mans chest as Jenkins climbed on top of him and started swinging. Wayne Jenkins, ex-police sergeant, leading the Gun Trace Task Force Sergeant Wayne Jenkins was a decorated leader of the corrupt plain-clothes police unit in Baltimore whose detectives robbed . During his time on the streets of Baltimore Jenkins was involved in several arrests that resulted in the injuries of the people he took into custody. Outside on the sidewalk, he saw a bunch of cops and yelled an expletive at one he knew who happened to be Jenkins supervisor. 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. I have to try to untangle his answers as he moves from subject to subject, sometimes so fast I can't keep up. ', "If you've got to lie about what you've seen or what you heard or what you witnessed, as long as he's dirty, he's got the drugs and he's got the guns and he did the crimejust get him.". Despite the lawsuits and later, video evidence from his squads body cameras Jenkins supervisors failed to scrutinize the arrests he was making. Command created the monster, she said, and allowed it to go unchecked.. "He's never been a true friend," Stepp says. And of course, Jenkins is also hoping for a sentenced reduction of some kind. Had the officers done things by the book, the cash and drugs would be registered with evidence control. I'm staring at my cell phone in the dark. "So you did take money, ultimately?" In an incident to which Jenkins would later plead guilty, the officers handcuffed two men. Wayne Jenkins from Baltimore was sentenced to 25-years-in-prison. Would they report the incident? Over his tenure, he was. We Own This City airs Mondays at 9 p.m. It is simply not true., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake denied Oakleys motion to suppress the evidence. He ran me over because I was getting away.. Homegrown commanders took pride in being known as having knockers. Jenkins says that the veteran goaded him into taking money. It was Jenkins, fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore. It was surreal hearing his voice, talking to me. They weren't being paid by the taxpayers to keep the city safe, and weren't operating with all the power and protections that police have. Sneed hired an attorney, who obtained footage from a city surveillance camera on the corner. Prosecutors went as far as having witnesses appear before a grand jury, according to records obtained by The Sun. 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. A loyal friend. 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. Then they spilled out of the house and onto the sidewalk, struggling. In March, HBO announced a new miniseries by David Simon, the creator of the classic Baltimore true crime series, 'The Wire'. The tape disputed Jenkins sworn account. Inside the police department, the Gun Trace Task Force was known for its success in capturing suspected drug dealers, their stashes and their illegal firearms. The two police officers came over because they had nothing else to do.. He resigned and the top spot at the Baltimore Police Department remains vacant. When I saw the video, Webb later told The Sun, it didnt corroborate what was in the statement of probable cause at all.. But I did call them, and the Baltimore Police Department, to see if anyone would respond to this laundry list of allegations. . I did give drugs to Donny [Stepp, who testified he and Jenkins sold $1 million worth of narcotics] for the last couple of years I was police, but I didn't take people's money because then they would know you were dirty. "Later on that evening, Gondo did give me money, that means hours later, I'm talking hours later, he gave me money.". He also says that he only made roughly $75,000 off of the narcotic sales, as opposed to the figure put on it by Stepp. The conversation with Jenkins gets more complicated when we turn specifically to the crimes of the Gun Trace Task Force. Wayne Jenkins, who led . Still, a yearlong investigation by The Baltimore Sun found warning signs that Wayne Jenkins wasnt such a good cop.

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