Ward, now working with Jenkins for the first time, recalled the officers pulling over a car in East Baltimore that had two trash bags full of money. Sure enough, no report was ever made. 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. Two officers said he spoke openly about doing home invasions on high-level drug dealers that he called "monsters", because of the amount of drugs and cash he hoped they'd have stashed in their houses. Across the country, these plainclothes squads have often been where scandals are born. In 2010, when Deputy Commissioner Anthony Barksdale wanted a special squad to go after elusive suspects, Jenkins was picked for the group. The leader of a rogue Baltimore police unit sobbed as he was sentenced to 25 years in prison in a corruption scandal prosecutors called "breathtaking". In his plea deal, Jenkins admitted he planted heroin on Burley to try to justify the fatal collision. The second declined to comment. The idea that the Gun Trace Task Force went rogue simply because their sergeant was uniquely evil ignores all the systemic ways in which he was encouraged to operate the way he did, and the larger policing culture that supported him (it should also be noted that several of the squad's members started stealing money long before they joined the GTTF). The message read: "Greetings. We Own This City airs Mondays at 9 p.m. 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. 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. "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 crime - just get him.". Contact me.". Wayne Jenkins, who led the Gun Trace Task Force, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges including racketeering, robbery and falsifying records. Federal prosecutors displayed the contents of a bag found in the trunk of Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, who led the Gun Trace Task Force, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges including racketeering, robbery and falsifying records. He popped the trunk and carried the drugs into the garage. 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. The show briefly depicts Wayne Jenkins' wife in episode 5, and we are told that Wayne takes time off for the impending birth of his child. Jenkins started calling Stepp to the scenes of arrests, encouraging Stepp to try to get inside drug dealer's hideouts to steal whatever cash or narcotics he could find. That's because in June 2018, Jenkins was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Hes given us all hes going to give us, Glenn said. ET on HBO. Wayne Jenkins, who led . And that is what they want, German said, according to an Internal Affairs report. "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 interview from prison, he said it wasnt uncommon for the officers to take contraband and submit it to evidence control without arresting someone. That the GTTF's leader, a former Marine and amateur MMA fighter named Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, was a hero who'd plunged into a violent crowd during the unrest to rescue injured officers. 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. They said that while they had their backs turned, someone had clocked OConnor and taken off. Over the years, I wrote to all of these former officers in prison several times, asking them to help me understand their breathtaking crimes. You never know until you get on this side, including me, what you do to families.". Jenkins, along with Detective Ben Frieman, had followed an African American man driving a nice car through Northeast Baltimore. 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. A few months after the OConnor incident, Jenkins was involved in another run-in where his sworn account was contradicted. Any attempts to make the force become less of a warrior and more of a guardian was looked at terribly, he said. The outfit change is designed to allow them to blend in. He suggested another option. Plenty of times he's gone behind me and found them.. Credit: Baltimore Police. In December 2017, eight months after Jenkins was arrested, the FBI and Baltimore County officers broke down Stepp's door and arrested him in his kitchen. 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 . I asked him if he thinks that another scandal is inevitable. In September 2021, Jenkins spoke with BBC journalist. I lived modest, we wasn't enriching ourselves," he answers. 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. 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. 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. But it's the big man upstairs," he says. At the time, Stepp was running his own bail bond company, Double D Bail Bonds. More than 50 people including current and former police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys and victims were interviewed. The drop-offs included marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, all of which Stepp did his best to sell. Hed grown up in the working class suburb, where his father worked two jobs, including at Bethlehem Steel. 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. "I never took a thing. "Right off the bat, we wasn't living lavishly. He thought Jenkins and Frieman might have been impersonating police. Oakley took the rare step of getting onto the witness stand to rebut the officers, as did an independent witness who backed his account. Yes. Why cant I be like this guy?. 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. 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". He is working on a book about the Gun Trace Task Force, to be published by Random House. I just knew it was a lie, Ward recalls. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, L-R: Former Baltimore police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and Jon Bernthal as Jenkins in HBO true-crime drama "We Own This City. Many plainclothes units would work out of a satellite office inside a trailer in Northwest Baltimore. "He always had large sums of money in his pocket. We'll never be the same again.". We knew he wasn't the straight-and-narrow cop that all cops are supposed to be," he said. When the officers circled back later, the two were still outside holding beers. Police who went rogue - Wayne Jenkins and Momodu Gondo, Jenkins, centre, before he took command of the Gun Trace Task Force, Clockwise from top left: Evodio Hendrix, Daniel Hersl, Jemell Rayam, Maurice Ward, Marcus Taylor, Momodu Gondo, Equipment that two of the GTTF officers testified was going to be used for home invasions, Donald Stepp inside Baltimore Police headquarters, in a photo taken by Wayne Jenkins, Shawn Whiting, centre, at a press conference held by victims of the GTTF. Sneed's attorney Michael Pulver concluded, per Fenton, that the officers had "fabricated this story to hide the fact that they intentionally assaulted and falsely arrested and imprisoned Mr. "I have no respect for him.". The bag contained masks and other gear he used while stealing drugs and cash from people he and his team targeted. No one believed Oakley. On Friday, both detectives Evodio Hendrix and Maurice Ward were sentenced to seven years in prison. Jenkins, who had been suspended during the investigation, went back to work, making no fewer than three dozen arrests over the rest of the year, most of them gun cases. 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. He woke up on a frigid city street with his jaw shattered, and couldn't eat solid food for months. Although the indicted officers committed many robberies individually before joining the Gun Trace Task Force, prosecutors charge that they grew bolder and more prolific after Jenkins took over the unit in June 2016. This call is from", A human voice breaks in: "Wayne Jenkins.". "I've tarnished the badge," he said through tears. For the most part, these defendants decided it wasnt in their interest to tell government authorities that. I am Agent and Representative as to Mr Jenkins. Wayne Jenkins was living a double life. According to testimony from Ward and Hendrix, Jenkins played an outsized role in the schemes. 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. And of course, Jenkins is also hoping for a sentenced reduction of some kind. I never heard back from the Baltimore Police Department. Jenkins and Fries would later say in sworn depositions that Sneed had been yelling expletives about police and throwing glass bottles at them. 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. When the phone rings, I put the call on speaker and hear a robotic, pre-recorded female voice: "You have a prepaid call. Jenkins had told his squad hed heard over wiretaps that Belvedere Towers, a high-rise apartment complex in North Roland Park, was the scene of large drug deals. One afternoon, he took two officers there and they wound up stopping a drug deal in progress. Victims like Bumgardner and Whiting had the courage to speak out. It was his first public appearance since he was arrested along with six other officers last year. His punches came fast Jenkins was a trained boxer and OConnor soon felt the warmth of blood spilling down his cheek. What if one of the men who was robbed turned out to be a federal informant? He says he was told that because these officers were so successful at seizing guns, there was nothing to be done. ', "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.". What Detective Wayne Jenkins wrote in his affidavit for the search warrant was a complete fabrication, Oakley said. As in the past, a video had surfaced that conflicted with the written account of a drug arrest by Jenkins and another officer. The BBC is not naming these three former supervisors, since none of them has been charged with a crime in connection with this case. Jenkins would stop bringing those big drug seizures to the evidence room, and instead give them to Stepp to sell. By Josiah Bates. I ask. He was arrested along with almost every member of the unit in March 2017. Blake who in 2017 would wind up presiding over the Gun Trace Task Force corruption case noted that the other officers present backed Jenkins account. Using wiretaps and hidden recording devices, they had accumulated a wealth of evidence showing the officers were robbing citizens, filing for hundreds of hours of overtime they never worked, stealing drugs and even selling illegal firearms back on the streets. . 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. 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. His fee will be donated to the victims of the Gun Trace Task Force. During his time on the streets of Baltimore Jenkins was involved. Four years after the Gun Trace Task Force officers were arrested, he says he sees no difference on the streets of Baltimore. "Pills of heroin, bags of marijuana," he says. They walked far enough so they couldnt be seen from the street. Read about our approach to external linking. 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. Jenkins pleaded guilty in court on January 5, 2018, for numerous counts of four of these charges. In March, HBO announced a new miniseries by David Simon, the creator of the classic Baltimore true crime series, 'The Wire'. 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. The sergeant took no one else from the flex squad. 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. The department valued their work too much to end this style of police work. Sgt. 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. But he added, All disciplinary decisions were put through the proper consideration by command staff and BPD legal department. At OConnors trial, Fries remarked that the others were worthless and didnt meet the standards of the organized crime unit. Updated: Mar 1, 2023 / 02:16 PM EST. Meanwhile, his Twitter account is full of pictures of him on set, hamming it up with Bernthal and some of the other actors. 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. 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. But thats likely not what triggered the unprovoked beating of OConnor. Jenkins joined Baltimore's police department in 2003, first becoming a beat cop and patrolling the streets of Baltimore. Then they spilled out of the house and onto the sidewalk, struggling. Its a Viking mentality: You go out into the field among the bad guys, and you bring back a bounty, Davis said. Relatives say he liked to visit his high school sweetheart, Kristy, who would become his wife. Sneed. After three weeks of astonishing testimony, the jury found the two remaining officers guilty. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Hill could not be reached by The Sun for comment. For example, in January 2006, Jenkins and Sergeant Michael Fries had an altercation with brothers Charles and Robert Lee after they continued to drink beer on the front step of their grandmother's home when the policemen had told them to stop. ", Paul Schiraldi/Baltimore Police Department/HBO, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. It showed Sneed calmly standing across the street looking on, never even raising his arms. 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. Plainclothes officers must constantly be checked by leadership, Barksdale said, with commanders inquiring about irregularities in their work and excessive overtime pay. The ringleader, former Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, admitted committing multiple armed robberies and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs. 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. Some drug dealers told their lawyers that Jenkins made stuff up to arrest them and had kept a good chunk of their money and drugs before taking them in. At one point, dozens of pharmacies were looted and millions of dollars worth of medication went missing. Later, Jenkins did more than talk about such a theft. "He is no more than a common criminal," Davis' daughter, Shirley Johnson, said of Jenkins. Wayne Jenkins is the leader of the rogue police unit in Baltimore who was sentenced to 25 years of prison in a corruption scandal prosecutors called "breathtaking". 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. Donald Stepp was released from federal prison back in January of this year. 3.4M views, 20K likes, 1.4K loves, 6.8K comments, 52K shares, Facebook Watch Videos from The Baltimore Sun: A criminal with a badge: A Baltimore Sun investigation into the story of Baltimore Police. But when the sun came up on 1 March 2017, the city awoke to a vastly different reality. They direct their work, approve overtime pay and provide reports to higher-ranking supervisors. The Parkville American Legion Post named him its Officer of the Year. The plaintiffs prevailed in three of them, either through a jury verdict or the citys decision to settle the case. The jury was shown axes, machetes and pry bars, as well as black masks that were found in Jenkins' van after his arrest. "It's a surreal story. 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. Prior to this, they'd been lauded as some of the best gun cops in the city - seizing dozens of illegal firearms every month, and demonstrating a "a work ethic that is beyond reproach", in the words of one supervisor. Jenkins doled out $5,000 to each of the two officers and instructed them not to make any big purchases. You guys willing to go kick in the dudes door and take the money? Jenkins said. Arrest him, too, Jenkins yelled at the responding officers. The apartment complex had a camera in the parking lot. Wayne Jenkins fist felt like a hammer to Tim OConnors face. I never aimed nothing at him . Hours later, in a quiet waterfront neighborhood 15 miles east of downtown, a drug-dealing bail bondsman was roused from his sleep. They had the autonomy to catch and release suspects and develop informants. De Sousa handled the discipline, and they had worked a deal, Hill said, according to a transcript of the interview. His supervisors and others either failed to see the red flags or chose to ignore them. He was convicted on multiple counts including racketeering, robbery and falsification of records. After the indictments, one of Jenkins supervisors told Internal Affairs investigators she had believed he was the best gun cop this department has ever seen.. Some tried to complain, but were ignored. Read more: Inside one of America's most corrupt police squads. On the off-ramp, I find four empty dime bags scattered along a section of sidewalk with no foot traffic. Not all the allegations against Jenkins came from lawsuits. 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