WORMSCAN: WORMSCAN.&& [PART 1]
Involvement of Politicians, Judges, Lawyers, & Police in the Drug Business
NOTES: I made a few corrections to spellings but left the original document mainly untouched. All dates are in YYMMDD format. These files are only a portion of the entire WORMSCAN.&& file. I had to break it up due to length. There are hundreds of pages in these files.
WORMSCAN.&&
By David P Beiter
[REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION]
Continued from WORMSCAN.&
[REDACTED]
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960120, Philadelphia, PA, Reuters. Police Officer Louis Maiier
Date: Sun Jan 21, 1996 12:38 am CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Philly Cop Sentenced
Posted by Bob Witanek 1/20/96
Officer Gets 5 Years
PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 19 (Reuters) - One of six police officers who pleaded guilty in a corruption investigation was sentenced today to 5 years in prison, an unusually long term that the judge said was intended to serve as a deterrent. "Criminal conduct such as you will not be tolerated and will be dealt with severely," Judge Harvey Bartle of Federal District Court said sentencing the officer, Louis Maiier. He had pleaded guilty to conspiracy in violating the civil rights of defendants by framing them on drug charges. Federal guidelines call for a sentence of 24 to 30 months. 5 other officers pleaded guilty to similar charges and are awaiting sentencing. As a result of the inquiry, 60 criminal cases have been dismissed or overturned.
==========
COMMENT: While the NYT reported that the sentence was stiff, I have to chuckle. These cops knowingly fabricated evidence that could have sent suspects away for decades. A fitting sentence for such criminal acts committed by cops would be, IMHO, at least 2 years for every one year sentencing potential of the framing victim.
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------------------------------
960126, Philadelphia, PA, Philadelphia Inquirer. Former
Date: Sat Jan 27, 1996 12:31 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Philly's Dirty Thirty-9th - Saga Continues
From: Bob Witanek
Subject: Philly's Dirty Thirty-9th - Saga Continues
Posted dadoner@chesco.com Fri Jan 26 22:33:46 1996
From: Ronnie Dadone
Subject: more on the Dirty Thirty-9th
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 96 02:04:36 -0800
From: Ronnie Dadone
To: dadoner@chesco.com
Subject: Philadelphia Inquirer: City & Region
http://www.phillynews.com/inq/city/COPS26.htm
[The Philadelphia Inquirer]
City & Region
Friday, January 26, 1996
5 officers' sentencing off again
The reason for this 3d postponement: The probe may touch even more 39th District officers.
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The sentencing of five former Philadelphia police officers in the 39th District corruption probe has been postponed a third time, and a defense lawyer yesterday said the reason was that the investigation was expanding.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William B. Carr Jr. confirmed that U.S. District Judge Robert S. Gawthrop 3d had postponed Monday's sentencing of former officers Thomas DeGovanni, Thomas Ryan and James Ryan.
Attorneys for the two other former officers, John Baird and Steven Brown, said they, too, expect the judge to postpone their clients' sentencing, which is set for Tuesday.
All five officers pleaded guilty to framing drug defendants and lying on police reports in a series of cases between 1988 and 1991.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joel Goldstein, who is prosecuting the case with Carr, said he could not comment on the reason for the postponement.
A. Charles Peruto Jr., the attorney for Brown, said the postponement was necessary because James Ryan's continuing cooperation had caused prosecutors to begin looking at other police officers.
"My client helped lead them to Ryan, and James then turned them onto something big," Peruto said. "And Brown is now entitled to some benefit for that."
Other than "more officers," Peruto declined to say into what area the probe was expanding.
Lawyers for James Ryan and Thomas Ryan, who are not related, could be reached for comment, but Peruto's remarks were echoed in the statements of two other defense attorneys.
"There is still ongoing cooperation that has not borne fruit, as they say," said Elizabeth K. Ainslie, the attorney for Baird, whom prosecutors have called the mastermind of the group of corrupt officers who preyed on suspected drug dealers in the North Philadelphia district.
The officers arrested or searched more than 40 individuals between 1988 and 1991, stealing more than $100,000 in cash and property.
Baird was the first target of the federal probe, and it was his reluctant decision to become an informant that led to last February's indictment of the five officers.
The fluid nature of the continuing investigation was further suggested by a memo filed Monday by Gerald Stein, attorney for DeGovanni. Stein also said DeGovanni's cooperation had helped lead prosecutors to James Ryan, and that it would be unfair for the judge to sentence the former police sergeant without knowing the results of Ryan's -- and, by extension, DeGovanni's -- cooperation.
All three defense attorneys contacted said their requests for postponement had nothing to do with the five-year prison term meted out last Friday by U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle 3d to former 39th District officer Louis J. Maier 3d.
Sources, however, said at least some of the five were shocked by the severity of that sentence. Maier was charged separately after the original five were indicted last year.
Bartle's sentence was twice as long as that recommended for Maier under federal sentencing guidelines. One reason was that federal prosecutors said the decorated veteran officer had breached his agreement to cooperate fully in the ongoing corruption probe.
Moreover, Maier's sentence came despite Assistant U.S. Attorney Carr's comments that Maier was among the least culpable of the six officers charged thus far.
Yesterday Maier's attorney, L. Felipe Restrepo, appealed the sentence to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
------------------------------
Date: Sun Mar 17, 1996 9:08 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
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Subject: Philly Dirty Thirty-9th. - More Releases
Posted: Ronnie Dadone
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/96/Mar/16/front_page/COPS16.htm
[The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Page One
Saturday, March 16, 1996
More falsely convicted to be released In the 39th District mess, the tainted cases have reached 110.
[Image]
By Mark Fazlollah
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Now it's 110, and counting.
The biggest, most expensive police scandal in Philadelphia history has reached a new benchmark for notoriety. Eleven more drug-conviction cases are about to be overturned, bringing the total to 110 as the massive review of damage done by corrupt cops continues.
The church-going grandmother who was framed and sent to prison for three years, the restaurant manager who was put away for two years, and the 18-year-old nursing student who was snatched from her relatives' house by police and falsely arrested.
These were some of the 110. The 11 new cases include two defendants who are on probation for their 39th District drug convictions. Another has finished his two-year prison term and is on parole.
William Davol, a spokesman for District Attorney Lynne Abraham, said yesterday the 11 convictions would be overturned as soon as a judge approved the prosecutors' motions for reversing the cases.
When five former 39th District officers were indicted on Feb. 28, 1995, on federal corruption charges, Abraham said that any case that was tainted by their involvement would be reversed.
All five have pleaded guilty, as has one other 39th District officer indicted later in the year.
A year into the review of the officers' arrests, defense attorneys continue to send Abraham stacks of cases for reconsideration. In all, the six corrupt 39th District officers made about 1,400 arrests between 1988 and 1995.
Among the cases overturned so far is the drug conviction of Betty Patterson, the grandmother who was arrested in July 1989. Former 39th District Officers Thomas Ryan, John Baird and Steven Brown told prosecutors that she was framed.
Baird, now in a federal prison, said the only reason Patterson was arrested was to gather evidence against her three sons for a murder case that the District Attorney's Office later lost.
Baird said he believed Ryan or Brown planted the drugs that were used to send Patterson to prison for three years.
And the 110 cases includes Andre Bonaparte, who walked out of jail Aug. 8 after his conviction was reversed. And George Porchea, a restaurant manager who was released from prison July 24.
And there was Denise Patterson (not related to Betty Patterson), who was arrested in November 1988 by Baird. She was then an 18-year-old nursing student who just happened to be at her relatives' house caring for her sick mother when the police burst in and decided that she was a drug dealer.
The case review has become a legal nightmare for the city. As cases are reversed because of corrupt officers, lawsuits pile up. Betty Patterson has sued for $20 million. Denise Patterson and Bonaparte have also sued, and Porchea has told the city he is ready to sue.
Public Defender Bradley S. Bridge said he was disappointed by the pace of the dismissals.
Though Bridge's office and prosecutors have agreed on dropping the 11 cases -- and 43 other convictions that the District Attorney's Office last month said should be overturned -- it is unclear when they can be officially reversed.
Last year, Common Pleas Court Judge Legrome D. Davis was assigned to handle all 39th District cases. He handled most of the 56 convictions that have been overturned.
Recently, Davis moved off the 39th District beat because of scheduling changes. Another judge was supposed to be assigned to the cases.
That has not happened yet, though prosecutors and defense attorneys said the glitch probably would be resolved quickly. Court officials did not respond to requests for comment yesterday.
Bridge said none of the 11 defendants, nor anyone from the 43 other cases, is currently in jail because of 39th District arrests. But he said the courts should quickly overturn the convictions.
"Everyone is in agreement about getting this done," Bridge said. "We just can't find anyone to do it."
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Date: Wed Mar 20, 1996 11:36 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Dirty 39th. - 60 More Tossed Convictions
Posted: Ronnie Dadone
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/96/Mar/20/city/COPS20.htm
[The Philadelphia Inquirer]
City & Region
Wednesday, March 20, 1996
60 more drug convictions are to be reversed today
The arrests involved corrupt police officers. 56 convictions have been thrown out already.
By Mark Fazlollah
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
A court today will throw out 60 tainted drug convictions in which corrupt 39th District officers were involved in the arrests -- more than doubling the number of cases overturned in the ever-widening probe.
Already, 56 convictions have been tossed out because of the involvement of six former 39th District officers who have pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges.
That will bring to 116 the number of cases reversed in the year-old scandal. That number is certain to grow.
"It just keeps going. There's no end to it," said William Davol, spokesman for District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham.
Davol said 54 cases had been scheduled to be overturned by Common Pleas Court Judge Legrome D. Davis today, but six more were added earlier this week.
And, as more officers are indicted, more cases will need to be overturned.
Last fall, for example, Mayor Rendell confirmed that a police-FBI investigation has expanded into the elite Highway Patrol unit. Law enforcement officials have said several patrol officers stole drugs from pushers and resold them to other pushers.
"It's incredible the damage that has been done to the system," Davol said.
Lawyers who have specialized in police corruption cases say there has never been an investigation as deep into police wrongdoing as the current effort.
"The feds have been very successful in spreading" the investigation to include other officers, including members of the Highway Patrol, said L. George Parry, a private attorney who once headed the now-defunct police corruption unit of the District Attorney's Office.
"I've never heard of 60 separate cases being overturned," said Parry, who was a federal strike force prosecutor in Buffalo before then-District Attorney Edward G. Rendell lured him to Philadelphia in 1978 to head the police corruption unit.
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Date: Thu Apr 04, 1996 11:18 pm CST
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Subject: 4 More Philly Cops to be Charged
From: Bob Witanek
From dadoner@chesco.com Thu Apr 4 08:58:13 1996
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[The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Page One
Thursday, April 4, 1996
4 more Phila. officers face federal charges
By Joseph A. Slobodzian and Mark Fazlollah
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
Guns drawn, they ordered about 100 people to their knees and rifled through their pockets, taking all their money.
Once the money was bagged, about $28,000, the thieves began to party, drinking the beer, eating the food.
This remarkably brazen heist was the work of four Philadelphia police officers, law enforcement officials said yesterday in announcing another indictment in the city's police corruption scandal.
The new charges stem from a Feb. 19, 1994, police raid on a cockfight in the basement of a North Philadelphia store -- a raid to cover what prosecutors called an armed robbery by the four officers, not an attempt to stop the illegal gambling on fighting roosters.
A total of 10 officers have now been charged in the federal probe of police corruption that began last year with the arrest of five officers from the 39th District in North Philadelphia.
Yesterday's indictment expanded the probe into the adjacent 25th District as well as the department's vaunted Highway Patrol, an elite spit-and-polish unit long considered beyond reproach.
The two officers from the 25th District are Julio C. Aponte, 42, an 11-year veteran of the force, and Edward A. Greene, 38, a third-generation police officer who was a city prison guard before joining the force in 1980. Indicted with them were Highway Patrol officers Lester F. Johnson, 35, a 14-year veteran, and John P. O'Hanlon, 32, a 10-year veteran.
It was a Saturday night cockfight in the basement of a store in the 3200 block of North Fifth Street. Booze was flowing. There was a vat filled with beer and bottles of rum.
Soon after the fights started, the four officers barged in, weapons drawn.
In an interview last night, store owner Ramon Nunez, 48, said the officers yelled: "Everyone freeze. Police."
The officers ordered everyone to get on the floor. Nunez said Greene and O'Hanlon then went to each man and reached into his pockets searching for money.
The two then piled the money in the center of the ring, Nunez said. One of the men was ordered to pack it in a large bag that had been used for carrying roosters.
"When the bag was filled with money, it was two feet high," Nunez said. "And this wasn't loose bills. Almost everyone had the money bundled up with rubber bands. They didn't leave one cent. They took everything."
Nu nez thinks as much as $75,000 was taken that night.
Hours later, at the 25th District station, Nunez said he asked Aponte about the money.
"He said they were counting it," Nunez said. "But they never brought it back."
The four officers were charged in a 21-count indictment with federal robbery and attempted robbery, use of a firearm in a crime of violence, and conspiracy to violate civil rights.
All four entered pleas of not guilty yesterday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter B. Scuderi.
Attorneys for Johnson and Greene told Scuderi that they intended to strongly contest the charges.
"You can bet on it," said Johnson's attorney, Jack McMahon.
The lawyer added that his client had made about 150 arrests since he joined the Highway Patrol in 1985 and had received "30 to 40 commendations and merit awards from the police commissioner and the mayor."
Police Commissioner Richard Neal said Aponte retired from the force several weeks ago; the three others were suspended yesterday with intent to dismiss in 30 days.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William B. Carr Jr. said each man faces a likely prison term of 14 years without parole if convicted on all charges because of the mandatory jail terms that accompany firearms convictions.
Yesterday's indictment was the long-expected sequel to the Feb. 28, 1995, indictment of the five 39th District officers.
All five pleaded guilty and are to be sentenced April 15. A sixth officer was later charged, pleaded guilty and has been sentenced to five years in prison.
The ongoing federal probe has become a public dissection of the city's criminal justice system. The admissions by the officers indicted a year ago that they created bogus search and arrest warrants so they could shake down suspected drug dealers has resulted in the dismissal of charges against 116 people arrested by the officers.
Thirteen federal civil rights suits have been filed against the city and the convicted 39th District officers, and more filings are expected.
Bradley S. Bridge, a lawyer coordinating the review of the corrupt officers' cases for the Public Defender's Office, said he would review all arrests made by Officers Aponte, Greene, O'Hanlon and Johnson.
"The corruption of these police officers has mortgaged our future," Bridge said. "The indictments today are a down payment, albeit small, toward the redemption of our future. In the months to come, there will be more mortgage payments in the form of more indictments."
All four officers charged yesterday were ordered released by Scuderi after their attorneys assured him that they would post personal and family properties to secure bail of $100,000 to $150,000.
The judge denied a motion by prosecutors to have Aponte held without bail for allegedly trying to persuade a witness to lie to federal investigators in another case.
Prosecutor Carr said Aponte was secretly recorded Jan. 19 by Damian Padilla, a suspect with Aponte and two other men in a 1991 attempted home burglary in Port Richmond, telling Padilla not to cooperate with the FBI. In a transcript of the conversation made available yesterday, Aponte tells the informant to tell the FBI that the two had not seen each other for 1-1/2 years.
"Now they're going to ask you if you talked to me," Aponte is quoted as saying in the transcript. "If you say yes, you talked to me . . . you sunked me, then you buried me."
Although Scuderi said he did not believe the audiotape warranted Aponte's pretrial detention, he raised Aponte's bail to $150,000 and warned him not to contact any witnesses.
All four officers have checkered histories. Johnson is a defendant in a federal civil rights suit that also names five officers who have pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges. In the last two years, the city has paid a total of at least $85,000 to settle federal lawsuits against O'Hanlon, Aponte and Greene.
The indictment -- announced at a news conference attended by U.S. Attorney Michael R. Stiles, District Attorney Lynne Abraham, Neal and Bob C. Reutter, head of the Philadelphia office of the FBI -- alleges that the four officers signed a police property receipt putting the amount at $2,404, and kept the rest for themselves.
To make their raid seem legal, the indictment alleges, the four also arrested five people from the cockfight, including store owner Nunez, for cruelty to animals and conspiracy. The indictment also alleges that the officers later sabotaged their testimony against the five -- who had been complaining about the theft of the money -- to ensure that the charges against them were dismissed.
Nunez's attorney, Harry Rubin, said Nunez had told the FBI about how police stole the money and then ate the victims' refreshments. "It was like a party," Rubin said.
Federal officials were tight-lipped yesterday about the status of the federal probe and how many more current of former officers might be indicted. They also took pains to put the corruption probe into perspective, noting that most Philadelphia police officers are honest "and deserve the public's respect."
"In my view this does not mean that the Philadelphia Police Department has more corruption than other police departments," said Stiles. "It does mean that we are more determined to do something about it."
That view was also taken by Mayor Rendell, who told reporters: "We ought to get a grip on reality."
"There's always a problem, if it was one officer that committed a corrupt act," Rendell said. "But so far, in years of investigation, we have a very small number of police, all acting on their own, all doing things that are not part of a pattern."
Neal said he remains "prepared to go wherever the investigation takes us" and said the probe "should send a very clear message to anyone who would have any thoughts in terms of engaging in any form of corruption that we're committed to come after them, we're committed to identify them. We will fire them and they will be arrested."
District Attorney Abraham also said she wanted the probe to continue and urged "as many police officers as possible who do deserve and earn the right to wear those badges and uniforms with honor" to report any police corruption they discover.
Four weeks after the raid, the five men arrested in the search appeared at a hearing before Municipal Court Judge Michael J. Conroy.
Three of the arresting officers testified -- Aponte, Greene and O'Hanlon.
O'Hanlon was questioned the most extensively about money that he and his partner -- Johnson -- had seized. He said 40 to 50 men attending the cockfight were searched, but no money was taken from anyone.
Question: How much money was confiscated?
O'Hanlon: "There was $2,400, $2,404 I believe is the exact number."
Question: From where was this money confiscated?
O'Hanlon: "Inside the ring. . . . Off to the side in the ring. Just a big pile of money."
All that was a lie, federal prosecutors now say.
[Image]
Inquirer staff writers Richard Jones and Vanessa Williams contributed to this article.
------------------------------
Date: Tue Apr 09, 1996 2:15 am CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Venting 'Bout Bad Cops
From: Bob Witanek
Posted nattyreb@ix.netcom.com Sat Apr 6 09:01:33 1996
From: nattyreb@ix.netcom.com (Marpessa Kupendua)
A RARE AND COURAGEOUS BREED - A BLACK MAINSTREAM JOURNALIST WHO DARES TO SPEAK THE TRUTH FROM HIS HEART! THERE'S HOPE FOR US YET!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
YES, LET US VENT ABOUT BAD COPS - by Elmer Smith,
Columnist - The Philadelphia Daily News 4/5/96
You may be pleased to know that our cops are no more corrupt than cops elsewhere. No? Well try this one: There are no more bad cops than bad lawyers, bad bankers or bad reporters. That one doesn't do much for you? Didn't do it for me either.
But the federal prosecutor probing Philadelphia police corruption and the mayor of this typically corrupt town seemed to think these revelations would be quite a load off your mind. And maybe they will be, if you're into turning your dark clouds inside out in search of silver linings.
After all, cops are reading Miranda warnings to each other in every big city in America. I guess it's good to know that ours are no worse than theirs. So maybe this is just a timing thing with me. But on a day when four cops get busted, this time for pulling a stickup at a cockfight, I'm not trying to hear that armed robbery by people we armed is just one of those things.
"In my personal view," said U.S. Attorney Michael Stiles "the men and women of the Philadelphia Police Department are certainly no more corrupt than... any other police department." The mayor took it a step further. "So, let's get a grip and understand that there are bad policemen, bad bankers, bad politicians and maybe bad reporters," Rendell said.
Hey, get a grip on this, guys: When cops crash through someone's door with guns drawn, rob 21 people of $28,000 and sit around drinking beer while their victims lie face down on the floor, I'm not trying to understand.
I think I do understand what the mayor and Stiles are trying to do. They just don't want us to panic. They want to let us know that we can stop worrying because they're on this. And since both of them have better-than-average track records for fighting police corruption, it seems fair to say that their official response is a lot less casual than their public shrug.
But I don't want to be calmed down when I'm paying people who may beat me up, lock me up and now, stick me up with the gun I bought them. So I reserve the right to be outraged. Because, even though I know they're doing it from Dubuque to Dallas, this is a sore spot that never gets numb for me.
Wednesday's indictment bowl raises to 10 the number of Philly cops busted in Mike Stiles' federal probe. The other six were into robbing drug dealers, planting drugs on innocent people and keeping a stash of illegal drugs for fun and profit.
Which brings to mind the old joke about Philadelphia being a town where a kid can play cops and robbers alone. But I ain't laughing. And I ain't buying that tired old refrain about how cops get corrupted by all the corruption they see around them. That's an excuse, and a sorry one at that.
If 950 cops of 1,000 can go from rookies to retirees without sticking up a craps game or collecting on both ends from the local hooker, the others have a problem more basic than workplace atmosphere. Sure, some of us do have trouble keeping our hands off other people's money. But it's the job of the police to help us. Instead, we've got this greedy monitory out here helping themselves.
There's no excuse for it. It is outrageous. And *that* is what I want to hear from my mayor and federal prosecutor. Instead I'm hearing how police are under such pressure, it's no wonder they stray off the reservation every once in a while.
Which is what we're hearing from California this week in the aftermath of the beating of two disarmed Mexican Americans who were caught smuggling illegal aliens across the border. This week's episode of roadside justice features some nifty stick work by the Riverside County sheriff's department. It follows a familiar script:
Police signal a driver to stop. The driver continues, picking up speed until he is leading the police cruiser on a high-speed chase over the highway or through city streets. Finally, after a long chase, he overtakes the fleeing motorist. What follows is a scene that has been repeated so often it's not just predictable; it's almost inevitable.
The scene is in continuous showing this week because a TV crew in a helicopter chronicled the chase and the beating on their overhead cameras. They should have pulled over. But they sped off. Cops hate that.
It's what made half a dozen L.A. cops form a circle and whip Rodney King like a runaway slave.
That's what pissed off a cop in an unmarked car who dragged a woman from her car, jumped on her back, and bludgeoned her on a South Carolina highway a few months ago. We saw that one replayed on a TV news magazine segment last month after the irate trooper was caught on camera by his own police cruiser as he administered roadside justice to this woman.
In California, where most American trends have their roots, this tendency is called high-speed pursuit syndrome.
For once, I wish someone would call it what it is, beating the hell out of people.
And stop trying to cool us off about it. Don't hose me down. Let me burn.
==============================
Submitted by: Sis. Marpessa
http://www.webcom.com/nattyreb
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 21:46:59 -0700
From: mregen@ix.netcom.com (Marnie Regen )
To: DRCTalk@drcnet.org
Subject: corrupt cops chronology
Message-ID: <199604110446.VAA08528@DFW-IX2.IX.NETCOM.COM>
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Thursday, April 4, 1996
Some major events of corruption probe
By Richard Jones and Mark Fazlollah
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
Yesterday's indictment of four Philadelphia police officers was the latest blow to a department already reeling from 13 months of scandal.
Here is a chronology of key events in the corruption probe:
Feb. 28, 1995 -- A federal grand jury indicts five former officers in the 39th District in North Philadelphia -- John Baird, 40; Thomas DeGovanni, 44; Steven Brown, 48; James Ryan, 39; and Thomas Ryan, 38. They are charged with planting drugs on suspects, stealing more than $100,000 in cash and property, and falsifying police reports. They and a sixth former officer, Louis J. Maier 3d, later plead guilty.
March 15, 1995 -- Joe Morris, 53, in prison for a 1988 drug conviction, is freed at the request of the District Attorney's Office. His is the first of more than 100 convictions overturned by the courts because of misconduct by the six former officers.
April 7, 1995 -- Two former 19th District officers -- Derrick Mayes, 31, and Kevin Daniels, 33 -- are convicted of stealing cash, planting drugs and making false arrests of young men in West Philadelphia. Each is sentenced to five to 10 years.
June 8, 1995 -- A former 35th District officer, Sgt. Gene Lomazoff, 39, is convicted of stopping motorists for minor infractions, then shaking them down for cash. He is sentenced to seven to 22 years.
July 26, 1995 -- Two former 39th District officers -- Brown, named in the February indictment, and Robert Miller, 47 -- are charged with running a lucrative fencing operation out of a North Philadelphia variety store.
Aug. 14, 1995 -- In the first of a series of mass transfers, Police Commissioner Richard Neal guts the 39th District's command, shifting the captain and 11 other supervisors to new assignments. In the 35th District, 11 supervisors are moved to new posts.
Aug. 15, 1995 -- City Councilman Michael Nutter criticizes Mayor Rendell's response to the widening scandal and calls for an independent commission with broad powers to investigate police misconduct. An existing commission is purely advisory.
Aug. 30, 1995 -- Federal investigators subpoena arrest logs in the 22d, 23d, 24th, 25th and 26th Districts and the Highway Patrol. The logs cover up to 100,000 arrests over 10 years.
Aug. 31, 1995 -- Neal announces a 10-step plan to fight police corruption, including beefing up the department's Internal Affairs Division, expanding ethics training, and instituting random drug testing. Three men who claim they were falsely arrested by corrupt officers file the first federal class-action suit stemming from the scandal.
Sept. 19, 1995 -- Before a packed City Council chamber, the Police Advisory Commission opens public hearings into the case of Moises DeJesus, a North Philadelphia man who died in 1994, three days after struggling with arresting officers. "He was hit, then handcuffed, then hit again, and again, and again," said one witness. "He was thrown in [ the police van ] like a dog. That's when I said, 'He's dead. He's dead.'" At the close of the hearing, about 200 off-duty officers chant: "Kangaroo, kangaroo!"
Sept. 26, 1995 -- Breaking with a traditional code of silence, the president of the group representing the city's black officers calls on all police to turn in corrupt colleagues and report misconduct, past or present. "The credibility of this police department is at stake," says David E. Fisher, president of the Guardian Civic League. "These rogue cops are . . . tarnishing the badge."
Nov. 16, 1995 -- The Inquirer reports that the Rendell administration paid $20 million over the preceding 28 months to settle more than 225 lawsuits alleging police misconduct. A spokesman for the mayor calls the upsurge "a statistical anomaly."
Dec. 21, 1995 -- In its report on the death of Moises DeJesus, the Police Advisory Commission calls for the suspension of six officers.
The report says that one officer struck DeJesus with a flashlight or nightstick and that five others "were not truthful in reporting what they observed."
April 3 -- Four more officers -- Julio C. Aponte and Edward A. Greene of the 25th District and Lester F. Johnson and John P. O'Hanlon of the Highway Patrol -- surrender for booking on federal corruption charges.
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April 8 -- After waiting 111 days for action, the Police Advisory Commission calls on Rendell and Neal to punish the six officers cited in its report. "Any further delay," panel members wrote, ". . . does an injustice to the citizens of Philadelphia."
April 15 -- A federal judge sentences the five officers indicted in February 1995 -- Baird, DeGovanni, Brown and the two Ryans -- to prison terms ranging from 10 months to 13 years.
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http://www2.phillynews.com/daily_news/96/Apr/16/local/KOPS16.htm
Local
[Philadelphia Online]
THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, April 16, 1996
Ex-cops get little pity
by Jim Smith
Daily News Staff Writer
The four ex-39th District cops said they were sorry for robbing and assaulting dozens of suspected drug dealers and for trumping up reasons to search and arrest victims. One even cried. But the apologies and the tears and the ratting -- mostly on each other -- didn't do them much good.
With stunning severity, all four were sentenced to long prison terms yesterday by U.S. District Judge Robert S. Gawthrop III.
The judge, for the most part, refused entreaties of prosecutors and defense attorneys to significantly reward three of the four defendants for squealing on each other and, in some cases, on other corrupt cops.
The judge, however, did show mercy on a fifth defendant, Thomas Ryan, the first to turn informant and the least involved, sending Ryan to jail for only 10 months.
The leader of the corrupt officers, John Baird, whom fellow officers called "Wacky Jacky" -- a man who liked to play a sadistic form of Russian roulette with victims, putting a gun to their heads and pulling the trigger on an empty chamber -- was sentenced to 13 years in jail without chance of parole.
The punishment was four years longer than that required by Baird's sentencing guidelines.
If it withstands an appeal, it would be one of the stiffest sentences in modern times in a Philadelphia police corruption case.
"The governmental functions in this town have been disrupted immeasurably," the judge said, referring to the overturning of more than 100 drug convictions as a result of wrongdoing by Baird and his three main associates over a three-year period.
Baird, 41, a trim, square-jawed man with long graying blond hair parted in the middle, has been in jail for several months and came to court in a khaki prison uniform.
He showed no emotion as deputy U.S. marshals hauled him from the courtroom in handcuffs to begin his sentence. A jail has yet to be designated by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
While it was important to "loosen tongues" of potential witnesses by rewarding those who inform on others, the judge said his primary purpose in dealing harshly with the ex-cops was "to deter other police officers from committing . . . crimes in the first place."
Baird, who stole more than $100,000 for his corrupt crew, would get no "silver platter" from him, Gawthrop added, rejecting requests for leniency from Assistant U.S. Attorneys William B. Carr Jr. and Joel Goldstein, and from Baird's defense attorney, Elizabeth Ainslie.
At one point the judge suggested that Baird's request for mercy "smacked of blackmail." The judge noted that Baird had told a court probation officer, Thomas Wolfe, that other corruption cases "would dry up" if he was dealt a harsh sentence.
"Of course," Ainslie said, when asked if she'd appeal the stiff sentence.
Ex-cop Steven Brown, 49, who bawled over the shame he brought to his family, drew 10 years from the judge, the maximum required by Brown's sentencing guidelines.
"I locked up drug dealers. They were drug dealers. I went about it the wrong way," Brown told the judge. "I became a thief . . . I needed the money.
"Seeing the money the drug dealers had and the way they were living, I took it upon myself" to steal. "I admit it. I hope they know I am sorry," Brown added, before being returned to prison.
Ex-Sgt. Thomas DeGovanni, 45, drew seven years in prison, but was given a week to spend with his wife and three children before the term begins.
"My behavior was . . . immoral," DeGovanni admitted.
"We all start out with good intentions. Too often we fail. I failed."
James Ryan, whose ongoing cooperation recently led to the indictments of four other cops for stealing about $30,000 from a cockfight -- and to other still-secret investigations involving members of the Highway Patrol -- was sentenced to six years.
Ryan, 40, asked for 30 days to report to prison. But the judge gave him only about seven minutes to surrender.
Gawthrop told James Ryan he had had "enough free will" to resist a cancer in the ranks of the Police Department.
"Tragically for you, you took the path of corruption," the judge added.
"I cannot factor out the ugliness with which his case abounds," the judge told prosecutors, rejecting a plea for more leniency.
James Ryan's sentence was two years less than the minimum required by his guidelines, but two years more than the four-year term the prosecutors had recommended.
The 10-month sentence went to Thomas Ryan, who was the least involved and the first to inform on Baird.
Prosecutors said Thomas Ryan was involved criminally with Baird only one time, more than five years ago in 1991, the night he and Baird illegally detained and roughed up a college student who had the misfortune of getting lost on their beat. The student, Arthur Colbert, resembled a drug dealer Baird wanted to roust.
Baird also broke into Colbert's apartment in Cheltenham searching for drugs or money while the student was kept in a 39th District cell.
In a letter to the judge, Thomas Ryan said he didn't have the courage that night to stand up to Baird.
Baird "had friends throughout the ranks of the Police Department," Thomas Ryan told the judge.
The student's complaint the next day eventually got Baird, Thomas Ryan and DeGovanni fired and brought in the FBI to help investigate corruption in the 39th District. Thomas Ryan's prison sentence was 14 months less than the minimum required by his guidelines.
Defense attorney Frank DeSimone noted that Thomas Ryan, who now works as a "residential counselor" in a group home for abused boys in North Philadelphia, had letters of support and a signed petition seeking mercy on his behalf from residents and businesspeople in the 39th District.
One admirer, Joan Downs, a reformed crack addict, testified yesterday that Thomas Ryan helped convince her to get treatment.
"Tom is still there for me. He's my knight in shining armor," Downs told the judge.The judge called her testimony "gripping" and said it "drives home the particular tragedy" of Thomas Ryan's case.
"You bore every hallmark of being a wonderful police officer," the judge said. "I think this was an aberration, but it happened and that fact is ineradicable."
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http://www2.phillynews.com/inquirer/96/Apr/16/front_page/SENT16.htm
[The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Page One
Tuesday, April 16, 1996
Corrupt Officers Get Harsh Terms
5 from 39th District given up to 13 years
By Joseph A. Slobodzian and Mark Fazlollah
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
Philadelphia's most notorious policeman, who blazed a trail of outrageous misconduct for 10 years and left the city with one of the biggest police scandals in its history, was sentenced yesterday to 13 years in prison without parole.
Looking more like a wraith than like the flamboyant officer who routinely beat, framed and stole from citizens, John "Wacky Jack" Baird was led away stone-faced and silent.
Four other officers who helped make the 39th District a home for scandal received sentences ranging from 10 years to 10 months.
Citing the legacy of the corrupt officers -- 116 of their criminal cases overturned and more coming, millions of dollars in civil suits filed and more coming, a justice system shaken to its roots -- U.S. District Judge Robert Gawthrop 3d did not just sentence the five officers.
He knocked them out of the park.
Gawthrop, 53, a former county prosecutor and a veteran of nine years on the federal bench, told Baird that he had "squashed the Bill of Rights into the mud" and that in his 14 years on the city police force he had "erred badly, grievously and repeatedly."
He then sentenced the 41-year-old officer to almost twice what federal prosecutors recommended.
Federal prosecutors pleaded for leniency, praising the way Baird had helped them root out corruption by helping expand the FBI probe.
Gawthrop bristled at a prosecution suggestion that "police corruption in this city is inexorable" and said he felt the need to "to deter other police officers from committing these crimes in the first place."
Several of the five former officers and their attorneys spoke and acted as if they had been betrayed by the severity of the sentences.
Baird, for one, will appeal his sentence to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said his attorney, Elizabeth K. Ainslie, who told Gawthrop that Baird's extensive cooperation and "prodigious memory" had worked against him at sentencing.
"I think the message that this sends [ to other corrupt officers ]," Ainslie told Gawthrop, "is don't tell them anything they don't already know. . . . The message will be: Either fight it, or take your medicine and shut up."
Baird, whose swashbuckling style and high arrest record earned him a reputation as a cop's cop, showed no emotion as the judge sternly imposed the sentence. Baird has been in jail awaiting sentencing since October, and the time away seemed to have drained the officer once known on the streets of North Philly as Blondie for his thick blond hair. The Baird who faced the judge yesterday stood in an olive prison jumpsuit, tall, gaunt and pale, his head listing slightly to the right.
Federal prosecutors sidestepped questions about whether the sentences might deter other police officers from disclosing corruption.
"The sentencing would have been harsher if there had not been cooperation," said Assistant U.S. Attorney William B. Carr Jr., adding that strong sentences might deter future misconduct. Carr declined to say whether more indictments were imminent.
With yesterday's sentencings, the first chapter in the continuing federal probe of city police ended.
It began in February 1995 with the indictment of the five former officers from North Philadelphia's 39th District on charges that they stole more than $100,000 from suspected drug dealers, who were usually searched or arrested with bogus warrants. It has grown, as Gawthrop described it, like "a cancer."
Last August a sixth former 39th District officer was charged, pleaded guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. And on April 3 four more officers were indicted on corruption charges: two from the adjacent 25th District and two from the Highway Patrol, all accused of stealing $28,000 from the participants in a cockfight they raided. All four are awaiting trial.
The probe has resulted in a wholesale review of 1,800 arrests involving the five original officers, and the District Attorney's Office has since pressed for the dismissal of charges against 116.
And the case review may be about to go much higher.
A sentencing memo filed by federal prosecutors for yesterday's hearings stated that Baird's "pattern of similar corrupt activity" began in 1984 -- four years earlier than alleged in the indictment.
Bradley S. Bridge of the Public Defender's Office said yesterday that "if the sentence reports are correct that these officers' corruption extends back to the early '80s, we must go back and extend our search for people whose lives were devastated by the police officers to the early '80s."
The proceedings began at 9:30 a.m. with the sentencing of James Ryan, 40, the officer who first protested his innocence and then cooperated, expanding the scope of the federal probe.
Ryan's attorney, Brian J. McMonagle, urged a sentence below the eight-to-10-year range recommended under the federal sentencing guidelines, and Carr said Ryan's cooperation was so important he deserved no more than four years.
"He never wanted to go to that unit," McMonagle said of the 39th District, "and when he got there he made a ton of mistakes and begged to get out of there."
Ryan, who boasts a series of commendations, insisted that all but seven months of his 17-year career were exemplary and told Gawthrop: "I took a lot of pride in being a police officer. It was basically my life."
"You are a grown man," Gawthrop told Ryan, standing ramrod straight below the judge. "You could take it or leave it. . . . Tragically for you you took the path of corruption, and now is judgment day."
The sentence -- six years in prison and a $4,000 fine -- stunned Ryan. So did what came next. McMonagle asked that Ryan be given 20 days to report for prison.
"I'll give you to quarter of 11 to report," Gawthrop said. "Until then you're a free man . . ."
That gave Ryan eight minutes of freedom.
Ryan whirled among a contingent of family and friends, making hurried goodbyes. As marshals began to escort him into custody, he turned to one federal investigator and said he was sorry he had cooperated.
Next up was Thomas Ryan, 39, whose criminal conduct was limited to the Feb. 24, 1991, incident in which he and Baird stopped and took into custody Temple University college student Arthur Colbert.
Colbert was taken into a vacant crack house, where Baird stuck a gun in his face and threatened to shoot him. The pair later went to Colbert's Cheltenham apartment, which Baird entered and searched illegally, before they returned and released the shaken student.
Thomas Ryan, who retired after injuring his back and now counsels teens in the 39th District, yesterday told Gawthrop that night was his first pairing with Baird and was "like a roller-coaster." Ryan said that he reported the incident to his supervisor but that supervisor was Sgt. Thomas DeGovanni -- a Baird ally -- and the probe went nowhere.
"I have to apologize again to Arthur Colbert," he told the judge.
"What he experienced that day should not happen in this country."
Ryan's case was "distinct from the others," the judge said, and he sentenced him to 10 months -- significantly below the 24- to 30-month guideline -- and fined him $1,000.
Ryan declined comment after the sentencing. Gawthrop gave him 20 days to surrender to authorities.
It was the Colbert incident, and Colbert's dogged persistence in pressing for an investigation of what happened to him, that triggered the federal probe in 1992.
Colbert, reached in Detroit, where he now works with juvenile delinquents, said he was pleased that "justice is finally done."
"Everybody did a good job. The FBI, the police, Internal Affairs, they all worked together," Colbert said.
After Thomas Ryan, DeGovanni, 45, the 39th District supervisor who admitted letting Baird's crimes continue unimpeded, was next and got seven years.
"I'm not going to stand here and make any excuses," DeGovanni told Gawthrop. "We all start out with good intentions, and sometimes we fail. I failed."
While Gawthrop acknowledged that Baird was the "prime mover in this ugly chain of misery that you have visited upon a lot of people," he told DeGovanni he bore much of the blame.
"It may be trite and perhaps a bit Trumanesque," Gawthrop added, "but the buck stops with you. You could have stopped the whole thing if you hadn't been on the take . . . You went along with it, gladly lining your pockets and crumpling the Constitution in your fist."
The last to be sentenced was Steven Brown, 49, Baird's frequent partner on his late-night cruises of North Philadelphia in search of suspected drug dealers to shake down. He was sentenced to 10 years.
Brown said he had realized that he was doing wrong and even warned the other corrupt 39th District officers they should stop: "I told all of those guys, 'You're going to bet banged.'"
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