WORMSCAN: WORMSCAN.&& [PART 4]
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.
This is a continuation of the file named WORMSCAN.&&.
WORMSCAN: WORMSCAN.&& [PART 1]
WORMSCAN: WORMSCAN.&& [PART 2]
WORMSCAN: WORMSCAN.&& [PART 3]
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960226, FBI, Wash DC, Star Ledger. US attorney's offices
Date: Sun Feb 25, 1996 10:48 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: FBI - All Lab Cases Under Review
Posted: Bob Witanek 2/25/96
SEARCH UNDER WAY FOR TAINTED ANALYSIS AND INCOMPETENCE IN FBI CRIME LAB (Star Ledger, 2/22/96 - Excerpted)
By ROBERT RUDOLPH
US Attorneys' offices throughout the nation have been directed by the Justice Department to weed through cases in their files in an effort to identify cases that could be tainted by allegations of misconduct involving the FBI crime lab in Washington. The allegations - which involve charges of slanted results, incompetence and improper testing procedures could have an impact on a number of criminal prosecutions throughout the country in which FBI lab results were used, including cases that already have been closed.
The charges were made by a veteran employee of the crime lab, long regarded as the top forensic law enforcement facility in the country. A memorandum, issued by acting Assistant U.S. Attorney General John C. Keeney and obtained by The Star Ledger, reveals that a special Justice Department task force has been established to review the allegations.
"As this memorandum makes apparent." the document states, the legal issues raised by the allegations are "nationwide in scope, affecting a substantial number of criminal cases in districts throughout the country."
Federal authorities in New Jersey said yesterday that a preliminary review indicates only a few cases that have a potential of being tainted.
According to the memo, US attorney's offices across the nation have been asked to supply information relating to such cases. The memo was sent to all U.S. attorneys in the country last month.
US authorities in New Jersey said they are conducting their own independent, in-house review as well.
"The review has not been completed," said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary. Cleary said yesterday that although New Jersey has a large number of cases in which the FBI lab has performed services, it has "very few cases handled by those people" named or working in units specified in allegations by Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, a supervisory special agent who has served as an examiner in the FBI crime lab. Cleary also said it doesn't appear that any of the specific cases cited by Whitehurst involve New Jersey prosecutions.
The existence of Whitehurst's allegations were first spotlighted during the trial of O.J. Simpson, when a defense attorney unsuccessfully sought to have Whitehurst testify.
The Justice Department memo outlines the nature of Whitehurst's charges. Specifically, the memo states, Whitehurst contends that certain FBI. lab examiners have slanted their conclusions to favor the prosecution; that certain FBI examiners who testify in criminal proceedings are not qualified to analyze the evidence involved in those cases; and that certain key units within the lab maintain insufficient scientific controls over the testing procedures. The memo states that the Justice' Department "is in the process of evaluating the validity of the wide-ranging allegations raised by Dr. Whitehurst."
At the same time, Justice Department spokesman Carl Stem confirmed yesterday, the department is "attempting to survey what cases are out there" that could be affected. Stem said the survey is part of an effort to determine if legal obligations will require the department to notify defense attorneys of the fact that Whitehurst's charges could affect their cases.
"While the scope of this may be unusual," Stem said, he called the inquiry "fairly routine." To date, he said, some one-third of the nation's 93 U.S. Attorney's offices have responded to the survey. The results, however, were not immediately available. The Justice Department official stressed, however, that the survey is independent of the separate investigation into the validity of Whitehurst's charges.
According to the Justice Department memo, "that evaluation will be time-consuming and will require substantial legal and scientific resources."
The memo revealed that among the charges made by Whitehurst are allegations relating to specific criminal investigations in which he alleged improprieties may have occurred in the presentation or analysis of evidence. The memo said it plans to notify the U.S. Attorney's offices directly involved about those charges and has requested that those offices assign an attorney to review written materials provided by Whitehurst.
The memo says the individual U.S. Attorney's offices will be asked to analyze the significance of the laboratory evidence used in those cases to determine whether it will be necessary to alert defense attorneys in those matters.
In addition, the memo contains a list of 20 employees who Whitehurst contends lack the proper qualifications, are not competent to perform required procedures or who slant opinions to favor the prosecution. The U.S. Attorney's offices have been asked to determine if any of the 20 employees were involved in ongoing cases in their districts - either pending trial, on appeal or in the grand jury stages.
The memo notes that Whitehurst has made specific allegations involving the FBI lab's Explosives Unit and Chemistry and, Toxicology Units in which he says these units slant results to favor the prosecution.
As a result, the Justice Department has asked U.S. Attorney's offices to identify any pending cases that could have been affected by those allegations. The FBI crime lab is involved in thousands of cases each year. FBI analysts often wind up in court, and spent 1,470 days testifying in various trials nationwide last year alone.
One Justice Department official noted that if Whitehurst's charges are upheld, not only could pending and closed cases be affected, but even cases in which defendants have pleaded guilty.
According to the Justice Department official, some 90 percent of all federal cases result in guilty pleas, but Whitehurst's allegations could raise questions whether those pleas were induced as a result of tainted test results.
The Washington-based FBI lab has 557 employees and operates on a budget of $63.6 million. In addition to its work in federal prosecutions, the lab spends about half its time performing studies for state & local law enforcement agencies that lack their own labs or need additional expertise. It has experts in chemistry and toxicology, hair and fiber, explosives, documents, photography, paint, tire tracks, ballistics and even feathers, among other specialties.
As a result of Whitehurst's allegations, the FBI already has reviewed 250 cases in search of any rigged or slanted testimony. "To date, no evidence tampering, evidence fabrication or failure to report exculpatory evidence have been found," the FBI said in a statement issued last year.
============
COMMENT - It would appear to me that the approach of asking US Attorneys to look through their own cases, which they were involved in prosecuting, to see if any of their own prosecutions were tainted by this misconduct is a sham. This situation screams for an INDEPENDENT review. There should be no question that information about Whitehurst's charges, the names of the 20 employees he fingers, the list of cases he cites, and EVERYTHING about this situation MUST be made available to defense attorneys universally! Do we really expect that US Attorneys will voluntarily throw out their successful convictions if they inspect and find that the evidence, its presentation and analysis were tainted? Yeah right!
- Bob
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960226, Guamuchilito, Mexico, SF Chronicle. Amado Carrillo,
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 19:12:18 -0800
From: tjeffoc@ix.netcom.com (Tom O'Connell)
To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Subject: SF Chronicle Drug Series. 1st article, 1/1
Message-ID:
The Chronicle revealed the reason behind yesterday's schizophrenia. Here's the 1st part of today's article, which appeared on 1st page with 2 full pages inside, complete with color pictures.
Mexico's New Emperor of Narcotics Amado Carillo's rise shows growing clout of drug lords.
Traffickers' Power Grows In Mexican Heartland
By Robert Collier
Chronicle Staff Writer
Guamuchilito, Mexico
Mexico's biggest drug trafficker may be a wanted man north of the border, but back home he walks tall and unafraid.
In the dirt streets of this tiny farming village, residents' eyes glaze over with a mix of admiration, gratitude and fear when Amado Carrillo's name is mentioned. From the two-story church that he built four years ago to his family's fortress-like two-acre compound at the other end of town the man believed to be responsible for smuggling more than one-third of the cocaine found on U.S. streets would be unopposed in any popularity contest.
"He's a good man, not at all like you say he is," says Guadalupe Garcia as she rocked quickly back and forth in a chair in her front yard. "If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have our church."
Clasping his hands tightly and twisting them back and forth, the town priest, the Rev. Pedro Coronado , said: "He and his family are good, quiet, Christian people, just like anyone else here." He refused to say more.
As Carrillo has consolidated his position as Mexico's No. 1 drug lord, the nation's drug war has become an increasingly silent one. Largely gone are the shootouts and chaos that had brought unwanted headlines and police attention
Even the capture last month of Carrillo's main rival, Juan Garcia Abrego, was strangely anticlimactic. The capo - formerly feared for his violent, gun slinging ways-was caught , with alone-with no bodyguards and no retinue, as if a deal had been cut with his captors.
The nation's recent economic and political troubles have allowed Carrillo and a new breed of allied traffickers to sink deep roots into the power structure and the fabric of daily life. And these roots, U.S . drug enforcement officials say, may have made Carrillo an untouchable enemy. Aside from the strange looks given visitors when Carrillo's name is mentioned, nothing is out of the ordinary in Guamuchilito.
Located in the hot, irrigated plains of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, the village is much like any other in Mexico - the same whitewashed walls, the same dogs barking at passing vehicles, the same girls walking hand in hand and giggling.
The normality of Guamuchilito is the normality of Mexico's new narcotics status quo. In the past two years, Carrillo has taken the lead over rival traffickers by changing the business.
Known as "Lord of the Skies" because of his fleet of smuggling planes, Carrillo has integrated his cocaine and marijuana distribution networks to include heroin and methamphetamine, whose popularity is surging in the United States. Feuds between drug organizations usually are solved with negotiations, not bullets. And shipments from Colombia now are brought into Mexico on large cargo jets rather than light planes.
For example, in a single week end in November, Carrillo's organization reportedly imported 20 tons of South American cocaine destined for the United States in two clandestine cargo-jet shipments.
The U.S.-orchestrated crackdown on the cartels inside Colombia in recent years has pushed the center of drug trafficking operations northward, closer to the U.S. border. Carrillo, according to U.S officials, is the first Mexican trafficker to become an equal partner of the Colombian cartels.
"Instead of playing their traditional role of "mules," or transporters for the Colombians, Carrillo and other Mexican capos now take as payment half of the South American cocaine they transport.
Experts say they have created their own distribution networks in the United States, which now compete directly with the Colombians sale networks.
And with the capture of Garcia Abrego, Carrillo is expected to increase his share of the trade."Amado Carrillo is clearly the most powerful trafficker in Mexico ... with resources and connections that mark a major shift on our southern border," Drug Enforcement chief Thomas Constantine said recently.
In Mexico, Carrillo has little to fear from the law. Although he is wanted on cocaine charges in Texas and Florida and is the subject of more than a dozen U.S. federal investigations, south of the border he faces only a weapons charge-"the equivalent of jaywalking," said one U.S. official. That charge reportedly was suspended recently when Carrillo's lawyers obtained a restraining order against the police.
In their fight against drug trafficking, Mexican authorities appear to focus most of their efforts on eradicating marijuana grown by poor farmers. Military-style search-and-destroy operations swoop down constantly on the rocky canyons of the Sierra Madre. But the officials seem less enthusiastic about netting the cocaine octopus in their midst.
"I'm not aware of any problems with Mr. Carrillo," said Commander Jose Barragan, federal police chief for Sinaloa. "There are no major trafficking organizations
"It is clear that his money has penetrated high into the ranks of politicians, police and anti-drug officials."
The attitude of the Mexican public toward drug corruption has gone from ho-hum to scandalized in recent months, as it has become apparent that traffickers have enjoyed protection from the nation's highest officials. A web of revelations, allegations and speculation has implicated Garcia Abrego in a conspiracy involving the brother of former President Carlos Salinas and the 1994 assassinations of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and ruling-party chief Francisco Ruiz Massieu.
But many analysts believe that no matter what dirt is dug up about Garcia Abrego's connections, none of it will touch Carril1o.
Unlike his erratic and violent ' rival, Garcia Abrego, who ordered a bungled hit on him in 1993, Carrillo is known-and respected, even by U.S. agents who track him -as a cool player
U.S. agents admit they know little about him. According to various DEA accounts, the 40ish Carrillo is either a third-grade dropout or a law school graduate, heavyset I or skinny, and was born in one of I three towns (DEA officials in Mexico City and the United States claimed they had never heard of Guamuchilito.)
But according to government officials and journalists in Culiacan, as well as Guamuchilito residents, there are no doubts about Carrillo's formative years.
He was one of 12 children of farming parents, and as he grew up he impressed townspeople as quiet and hard-working. "Amado used to take care of his parents' cattle, and he often tended ours," said Garcia, smiling as she rocked more slowly in her chair.
"He sure liked milking the cows. He did it very fast. And he liked to drink milk, too. Sometimes he would drink milk right from the udder, like this." She tilted her head, making a slurping sound and laughing.
When Carrillo was growing up, Sinaloa state was North America's center for marijuana and opium poppy cultivation, and gunfire was ~heard in Culiacan every night.
According to DEA accounts, Carrillo's uncle, Ernesto Fonseca, was one of the country's biggest traffickers. The young Amado started at the bottom, loading and driving marijuana to safe houses. Eventually he made contacts with Pablo Acosta, a trafficker from the neighboring state of Chihuahua.
Acosta was the link between Mexico's old-time smugglers and the new. His grandfather was a bootlegger who switched to smuggling marijuana after Prohibition. By the 1980s, Acosta was moving marijuana, heroin and cocaine across the border into Texas.
But the volatile Acosta flaunted his wealth and killed too many of his enemies and friends, and by 1987 he had burned so many bridges that Mexican police felt emboldened enough to ambush and kill him.
After Acosta's death, Carrillo moved to Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, and gradually assumed the role of peacemaker between rival Mexican traffickers from Tijuana to Matamoros.
U.S. officials say Carrillo's style was so effective that he became the coordinator of a loosely knit empire of traffickers-a white collar cooperative whose members do business with Lear jets, Boeing 727s and French Caravelles rather than bullets.
According to DEA informants, Carrillo never uses drugs or carries guns. He has served only eight months in jail on cocaine trafficking charges, and the Mexican government has never made public any information it may have gleaned from him during his incarceration.
He was set free in April 1990 by a Mexico City judge, who ruled that there was "insufficient evidence" to hold him. The ruling brought only muted protests from U.S. officials, who at the time did not view Carrillo as a major trafficker.
Carrillo has not spoken publicly about any of the charges against him.
U.S. officials who track Carrillo say he lives in no one location, protection," said Eduardo Valle, a constantly moving between safe former Mexican government anti-drug official. houses in central and northern Mexico.
Guamuchilito residents said that Carrillo occasionally returns home to visit his mother, two sisters and a brother. But Barragan, the state police commander, said Carrillo's family is "not a matter for attention or investigation," adding: "In Mexico, we have a great respect for families."
In Guamuchilito, the Carrillo compound is ringed by high walls and concertina wire. Four-wheel drive vehicles and pickups with darkened widows come and go, giving the casual passer-by a tantalizing glimpse of colonial-style arches, lush greenery and spraying water as the heavy, black gates open and shut.
Although townspeople nervously warned a reporter not to linger near the compound, guards at the entrance responded to repeated inquiries for Carrillo's mother, Aurora, by politely saying no one was home. After the visitor left a letter asking for an interview with Mrs. Carrillo, he received a series of cryptic phone calls at his hotel in Culiacan from a man describing himself as an intermediary.
On the fifth call, two days later, the man said "he has approved it" -- apparently referring to Amado Carrillo himself-adding that only the final arrangements remained to be made. But the intermediary did not call back, and the compound's telephone number was unlisted.
At the front gate the next day, the guards said again-grinning slightly behind their sunglasses-that no one was home.
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More tomorrow. So far a pretty generic piece, but no criticism of US policy either, just a parroting of DEA comment.
Tom
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 13:13:06 -0800
From: tjeffoc@ix.netcom.com (Tom O'Connell)
To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Subject: Chronicle Drugs/Mexico 2nd Installment
Message-ID:
Here's the second and last part of the series:
Second of Two Parts
U.S., Mexico Stalemated on Drugs
Congress' anger has little effect south of the border
BY Robert Collier
Chronicle Staff Writer
Mexico City
When Juan Garcia Abrego was captured by Mexican police last month, law enforcement officials on both sides of the border congratulated themselves, loudly proclaiming that the fall of the drug lord was a major victory against the narcotics cartels.
But the arrest was not enough to satisfy Mexico's critics in the U.S. Congress, who said that other Mexican drug lords appear to enjoy total immunity from justice.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, D., Calif., and other lawmakers charged that Mexico has dawdled in taking concrete steps to fight the traffickers, and they proposed legislation to cut off U.S. economic and diplomatic support for its southern neighbor.
Mexican officials, in turn, reacted angrily, hinting that any congressional retaliation against Mexico would result in less, not more, cooperation on law enforcement.
As the war of words heats up on both sides of the border, many experts say the rhetoric is simply irrelevant; Whether by using praise or taking a hard line, the United States can do little to make Mexico's fight against drugs more effective.
"The problem with U.S. pressure about drugs is knowing where to stop," said Jorge G. Castaneda, a political analyst at the Nation Autonomous University of Mexico "The corruption is so huge and. deep that if you keep digging, you will undermine this government -and that's something the Clinton administration clearly has no interest in doing."
The stakes for the Unite States are high: An estimated, percent of the cocaine and 40 per cent of the heroin that reach American streets are smuggled through Mexico. Indeed, Mexico drug lords have risen rapidly to become just as powerful as those who head Colombia's cartels, and the, are now reported to spend as much as $500 million a year to bribe Mexican government officials.
Recent setbacks in the U.S. Mexican war on drugs have been striking:
Days after Garcia Abrego capture, the drug corruption case against Raul Salinas, brother of former President Carlos Salinas was severely damaged when several top businessmen said they had given him most of the $100 million found in his Swiss bank accounts -money that was suspected of being drug-related. Although Raul Salinas still faces charges relating to the 1994 assassination of a key ruling-party official, many observers say the whole issue of drug corruption in the Salinas administration may be swept under the rug.
* Another major graft case, against former government prosecutor Mario Ruiz Massieu, also has crumbled. A U.S. federal magistrate in New Jersey, where Ruiz Massieu has been jailed since last March, has rejected repeated attempts to extradite him to Mexico to face trial on drug corruption charges. U.S. diplomats now admit , that both governments have botched the case.
* A broad package of legislation to reform Mexico's notoriously lax laws on money laundering, , government corruption and the sale of so-called precursor chemicals used in processing drugs has stalled in Mexico's Congress since it was introduced in November.
In the past year, the widening scandal linking the former Salinas administration with drug traffickers has left Washington and Mexico City in a bind, experts say.
Hoping that Mexico will emerge from its 14-month old economic crisis with no damage to NAFTA, President Clinton has thrown the economic and diplomatic weight of the United States behind President Ernesto Zedillo's attempts to fight corruption in the traditional Mexican way-quietly, behind the scenes and without hurting the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
"Because of the whole drug scandal about the Salinas brothers, there is enormous public pressure to find the guilty," said Agustin Basave, a leading PRI reformer and president of the Luis Donaldo Colosio Foundation, a PRI think tank. "But we're not going to try to stop this political disaster by carrying out a witch hunt or a lynching to satisfy the public. We must let the legal process work . . . and that is going to be slow."
Just how slow depends, in part, on the Mexican public, which has long been accustomed to official corruption. In recent local elections, the PR1 escaped the scandal largely unscathed.
Even among Mexico's upper class, "everyone complains about corruption, but we all dream about getting the local narcopolitician to come to our daughter's wedding," said Guadalupe Loaeza, a novelist whose sardonic chronicles of high society are best-sellers.
"Almost any of them-well, anyone except maybe Raul Salinas now-would get seated at the head table."
Getting to the bottom of what Mexicans call "narcopolitics" has proved virtually impossible because of the code of secrecy that politicians and drug lords obey.
When Garcia Abrego was arrested and abruptly sent to the United States, many Mexicans angrily asked why the government id not question him about his many alleged crimes in Mexico, including dozens of killings and his apparent ties with the former Salinas administration. Skeptics suggested that he was expelled so fast to keep him quiet.
U.S. officials say the drug kingpin, now jailed in Houston, has refused to cooperate with his American interrogators.
Back in Mexico, the government does its best to keep those in the know from talking. The Interior Secretariat refused to answer repeated Chronicle requests to interview Miguel Felix Gallardo and Rafael Caro Quintero, two former top drug lords now serving long sentences in a high security prison near Mexico City.
When a reporter passed a written questionnaire to Felix Gallardo through the drug lord's lawyer, he gave only evasive replies, concluding, "Going public would not change things." The lawyer said Felix Gallardo had noted privately that authorities would punish him if he talked more freely. The interview was the first he had ever given to the press.
Last month, when a pro-government newspaper published five long essays written by Raul Salinas, the result was virtually the same. Amid 5,000 words of eloquent philosophizing about prison existence, Salinas alluded only vaguely to the charges against him, including those tied to politics, corruption and drugs.
With no one willing to talk and with little hard evidence, many experts assume the worst.
A recent study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico noted that the annual budget of the Mexican federal attorney general-including the federal police l agencies that fight drugs - is about $200 million, less than half the total of annual bribes the university's researchers estimate are paid to government officials.
The Clinton administration has placed high hopes on an omnibus organized crime bill championed by Attorney General Antonio Lozano, a member of Mexico's conservative National Action Party who is seen as crucial to the reform process.
The bill would impose tough controls on money laundering through banks and exchange houses, create new rules on financial disclosure and conflict of interest by government officials, and crack down on the sale of precursor chemicals, which are used to make methamphetamine-a drug that has been flooding the California narcotics market recently.
The package was proposed with great fanfare by Zedillo's administration in November. But since then, businessmen have opposed it because it would increase government control of the economy. The Mexican Congress has placed the bill on a back burner and no action is expected before this fall.
The apparent lack of progress against drug smugglers has helped produce an atmosphere in the U.S. Congress that is clearly hostile to Mexico.
Earlier this month, Feinstein and New York Republican Senator Alphonse D'Amato proposed legislation to block the extension of the $20 billion U.S. bailout of the Mexican economy. Feinstein charged that "Mexico's actions do not match their words in the war on drugs" and noted that major drug lords such as Amado Carrillo enjoy apparent immunity from justice.
In addition to Feinstein's bill other pending legislation ranges from anti-immigration proposals to a bill to drastically renegotiate NAFTA. Sponsored by Representative Marcy Kaptur, D Ohio, the NAFTA Accountability Act has gathered 77 co-sponsors from the far left to the far right.
And with GOP presidential contender Pat Buchanan bashing Mexico and NAFTA at nearly every campaign appearance, the antipathy is likely to grow.
Feeling the pressure, the administration has said it may deny certification later this week of Mexican cooperation in anti-drug efforts-thus blocking a wide variety of international loans to Mexico.
In December, the administration ceded to similar pressure by blocking implementation of a NAFTA provision allowing Mexican truckers free access to the highways of California and the Southwest.
In fact, drug enforcement officials admit that most of the narcotics crossing the border do not come by plane, tunnel or mule across the desert, but are hidden in truck cargo that passes openly through U.S. Customs.
Although plans have been announced to tighten up loopholes in customs procedures that allow many high-volume importers to avoid inspection at the border U.S. officials say ruefully that there are limits to what they can do to intercept drugs.
"To understand this, you have to look at the reality of the border and what our function here is," said George McNenney, the special agent in charge of the Customs Service office in El Paso, one of the border's busiest crossing points. "On one hand, we're a law enforcement agency. But on the other, we have to facilitate trade. If we checked every vehicle, there would be lines backed up clear to Mexico City."
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There's another related story in today's paper. I'll post it later.
Tom O'Connell
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960321, New York City, NY, AP. Harlem police officer Barry Brown
Date: Sun Mar 31, 1996 10:54 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: NYPD Testilying
Posted: pinknoiz@ccnet.com (Bob Gonsalves)
3/21/96
NEW YORK (AP) - When Officer Barry Brown took the stand against a suspected drug dealer in 1991, he raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth.
Then he lied.
"It was part of everyday police work, unfortunately," the former Harlem policeman said of the falsified testimony, which helped send Samuel Victor to prison.
[Article goes on to say that NYPD has instituted 'reforms' to combat this. And, it's a natural growth of an environment where 'crooks' (suspects, really) are seen to have an 'unfair' advantage.]
...
Police perjury "is not as widespread as people think," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. "It's a perception. But the danger is that perception could find its way into the jury room."
Others contend the problem is pervasive. The Mollen Commission, a mayoral panel that investigated police corruption, concluded in a 1994 report that perjury "is not uncommon, even among those who do not engage in other kinds of misconduct."
A quiet conspiracy to subvert the Constitution's search-and-seizure protections begins when an arresting officer and a prosecutor meet to review a case, said Norman Siegal, head of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"When a cop sits down with a D.A., there's kind of sense of what needs to be said, of what the magic words are," Siegal said. "The cop understands that unless he uses them, the case won't succeed."
[Among the proposed changes are increased "class time on courtroom testimony" for new recruits, which will undoubtedly include training in the 'magic words'.]
...
Brown - a secret informant for the Mollen Commission who used the code name "Otto" - was forced to resign last year after being threatened with prosecution for perjury. Only two weeks earlier, "60 Minutes" likened Brown to Frank Serpico, the New York officer who helped uncover a 1970s corruption scandal.
Brown testified that he saw Victor drop some drugs on the street, then run into an apartment. He later admitted he made up the story after searching the apartment without a legal reason.
Victor was released from prison after serving three years of a 15-year sentence.
[Poster's comments in brackets. My reading of the article is that Brown will not be prosecuted, in spite of the fact that Victor was unlawfully incarcerated for three years.]
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960323, San Francisco, CA, San Francisco Chronicle. Three cops
S.F. Cop in Theft Trial Unlikely to Face Agency Charges
Saturday, March 23, 1996
Page A15
copyright San Francisco Chronicle
Susan Sward, Bill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writers
San Francisco's police watchdog agency has made a preliminary decision not to file theft charges against one of three officers indicted by the grand jury for stealing from drug dealers and other citizens, but a lawyer for two of the alleged victims is appealing.
Lance Bayer, director of the Office of Citizen Complaints, told the alleged victims in a February 28 letter that his agency's investigation failed to sustain the theft charges that the two women made against officer James Acevedo.
The watchdog agency's handling of the case is separate from the Superior Court trial that Acevedo and two other officers, Gary Fagundes and Steven Landi, face in connection with the theft charges. All three officers have entered not guilty pleas in that case.
The three were indicted by the grand jury for stealing money and personal property from drug dealers and others. They also face disciplinary charges before the police commission in connection with the case. No hearing date has been set. Acevedo, Fagundes and Landi were suspended after the indictment.
In his letter, Bayer told Lisa Strain, 29, and Desiree Smith, 25, that the Office of Citizen Complaints' investigation "failed to disclose sufficient evidence to enable us to determine the validity of the allegation" that police failed to book property taken after officers entered the women's apartment.
Strain and Smith have said they had no idea why the police picked on them. Neither woman has a criminal record.
The two women, who have filed a suit seeking $4 million in damages against the city, said they had four nightmarish encounters with police over a 14-month period that ended one year ago.
Jeffrey Sloan, a lawyer who represents the women, said he has written a letter appealing the Office of Citizen Complaints' preliminary decision, asking for a hearing. He plans to write another letter detailing evidence that he believes was ignored.
"This is outrageous," Sloan said. "Ms. Strain and Ms. Smith have been victimized more than once by the very officers who are hired to protect them. Now they turn to the agency that is supposed to protect them, and Mr. Bayer and his agency have once again slapped my clients.
"It is embarrassing that in light of a mountain of evidence that leads to an indictment, the OCC somehow can't find any evidence. It just stinks of a cover-up."
If the Office of Citizen Complaints were to hold a hearing and decide to file charges, it could recommend to Police Chief Fred Lau that he or the police commission hear the charges.
In a related action, the office also declined to sustain charges against Sergeant Johnny Velasquez for allegedly dressing Smith in her jeans in a suggestive fashion before taking both women to the police department one night. Smith said she felt demeaned by his behavior.
The Office of Citizen Complaints also reportedly sustained a charge against Fagundes of failure to cooperate with investigators. Fagundes' lawyer was not available for comment.
Landi was not named in the complaint filed with the office by Strain and Smith.
Bayer told The Chronicle that he has not yet decided whether to hold a hearing to consider further evidence in the case before any final decision is issued.
The preliminary decision in the Acevedo case follows another controversial call by the Office of Citizen Complaints, which decided earlier this month not to sustain charges against officer William Wohler in connection with the 1993 shooting death of Brian Sullivan. Lawyers for Sullivan's family have asked for a hearing, and Bayer has not yet decided what to do.
Sullivan, who lived in the Excelsior district, was shot and killed by Wohler after Sullivan allegedly pointed a gun at him and ran into his garage. The city later paid almost $300,000 in damages in connection with that shooting.
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960326, Philadelphia, PA,. The Civil Rights Committee of the
Date: Mon Feb 26, 1996 9:08 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Philly Bar: Forum on Police Accountability
From: Bob Witanek
Subject: Philly Bar: Forum on Police Accountability
Posted: Barrio215@aol.com
Please let your subscribers know about this great forum
POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY: PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS AND THE ROLE OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONS
The Civil Rights Committee of the Philadelphia Bar Association will host a forum titled "Police Accountability: Problems, Solutions, and the Role of Special Commissions." The forum will be held from 5:30PM to 8:00PM on March 26, 1996, in Philadelphia at the Wanamaker Conference Center, Suite 1010 of the Wanamaker Building. The entrance is on Juniper Street between Market and Chestnut Streets.
The panel for the forum will consist of four nationally recognized experts on the issue of police accountability. The four speakers are: Judge Milton Mollen, Merrick Bobb, Esq., Charles Bowser, Esq., and Leslie Seymore. The moderator for the forum will be Prof. James Fyfe.
Judge Milton Mollen was the chair of the distinguished Mollen Commission. The Mollen Commission investigated police corruption in NYC in 1994 and devised extensive recommendations to reform the New York Police Department. The Mollen Commission report and its recommendations were lauded by experts around the country. It was before this commission that Officer Dowd testified with graphic frankness of the depth and breadth of police corruption in the city. His description of the brashness of some officers, included testimony describing how he snorted cocaine off the dash board of his patrol car.
Merrick Bobb, Esq. serves as special counsel to the Kolts Commission. The Kolts Commission investigated corruption and misconduct in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Mr. Bobb's remarkable work at implementing the Kolts Commission's recommendations with a team of pro-bono attorneys has earned him national attention. Mr. Bobb was also the Deputy General Counsel to the Christopher Commission. The Christopher Commission was created to probe the Los Angeles Police Department in the aftermath of the Rodney King incident. It was headed by Warren Christopher, currently the Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration.
Charles Bowser, Esq. was a member of the Commission that investigated the police bombing of the MOVE compound and the resulting fire that killed 11 people and destroyed 61 homes. Mr. Bowser was appointed to the country's first Civilian Review Board in 1961 by Mayor Dilworth. He has also served as Deputy Mayor for the city of Philadelphia, and Special Counsel to the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus.
Leslie Seymore is a twenty three year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department. She is the past National Chairperson of the National Black Police Association. She has a long history of working to secure institutional improvements in the Philadelphia Police Department. Her efforts started before she became a police officer. She was one of the plaintiffs that successfully challenged the Department's policy to exclude candidates for such things as being a single parent, and holding more than one job. She is currently assigned to the Community Relations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department.
The forum's moderator is Professor James Fyfe of the Criminal Justice Department of Temple University. Prof. Fyfe is a commissioner of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. He has published 6 books and more than 75 articles on police accountability. Prof. Fyfe served as a police officer for 16 years with the NYPD where he rose to the rank of lieutenant.
Police misconduct is the primary civil rights issue facing American urban communities today. In Los Angeles, the tape recorded conversations of Mark Fuhrman exposed a police department that routinely looks the other way while citizens are abused and racially insulted by rogue police officers. In New York, nearly 50 police officers have been arrested since March 1994 on charges of drug trafficking, extortion, brutality and civil rights violations. In New Orleans, more than 50 police officers have been arrested, indicted or convicted since 1993 on charges including rape, aggravated battery, drug trafficking and murder. In Atlanta, six police officers were arrested in September of last year on drug charges and extorting money from citizens for police protection. In Philadelphia, six police officers confessed to planting drugs on suspects, lying under oath and stealing from innocent citizens. In December, Philadelphia's civilian review board concluded that police used excessive force against a North Philadelphia tow truck driver, Moises DeJesus, and then tried to cover it up. DeJesus died while in police custody. The most far reaching finding of the report however was that the investigation of the incident by the police was not adequate.
In September of last year, City Councilman Michael Nutter and Council President John Street passed a resolution in City Council to create a special commission to investigate police corruption. The proposed commission will be in the style of the Mollen Commission and the Christopher Commission. It will focus on the operations of the Police Department, the District Attorney's Office and the Courts to prevent, investigate and followup police corruption and misconduct.
This forum on Police Accountability is an opportune chance to tap the knowledge and experiences of a nationally renowned panel of experts in the field. The forum is co-sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, the Police Barrio Relations Project, the Criminal Justice Department of Temple University, The National Lawyers Guild, and the Center for Public Policy of Temple University.
For more information about the conference call the Philadelphia Bar Association at 215-238-6300.
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960327, St Louis, MO, UPI. Cop George DeLuca (55), 20 year UPI
March.27.--.A former New York City police officer began serving a life sentence Wednesday, after being convicted for his role in running a drug ring that imported cocaine and heroin to St. Louis.
George DeLuca, 55, was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in St. Louis. His sentencing followed Monday's sentencing in the same courtroom of his wife, Elisa DeLuca, 42. A federal jury convicted both DeLucas of drug conspiracy last December.
Both husband and wife were sentenced to identical terms of life in prison without parole. Prosecutors charged the couple ran a drug ring that bought Colombian cocaine in New York and sold it in St. Louis. After Elisa DeLuca had trouble paying her cocaine suppliers, she began selling white heroin, authorities said.
The jury also convicted George DeLuca of laundering the profits from the drug operation. Some of the laundered money was used to buy a $400,000 house in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, which the couple bought after George DeLuca retired in 1993 from the New York Police Department.
The government has seized the couple's house, and federal marshals soon will auction it.
George DeLuca served as a police officer in New York for 20 years, including a stint as a vice detective, authorities said.
The couple's five-week trial featured the testimony of Elisa DeLuca's daughter, Alexandra DeLuca, 17, and the girl's boyfriend, Jorge Bustamante. Alexandra, who ran away with Bustamante in 1994, testified that she knew her mother was dealing drugs.
Bustamante, a Colombian who met Elisa DeLuca when he went to New York illegally, testified that he moved to the St. Louis area with the family in 1993. Bustamante worked as a drug courier for the ring, authorities said. Federal agents arrested him at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport in 1994, while he was trying to take $110,000 in cash to New York.
Because they cooperated in the investigation, Bustamante and Alexandra DeLuca will be placed in the federal witness protection program, authorities said. They said the witnesses planned to marry. --
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960327, Los Angeles, CA, Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Cop admits
Subject: Cop Admits Lie in R King Case
Posted: : Ronnie Dadone
To: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
Subject: U.S. & World News
http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/96/Mar/28/national/RODN28.htm
National [Philadelphia Online]
THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
Thursday, March 28, 1996
Cop admits lie in King case
Tipsy-driving trial under way
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- The police officer who charged Rodney King with drunken driving said yesterday that he lied while testifying in the case about a memorandum he produced detailing the arrest.
The admission came in the second day of testimony in the trial of King, whose beating by Los Angeles police officers in 1991 was caught on videotape and turned the national spotlight on police misconduct.
Clint Garver, a patrolman who charged King with drunken driving May 21, said a memo he had prepared about the circumstances of King's arrest in Union was typed by David Rishel, the district justice who arraigned King on the charges. Garver said Rishel provided "a crib sheet" to help Garver assemble the document.
Garver said Rishel typed the memo, which he later incorporated into a supplemental police report detailing events surrounding King's arrest, on a computer at a fire hall the day after King was arrested.
On Tuesday, Garver testified he had typed the memo on an unnamed friend's computer, and later threw it away. The document surfaced when the Lawrence County district attorney's office turned it over to defense attorney Carmen Lamancusa during pretrial discovery.
"You said you typed it up on a friend's computer," Lamancusa told Garver in front of the jury.
"Yes," Garver replied.
"Now, isn't that a lie?" Lamancusa said.
"Yes," Garver said. Asked why he lied, Garver said, "I was a little nervous. It was my first time up here."
Garver had been an officer for two months when he arrested King, the first person he had charged.
Lamancusa then asked Garver why the jurors should believe anything else he said during the trial. "I didn't lie about nothing else," Garver said.
The admission shifted the trial's focus. Until yesterday, Lamancusa's main strategy had been to stress that Garver had no concrete evidence to place King behind the wheel other than Garver's contention that King told him he was the driver of the car. King denies it.
During a court recess, Lamancusa said that if Judge Glenn McCracken did not dismiss the case, he would ask McCracken to instruct jurors to consider Garver's testimony unreliable.
"This is the first time in 28 years I've been trying cases where I got a police officer to say ‘I lied,’" Lamancusa told reporters. "I think the district attorney should look into it."
But both Robert Barletta, the prosecutor, and Garver's boss, Union Police Chief Mark Pelto, said they believed Garver's admission to lying was simply a poor choice of words to describe a faulty memory. The memo in dispute is a two-page account of King's arrest and his repeated refusals to submit to a blood alcohol test.
Garver said he prepared it to help him in testimony. At the time he didn't realize he would be given legal assistance by the Lawrence County district attorney.
Rishel's help in putting the document together came the day after Rishel had presided at King's arraignment on drunken driving charges.
Pelto said it was common for district justices to help officers put together legal papers.
The King case is expected to wrap up testimony today and jurors should begin deliberations tomorrow.
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