In federal prison, inmates are only allowed to talk on the phone for 15 minutes before the line is automatically cut. A strange back and forth with a man who used to be Jenkins' cell mate ultimately ended up with me in my closet waiting for that call. I am Agent and Representative as to Mr Jenkins. De Sousa handled the discipline, and they had worked a deal, Hill said, according to a transcript of the interview. Having taken money before with previous squads, he expected the officers might skim some and submit the rest as cover. Stepp says Jenkins started bringing over shipments of drugs on an almost daily basis, putting them in a locked shed behind Stepp's house. Wayne Jenkins a former Marine? They employed tactics that straddled and sometimes clearly crossed the line that divides aggressive policing and trampling on civil rights. Jenkins was a decorated cop and had a reputation for his role in several high-profile drug busts. You tried catching me all day, and you cant, because Im telling the truth, Jenkins told the lawyer. But two pronounced their innocence and went to trial, which I covered for the BBC. De Sousa, who is now serving a federal sentence for tax evasion, said through his attorney that he does not remember the Jenkins case. He reminds me that the US Attorney's office found him more credible than Jenkins. "I deserve to be punished. When I tell this to Stepp, he's angry. But they needed more information. Jenkins later alleged in official paperwork that Simon had pointed a weapon at Frieman and that he ran Simon down to stop the threat. It's no wonder people come out meaner than when they come in.". For the most part, these defendants decided it wasnt in their interest to tell government authorities that. We Own This City airs Mondays at 9 p.m. He was getting suspects off the street, but his cases often werent holding up in court. Several of the former officers also took the stand - now wearing prison jumpsuits instead of uniforms - and detailed the tactics encouraged by their leader, Jenkins. Jenkins earned praise outside the department, too. Read about our approach to external linking. According to the Internal Affairs file, the only times Jenkins had been disciplined by the department was for twice failing to appear in court. It turned out that federal agents had the unit under surveillance for months. Wayne Jenkins and his plainclothes colleagues operated in a world where success and misconduct were not mutually exclusive and sometimes seemed to go hand in hand. After three weeks of astonishing testimony, the jury found the two remaining officers guilty. With the investigations behind him, Jenkins seemed emboldened. "It shows what a committed, sophisticated, devious person can do," Mr Wise said. "Especially because we're short on time, is there anything that you kind of want to just say right off the bat?" ", Explaining the tactics of the GTTF, he also told the publication: "This is a saying we state: 'Don't let probable cause stand in the way of a good arrest. To single him out as a flawed individual in an otherwise perfectly functioning system is a way to avoid change in the police department, to shirk the responsibility of actually preventing this from happening again. While it may seem incongruous that an officer would be hailed as a hero while racking up complaints, in the Baltimore Police Department it was not. The ringleader, former Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, admitted committing multiple armed robberies and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs. Simon's new project will tell a fictionalised version of the Gun Trace Task Force saga, and began filming on the streets of Baltimore over the summer. Or harm you or even kill you.". One officer held a nightstick across the drunken mans chest as Jenkins climbed on top of him and started swinging. He was convicted on multiple counts including racketeering, robbery and falsification of records. The department valued their work too much to end this style of police work. You never know until you get on this side, including me, what you do to families.". Not long after Stepp flipped on his former friend, Jenkins pled guilty. Jenkins said hed tried to be nice, but now they were going to jail. "I got 25 years. In the spring of 2015, the city of Baltimore was rocked by civil unrest after the in-custody death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. They weren't being paid by the taxpayers to keep the city safe, and weren't operating with all the power and protections that police have. Some of the most upsetting conversations I had were with people who felt victimised twice -- by both the officers and by the criminals. "I'm here because of greed," he said. Read more: Inside one of America's most corrupt police squads. Later that year, the mayor held a news conference for another of Jenkins busts. He also acknowledged stealing the man's $4,000 (2,956) watch, which he gave to Stepp to sell. "Nobody still knows the truth about what's going on in the city," Taylor told the judge. 2023 BBC. Some drug dealers told their lawyers that Jenkins made stuff up to arrest them and had kept a good chunk of their money and drugs before taking them in. But, he added, I think that if I am held responsible for my actions, then the same should be with the officers for their wrongdoing.. The actions of former Baltimore police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins and his team of plain-clothed officers in the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) are explored in We Own This City. I think about Shawn Whiting, a former heroin dealer who went to prison for years after the officers robbed him. In his plea deal, Jenkins admitted he planted heroin on Burley to try to justify the fatal collision. In the years since his arrest, he'd never given a public interview. Stepp was on home confinement for six months with an ankle monitor until this summer. "This is not the man I know," she wrote. "He is no more than a common criminal," Davis' daughter, Shirley Johnson, said of Jenkins. Jenkins tells me he traded some sausages with other inmates in the line, bartering his way to the front. A former member of the unit, Sergeant Thomas Allers, also pleaded guilty. I deserve to go to jail.". Wayne Jenkins from Baltimore was sentenced to 25-years-in-prison. OConnor, a house painter who missed weeks of work because of his injuries, sued Jenkins and put forward witnesses who backed his account: After OConnor yelled at Fries, officers had pulled him to the ground, and Jenkins walloped him. Read about our approach to external linking. "I thought it was a winner.". VideoAt the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Havana Syndrome unlikely to have hostile cause - US, How 10% of Nigerian registered voters delivered victory, Sake brewers toast big rise in global sales, The Indian-American CEO who wants to be US president, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip. He said they were confiscating the cash and 20 pounds of marijuana. Outside on the sidewalk, he saw a bunch of cops and yelled an expletive at one he knew who happened to be Jenkins supervisor. At that time, it was within De Sousas purview as the deputy commissioner in charge of administrative matters to intervene to resolve a discipline case, according to another former deputy commissioner, Jason Johnson. Ward, now working with Jenkins for the first time, recalled the officers pulling over a car in East Baltimore that had two trash bags full of money. On the citys west side, officers were being pelted with bricks; some were hurt. Sure enough, no report was ever made. No one believed Oakley. He says he was told that because these officers were so successful at seizing guns, there was nothing to be done. "I could have spoken up.". I just knew it was a lie, Ward recalls. This kind of mindset assumes that the victims of the Gun Trace Task Force - many of them black and poor - deserved what happened to them. This just begun.". Prosecutors investigated and even presented evidence to a grand jury but concluded they didnt have enough evidence to obtain an indictment. He was serving his sentence at the Edgefield Federal Correctional Facility in South Carolina until 2020. The departments Internal Affairs chief at the time says then-Deputy Commissioner Darryl De Sousa intervened to prevent the punishment. He claims that it was Stepp's idea to start selling drugs together, not the other way around. Some tried to complain, but were ignored. Plainclothes officers must constantly be checked by leadership, Barksdale said, with commanders inquiring about irregularities in their work and excessive overtime pay. The line goes dead, and I feel like I've barely gotten anywhere. What was Jenkins really going to do with the drugs? Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton spent a year delving into the operations of Wayne Jenkins and his officers, both as members of the Gun Trace Task Force and before. Baltimore leaders have agreed to pay a $6 million settlement to the family of a driver who was killed during a 2010 police chase involving Gun Trace Task Force officers. The former ringleader of the Baltimore police Gun Trace Task Force and one of its detectives were sentenced Thursday to federal prison. He had been stationed in North Carolina and would frequently make trips home to visit his family and his high school sweetheart Kristy, the . He thought Jenkins and Frieman might have been impersonating police. Then 34, he was already an admired leader of aggressive street squads and would go on to head the elite Gun Trace Task Force, one of the Baltimore Police Departments go-to assets in the fight against violent crime. Baltimore leaders have agreed to pay a $6 million settlement to the family of a driver who was killed during a 2010 police chase involving Gun Trace Task Force officers. Far from it. He also names two former supervisors who he says he complained to about his former subordinate officers, Momodu Gondo and Jemell Rayam, saying they had bad reputations for stealing money. Though Simon says he reported the incident to the police departments Internal Affairs office, he ultimately stopped cooperating on advice from his defense lawyer. "I'm so sorry for what you're going through. I'm losing a lot of teeth, you know, they used to be nice and pretty.". But when I tell him that I've interviewed Wayne Jenkins, his one-time drug partner, Stepp is displeased, to put it mildly. He was also the ringleader of a criminal enterprise of police officers who were robbing people and dealing drugs. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Later, Jenkins did more than talk about such a theft. "My dad would be alive today would it not be for his actions that day. I asked him if he thinks that another scandal is inevitable. The same video led to a rare police department disciplinary case against Jenkins, who was internally charged with misconduct in 2015, according to a copy of the case file reviewed by The Sun. Dan Horgan said his mentality was your typical Marine camaraderie, teamwork. He couldn't get anyone to believe him at the time, and to this day, he fears law enforcement. The indictment of Jenkins and six of his gun task force officers on federal racketeering charges rocked Baltimore when the announcement came in March 2017. Judge Blake ultimately decided to sentence him to 25 years, saying she was taking into consideration the fact that he pleaded guilty and co-operated to some extent with the prosecutors. Jenkins was a member of the Baltimore police department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a plain-clothed unit tasked with finding guns and drugs in bulk in a bid to tackle the city's high murder. Jenkins, indignant, aggressively shot back at questions from OConnors attorney. So he gave up and entered a guilty plea. Their work is not to be confused with undercover operations, in which police officers assume a different identity and worm their way into a criminal organization. He says Stepp pressured him into it. They also didnt give chase. Ex-police sergeant Wayne Earl Jenkins apologized in the courtroom for the crimes he committed at the same time as he was head of an elite squad referred to as the Gun Trace Task . In June 2018, after pleading guilty on charges of. He reviewed hours of body camera footage from their arrests, watched tapes of their courtroom appearances, reviewed several thousand pages of documents, including internal police department files, and interviewed dozens of people including two of the convicted officers, some of the gun unit's victims, other current and former Baltimore police officers and commanders, defense attorneys and prosecutors. They testified he told them to carry BB guns to plant if they ever injured or killed an unarmed person, that he often took large quantities of drugs off of suspects without submitting them to the police evidence room. Wayne Jenkins who was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for years of robberies, drug dealing and other crimes has asked a judge to release him just four . After outlining this, Ward said, Jenkins reconsidered. Jenkins and Fries would later say in sworn depositions that Sneed had been yelling expletives about police and throwing glass bottles at them. No one took anything, but Jenkins later mused about the possibilities. Instead, while their cash and drugs were gone, the dealers were free men. But Davis, Baltimores police commissioner from 2015 to 2018 and a veteran of two other departments, calls plainclothes units necessary and critical to the crime fight. They go looking for guns and drugs, he said, and often are successful. Jenkins would stop bringing those big drug seizures to the evidence room, and instead give them to Stepp to sell. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, L-R: Former Baltimore police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and Jon Bernthal as Jenkins in HBO true-crime drama "We Own This City. Any attempts to make the force become less of a warrior and more of a guardian was looked at terribly, he said. By the time his criminal streak was in full swing, it entailed high-stakes robberies and breaking and entering even as he was bringing in paychecks totaling over $170,000 in a year, in part because of overtime fraud. HBO's new true-crime drama stars Jon Bernthal as Jenkins, with the show examining Jenkins' rise in the city's police department and eventual arrest after a two-year federal investigation into the GTTF. Command created the monster, she said, and allowed it to go unchecked.. When the man stopped his car and started to run away, Jenkins drove after him and into someones front yard, where he struck him. While no one should forget for an instant that Jenkins and his officers caused untold harm to Baltimore citizens, I don't find it helpful to try to write him off as a "monster". Stepp turned everything over to the US prosecutors. Human error to blame for train crash - Greek PM, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece. During hia time in the department, Jenkins was involved in numerous arrests . But in less than a year, Sergeant Jenkins was put in charge of the new plainclothes squad in West Baltimore. Maurice Ward says he, Sgt. By Justin Fenton June 12, 2019 More in the series Part 1 The rise of Wayne. That while the homicide rate was on a historic rise, this elite, eight-officer team was getting guns off the streets at an astonishing rate. Stepp's moving on with his life - in a sense. A line prosecutor, Molly Webb, had been notified by a defense attorney of the footage footage that the police department hadnt submitted to her. A two-year federal investigation into the GTTF resulted in all eight officers, and one Philadelphia officer, getting charged with several offenses, including racketeering, in 2017. "I'm finally trying to get my life back on track," he told me. Yes. Five of the former officers, including Jenkins, pleaded guilty. 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