Federal prosecutors displayed the contents of a bag found in the trunk of Sgt. Seething frustration was spilling into the streets that afternoon in 2015. I was a hero," Jenkins says of his activity during the unrest. Using wiretaps and hidden recording devices, they had accumulated a wealth of evidence showing the officers were robbing citizens, filing for hundreds of hours of overtime they never worked, stealing drugs and even selling illegal firearms back on the streets. He's also at work on a memoir, which he says will reveal the contents of videos and photos he took of Jenkins that were never released publicly. That made it very tempting when, sometime around 2011, Jenkins approached Stepp and suggested they go into business together. De Sousa, who is now serving a federal sentence for tax evasion, said through his attorney that he does not remember the Jenkins case. Contact Justin Fenton at jfenton@baltsun.com. FOX45 looks at the 8 former officers of the Gun Trace Task ForceThe ring leader of the squad Wayne Jenkins is currently serving the longest sentence out of the members federally indicted on . You guys willing to go kick in the dudes door and take the money? Jenkins said. But nothing more. Jenkins, shown here with then-Commissioner Kevin Davis, was awarded a bronze star in April 2016 for his efforts to save injured officers during the unrest a year earlier. In December 2017, eight months after Jenkins was arrested, the FBI and Baltimore County officers broke down Stepp's door and arrested him in his kitchen. This series was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Today, he's a free man, living without restrictions with his spouse and young daughter in the eastern part of Baltimore County. Wayne Jenkins was living a double life. Wayne Jenkins, who . 2023 BBC. A surveillance video suggesting Jenkins may have planted drugs in a suspects car did make its way to the police integrity unit of the Baltimore States Attorneys Office in 2014. Stepp turned everything over to the US prosecutors. I couldn't help thinking about the many victims of the squad that I'd met over the three years I've been working on this story. It's going to take an almost unimaginable kind of effort to dig out the roots of corruption in the department, and it's much easier to just lock up the cops who get caught, and carry on with business as usual. The bag contained masks and other gear he used while stealing drugs and cash from people he and his team targeted. Amid controversies over the years, police brass would publicly disband the units, then reconstitute them with the same personnel under a different name. Wayne Jenkins, ex-police sergeant, leading the Gun Trace Task Force Sergeant Wayne Jenkins was a decorated leader of the corrupt plain-clothes police unit in Baltimore whose detectives robbed . Lets get this done, but were going to do it 100 percent. Nothing was 10 percent.. Jenkins, indignant, aggressively shot back at questions from OConnors attorney. Wayne Jenkins from Baltimore was sentenced to 25-years-in-prison. His fee will be donated to the victims of the Gun Trace Task Force. 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. He ran me over because I was getting away.. Relatives say he liked to visit his high school sweetheart, Kristy, who would become his wife. Last month, Mr De Sousa was indicted for failure to pay his taxes by the same prosecutors who brought the GTTF case. "Seen it done, honest to god, 500 times.". They had the autonomy to catch and release suspects and develop informants. After outlining this, Ward said, Jenkins reconsidered. The tape disputed Jenkins sworn account. Jenkins must serve three years of supervised release after his custodial sentence. At one point, dozens of pharmacies were looted and millions of dollars worth of medication went missing. Hed grown up in the working class suburb, where his father worked two jobs, including at Bethlehem Steel. 49 . But thats likely not what triggered the unprovoked beating of OConnor. We'll never be the same again.". The spouse of the third left a message telling me I could take what Jenkins told me and "stuff it". I think about Shawn Whiting, a former heroin dealer who went to prison for years after the officers robbed him. They tracked other dealers and broke into their houses when no one was home. Yes, I did," he says. He was serving his sentence at the Edgefield Federal Correctional Facility in South Carolina until 2020. View all articles on the Gun Trace Task Force on The Baltimore Sun. When the phone rings, I put the call on speaker and hear a robotic, pre-recorded female voice: "You have a prepaid call. No one had called police to complain, but Jenkins and Fries told the men to go inside. Then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a news conference to tout one of Jenkins big drug busts. In fact, it's highly likely - if not certain - that many of the people Jenkins' put in prison himself had those tactics used on them by prosecutors. He was arrested along with almost every member of the unit in March 2017. 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 . Jenkins, who is serving a 25-year sentence in a federal prison in South Carolina, declined to speak with The Sun. Many plainclothes units would work out of a satellite office inside a trailer in Northwest Baltimore. Sergeants are the eyes and ears of the command, the front-line supervisors trusted to keep close tabs on their officers. Then-Police Commissioner Anthony Batts had created a Force Investigation Team to inspire public trust that police leaders were keeping an eye on officers use of force. 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. The line goes dead, and I feel like I've barely gotten anywhere. I thought, How is he doing it? During the altercation, a passerby named George Sneed was assaulted by officer Robert Cirello who broke his jaw, leading Sneed to sue. Jenkins doled out $5,000 to each of the two officers and instructed them not to make any big purchases. His supplier needed to offload two garbage bags of pharmaceutical drugs stolen from people who had themselves looted pharmacies. "I have no respect for him.". 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. The longest sentence was handed down to Jenkins: 25 years. Jenkins gave 150 percent on the street. "Hi, ma'am," Jenkins says when I pick up. Jenkins names two specific locations where he says the drugs get tossed: a train bridge near the Eastern District police station, and a wooded highway off-ramp on the way to the Northern District police station. I have so many questions to ask, and I'm not sure if this will be my one and only opportunity to speak to him. He woke up on a frigid city street with his jaw shattered, and couldn't eat solid food for months. 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. He also acknowledged stealing the man's $4,000 (2,956) watch, which he gave to Stepp to sell. But in less than a year, Sergeant Jenkins was put in charge of the new plainclothes squad in West Baltimore. The dealers would be sitting in a jail cell. Jenkins tells me he traded some sausages with other inmates in the line, bartering his way to the front. In federal prison, inmates are only allowed to talk on the phone for 15 minutes before the line is automatically cut. 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. Jenkins was a decorated cop and had a reputation for his role in several high-profile drug busts. And Jenkins says, Did you look in the console? And he pulls the rug back and boom. As in the past, a video had surfaced that conflicted with the written account of a drug arrest by Jenkins and another officer. Gillian Whitfield recalled Jenkins as sweet and always willing to lend a hand. The first 15 minutes are over in a flash. But it's the big man upstairs," he says. It was Jenkins, fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore. Outside on the sidewalk, he saw a bunch of cops and yelled an expletive at one he knew who happened to be Jenkins supervisor. Jenkins joined Baltimore's police department in 2003, first becoming a beat cop and patrolling the streets of Baltimore. A plea agreement is a document that lists specific criminal acts that the defendant is agreeing to plead guilty to. It didn't take long before Stepp began to suspect that Jenkins ratted him out. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Far from it. 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. Homegrown commanders took pride in being known as having knockers. Others were raised by defense attorneys and their clients, who said an overzealous Jenkins skirted legal standards in making arrests. 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. And in the midst of that investigation, another arose. In federal court, Mickey Oakley argued that the officers who arrested him including Jenkins and future Gun Trace Task Force member Daniel Hersl had lied about the circumstances leading up to the arrest and had illegally searched his home. And that is what they want, German said, according to an Internal Affairs report. Right away I learn that Jenkins is an incredibly fast talker. Jenkins pleaded guilty in January and admitted taking part in at least 10 robberies of Baltimore citizens, planting drugs on innocent people and re-selling drugs he stole from suspects on an almost daily basis, including heroin, cocaine and prescription painkillers. The GTTF was made up of eight officers, all but one of whom were indicted. The idea that the Gun Trace Task Force went rogue simply because their sergeant was uniquely evil ignores all the systemic ways in which he was encouraged to operate the way he did, and the larger policing culture that supported him (it should also be noted that several of the squad's members started stealing money long before they joined the GTTF). Detective Marcus Taylor on Thursday was sentenced to 18 years in prison on racketeering charges, including robbery and overtime fraud. "He perverted the criminal justice system.". 2023 BBC. During his time on the streets of Baltimore Jenkins was involved in several arrests that resulted in the injuries of the people he took into custody. "I just go through this on a daily basis, scared of police, wondering when they gonna stop you, trying to plant drugs on you or something like that. I did give drugs to Donny [Stepp, who testified he and Jenkins sold $1 million worth of narcotics] for the last couple of years I was police, but I didn't take people's money because then they would know you were dirty. Four years after the Gun Trace Task Force officers were arrested, he says he sees no difference on the streets of Baltimore. Near Druid Hill Park, amid the shouting, sirens and buzzing choppers overhead, he commandeered a state prison department van and helped pull injured officers inside. "I'm grateful, very grateful.". OConnor had been sloppy drunk, they testified, and his friends said they would get him home. According to Jenkins convicted partner in the drug dealing, the police sergeant had been stealing drugs off the street for years and profiting from their illegal sale. He's opening a consulting service called Stepp Right Consultants, to give guidance and insight to men and women who are about to enter the federal penal system. Plainclothes officers must constantly be checked by leadership, Barksdale said, with commanders inquiring about irregularities in their work and excessive overtime pay. A few months after the OConnor incident, Jenkins was involved in another run-in where his sworn account was contradicted. Finally, in March 2015, Internal Affairs chief Rodney Hill informed Jenkins that he was being charged internally with misconduct, neglect of duty and failure to supervise the officer in his charge, according to a leaked copy of the case file obtained by The Sun. Sneed hired an attorney, who obtained footage from a city surveillance camera on the corner. But that day, Jenkins drove toward the edge of town, bobbing in and out of traffic and running red lights, until he pulled over near a wooded area off Liberty Heights Avenue. He started to worry. Blake who in 2017 would wind up presiding over the Gun Trace Task Force corruption case noted that the other officers present backed Jenkins account. There is no love lost between these two former friends. When Jenkins called him to a house the GTTF was investigating, Stepp took pictures of the officers going in and out. In 2018, Jessica wrote a piece which detailed the explosive trial at a Baltimore federal courthouse that revealed the unit's crimes, She then turned that story into a new seven-part podcast series called Bad Cops which you can listen to in its entirety below. You guys willing to go kick in the dudes door and take the money? Jenkins' lawyer mentioned that he has been assaulted at least once by another inmate who was targeting him for being a former police officer. Another was to talk about how futile life inside the penal system is. Your digital subscription helps pay for The Baltimore Sun's investigative reporting. He took pictures of himself and Jenkins together inside the police department, where Stepp would sometimes pick up drugs. They also didnt give chase. Back then, Jenkins escaped scrutiny again. Because believe me, I'll stand my ground in a second.". He was also the ringleader of a criminal enterprise of police officers who were robbing people and dealing drugs. 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. Jenkins, who later led the GTTF, pleaded guilty to civil rights violations for participating in the coverup and is serving 25 years in prison for crimes including robberies and selling drugs. But Jenkins wanted to argue the details in his plea agreement, saying many of them weren't true. It was difficult for me to understand and parse all of Jenkins' denials, now. It was his first public appearance since he was arrested along with six other officers last year. But he added, All disciplinary decisions were put through the proper consideration by command staff and BPD legal department. I continued working on this story for as long as I did out of some hope that the more the public learned about the corruption in the police department, the better chance there might be of some kind of true, systemic reform. All seven now sit in federal prisons scattered across the country. Wayne Jenkins is a former BPD Sergeant who served as the leader of the Gun Trace Task Force. "I swear, I wish I would have known before I ever put anyone in here I wish I would have known the other side," he says at one point. They drive unmarked vehicles.

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