I did give drugs to Donny 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. 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". My thoughts return to Kenneth Bumgardner, a hard-working father who was chased by the squad when they suspected him of having marijuana. Others were raised by defense attorneys and their clients, who said an overzealous Jenkins skirted legal standards in making arrests. Later on, he claims, they'd throw the drugs out the window or down a sewer grate. He also acknowledged stealing the man's $4,000 (2,956) watch, which he gave to Stepp to sell. The unit began looking into a case involving Jenkins, in which he had run down a young man with his unmarked Dodge Avenger early in 2014. Sergeants are the eyes and ears of the command, the front-line supervisors trusted to keep close tabs on their officers. And Jenkins says, Did you look in the console? And he pulls the rug back and boom. His eye socket was fractured. The bottles were winged at us. Then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a news conference to tout one of Jenkins big drug busts. Why cant I be like this guy?. But the police departments Internal Affairs office still had an open file on the case. "And I remember taking the $10,000.". 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. Jenkins was given a 25-year prison sentence on June 7, 2018, which he is currently in the midst of serving at a federal prison in Kentucky. "I never had [theft complaints] because I never took money off individuals. But thats likely not what triggered the unprovoked beating of OConnor. Jenkins, meanwhile, was the best officer I had working under my command, Fries said. But he says he was also struggling with a gambling addiction and dealing large amounts of cocaine. You guys willing to go kick in the dudes door and take the money? Jenkins said. BALTIMORE (AP) Baltimore leaders agreed Wednesday to pay a $6 million settlement to the family of a driver who was killed during a 2010 police chase . 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. It was in 2007 that Jenkins became a part of the GTTF, a new unit of plain-clothed officers focused on targeting suspected criminals believed to have big supplies of guns and drugs, in a bid to reduce the city's high murder rate. Video, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Read the full story of Baltimore's Gun Trace Task Force, Inside one of America's most corrupt police squads, Harry and Meghan told to 'vacate' Frogmore Cottage, Fungus case forces Jack Daniels to halt construction, Rare Jurassic-era bug found at Arkansas Walmart, China and Belarus call for peace in Ukraine, Ed Sheeran says wife developed tumour in pregnancy, NFL hopeful accused of racing in deadly car crash, Beer and wine sales in Canada fall to all-time low, Dozens of girls treated after new Iran poisonings. Wayne Jenkins, who led the Gun Trace Task Force, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges including racketeering, robbery and falsifying records. I never aimed nothing at him . 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. Jenkins was given a 25-year prison sentence on June 7, 2018, which he is currently in the midst of serving at a federal prison in Kentucky. They drive unmarked vehicles. "I still maintain my innocence. Police who went rogue - Wayne Jenkins and Momodu Gondo, Jenkins, centre, before he took command of the Gun Trace Task Force, Clockwise from top left: Evodio Hendrix, Daniel Hersl, Jemell Rayam, Maurice Ward, Marcus Taylor, Momodu Gondo, Equipment that two of the GTTF officers testified was going to be used for home invasions, Donald Stepp inside Baltimore Police headquarters, in a photo taken by Wayne Jenkins, Shawn Whiting, centre, at a press conference held by victims of the GTTF. The former ringleader of the Baltimore police Gun Trace Task Force and one of its detectives were sentenced Thursday to federal prison. But two pronounced their innocence and went to trial, which I covered for the BBC. He popped the trunk and carried the drugs into the garage. The BBC is not naming these three former supervisors, since none of them has been charged with a crime in connection with this case. Jenkins earned praise outside the department, too. 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. A reporter also reviewed videos of judicial proceedings stemming from the officers arrests. Nobody said yes or no, instead expressing ambivalence. Youve got to be willing to dig into their s--- and confront them, Barksdale said. What was Jenkins really going to do with the drugs? When Jenkins was on paternity leave, commanders groused that his squads productivity dropped. That the GTTF's leader, a former Marine and amateur MMA fighter named Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, was a hero who'd plunged into a violent crowd during the unrest to rescue injured officers. No one took anything, but Jenkins later mused about the possibilities. Wayne Jenkins a former Marine? It was during these games that Stepp heard Jenkins boasting about the large drug stashes he often came across during his work as a plainclothes police officer. It was nicknamed The Barn an apparent homage to the offices of a corrupt police unit on the television series The Shield. The show, modeled after a 1990s Los Angeles Police Department scandal, featured a strike team that roughed up suspects, lied about their investigations and took a cut of their drug busts. He ordered a detective to drive them to the hospital and joined the front lines. Some tried to complain, but were ignored. But it's the big man upstairs," he says. I thought, How is he doing it? Hill told Al-Jazeera it was because then-Deputy Commissioner De Sousa got involved. 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. "You have nightmares about police officers harassing you, beating you up, just locking you up, it's just a nightmare that I have and it basically hasn't gone away yet," he said. Wayne Jenkins, who led the Gun Trace Task Force, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges including racketeering, robbery and falsifying records. Detective Marcus Taylor on Thursday was sentenced to 18 years in prison on racketeering charges, including robbery and overtime fraud. "Hi, ma'am," Jenkins says when I pick up. Marcus Taylor split up $20,000 in cash they stole in 2015. Credit: Kevin Richardson / Baltimore Sun, serving a federal sentence for tax evasion. In March, HBO announced a new miniseries by David Simon, the creator of the classic Baltimore true crime series, 'The Wire'. One of the most surprising witnesses was a man named Donald Stepp, a bail bondsman, who revealed that he'd been selling drugs Jenkins brought him from work. 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. He was scared. He admitted to knowing . De Sousa, who is now serving a federal sentence for tax evasion, said through his attorney that he does not remember the Jenkins case. His punches came fast Jenkins was a trained boxer and OConnor soon felt the warmth of blood spilling down his cheek. the dim light of the Baltimore Police Departments downtown nerve center, Sgt. His drill sergeant described him as having the utmost flawless character Ive seen in two decades of service. The outfit change is designed to allow them to blend in. 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 . A loyal friend. 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. I asked him if he thinks that another scandal is inevitable. He was like King Kong, the officer, who still works for the police department, recalled. Stepp testified that the arrangement was so lucrative, he stuck with it for years before getting arrested himself in December 2017. It is simply not true., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake denied Oakleys motion to suppress the evidence. Until this point, I'd only heard Jenkins on. They ordered us to f--- them up; we f---ed them up, one of the responding officers, Robert Cirello, now retired, said later in an interview with The Sun. "I thought it was a winner.". So I kind of had a mental, like maybe a messed up moral code.". It was billed at the time as the largest cocaine seizure in department history, one of Jenkins many large-scale seizures. Then they could enter the house and take the money, only later calling county officers to say they were executing the warrant. After the indictments, one of Jenkins supervisors told Internal Affairs investigators she had believed he was the best gun cop this department has ever seen.. "He is no more than a common criminal," Davis' daughter, Shirley Johnson, said of Jenkins. Baltimore Police Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, 37, pleaded guilty in January to robbery . But Internal Affairs was still working on the case that the States Attorneys Office had decided it could not pursue: the suspicion that Jenkins might have planted drugs in a car to justify an arrest. Turmoil has continued at the Baltimore Police Department, an agency that saw four commissioners in little more than a year among them De Sousa, now in prison for tax fraud. This is his senior portrait from 1998. Over the years, I wrote to all of these former officers in prison several times, asking them to help me understand their breathtaking crimes. 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. 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. This past summer, as I was wrapping up work on "Bad Cops", a strange email appeared in my inbox. He walked into the court wearing a maroon prison uniform. It turned out that federal agents had the unit under surveillance for months. "Immediately, we get together and you go over your story. At OConnors trial, Fries remarked that the others were worthless and didnt meet the standards of the organized crime unit. But I did call them, and the Baltimore Police Department, to see if anyone would respond to this laundry list of allegations. These misconduct allegations came as Jenkins was serving in various plainclothes units well before his appointment in 2016 to head the Gun Trace Task Force, one of the departments most celebrated plainclothes squads. "I'm finally trying to get my life back on track," he told me. Reflecting on the revelations of his misconduct, Lt. Marjorie German concluded that department leaders gave Jenkins too much leeway because they were enamored of his results. Today, he's a free man, living without restrictions with his spouse and young daughter in the eastern part of Baltimore County. OConnor had been sloppy drunk, they testified, and his friends said they would get him home. "Especially because we're short on time, is there anything that you kind of want to just say right off the bat?" The daughters of 86-year-old Elbert Davis also told the court about the 2010 car crash Jenkins caused while he was pursuing a man named Umar Burley. Wayne Jenkins from Baltimore was sentenced to 25-years-in-prison. In January, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh fired her police commissioner and replaced him with former Deputy Commissioner Darryl De Sousa, who promised sweeping reforms to the department. Become a subscriber today to support investigative reporting like this. Outside on the sidewalk, he saw a bunch of cops and yelled an expletive at one he knew who happened to be Jenkins supervisor. The leader of a rogue Baltimore police unit sobbed as he was sentenced to 25 years in prison in a corruption scandal prosecutors called "breathtaking". De Sousa handled the discipline, and they had worked a deal, Hill said, according to a transcript of the interview. 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. "He's like, 'I'm not telling you to do anything, I'm just saying it sure would be nice if we had $10,000 apiece to go up to Atlantic City,'" Jenkins recalls. He points to the plea agreement, in which Jenkins agreed that his cut of their drug sales came to roughly $250,000. In Jenkins' plea, it says that "in April 2015 following the riots after the death of Freddie Gray, Jenkins brought DS prescription medicines that he had stolen from someone looting a pharmacy so that DS could sell the medications". 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. But they needed more information. They are not typically tethered to specific posts, or burdened by responding to 911 calls. Wayne Jenkins was living a double life. 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. From 2006 to 2009, Jenkins was the subject of at least four lawsuits alleging misconduct. The man, Demetric Simon, 31, said he did have drugs on him and knew someone was following. Shawn Whiting, a man whose house was robbed of $16,000 and a kilo-and-a-half of heroin, testified that he knew that as a drug dealer, his word counted for much less than the officers'. 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