I thought, How is he doing it? In January 2018, a long list of victims took the stand - many of whom had ties to the drug trade - and told harrowing stories of how they were robbed by the officers during car stops and searches of their homes. Jenkins signed a plea agreement in 2017 that detailed seven robberies that he participated in along with other members of the unit, as well as his drug dealing partnership with Donald Stepp, the former bail bondsman and cocaine dealer who testified at trial. Sneed's attorney Michael Pulver concluded, per Fenton, that the officers had "fabricated this story to hide the fact that they intentionally assaulted and falsely arrested and imprisoned Mr. He admitted to knowing . Jenkins rushed off to join them. No one had called police to complain, but Jenkins and Fries told the men to go inside. Despite Jenkins bravado, the jury found in favor of OConnor and awarded $75,000. He is very remorseful.". Sgt. Jenkins said hed tried to be nice, but now they were going to jail. On 1 March, 2017, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins and six of his subordinate officers from the Gun Trace Task Force walked into the Baltimore Police Department's Internal Affairs building, believing they were there to clear up a minor complaint about a damaged vehicle. The topic: Can we get Wayne Jenkins? 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". "Now we're going to burn it down. De Sousa handled the discipline, and they had worked a deal, Hill said, according to a transcript of the interview. Others were raised by defense attorneys and their clients, who said an overzealous Jenkins skirted legal standards in making arrests. "I thought it was a winner.". 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. He was like King Kong, the officer, who still works for the police department, recalled. Jenkins earned praise outside the department, too. The bottles were winged at us. The first 15 minutes are over in a flash. Ex-police sergeant Wayne Earl Jenkins apologised in court for the crimes he committed while heading an elite squad called the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF). "It's still hard though, because I get a lot of pain in my mouth at night. "Immediately, we get together and you go over your story. The bag contained masks and other gear he used while stealing drugs and cash from people he and his team targeted. 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. One former supervisor never responded. He reminds me that the US Attorney's office found him more credible than Jenkins. 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. Oh, yeah. 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. Inside the police department, the Gun Trace Task Force was known for its success in capturing suspected drug dealers, their stashes and their illegal firearms. It was his first public appearance since he was arrested along with six other officers last year. 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". They said he prepared an arsenal of weapons and tools to begin carrying out burglaries. But he added, All disciplinary decisions were put through the proper consideration by command staff and BPD legal department. "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. That's because in June 2018, Jenkins was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Now, the recommended punishment was significant: a demotion, a transfer and suspension for 15 to 20 days, including a period without pay, Hill told the television network Al-Jazeera. The leaked case file doesnt say why. At one point, dozens of pharmacies were looted and millions of dollars worth of medication went missing. He acknowledged that he could tell something was off with Jenkins around the time of the GTTF crime spree. 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. However, the focus on quantity rather than quality led Jenkins and the seven other GTTF officers to start planting evidence, take money from the homes they invaded, and even resell the drugs they seized back onto the streets. 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. In part due to his cooperation in the case, he received a much shorter sentence than the officers of the GTTF. "Seen it done, honest to god, 500 times.". He ordered a detective to drive them to the hospital and joined the front lines. But thats likely not what triggered the unprovoked beating of OConnor. Jenkins and members of his squad were praised for their work getting guns off the streets in an October 2016 police department newsletter. Its a Viking mentality: You go out into the field among the bad guys, and you bring back a bounty, Davis said. . I have no idea what he wants to say, or why after four years, he's breaking his silence. One such warning came in 2010 from a Baltimore man caught drug dealing. A loyal friend. No single person was in a position to make unilateral discipline decisions.. Wayne Jenkins was living a double life. "This was a great abuse of the public trust," said Judge Blake. As adults, they ran into each other again at an underground card game frequented by Baltimore Police officers. Baltimore can be a complicated and dangerous place, and the men and women the officers targeted and abused may have caused harm and abuse themselves. With the investigations behind him, Jenkins seemed emboldened. He said he started dealing drugs at age 9, selling. Stepp's moving on with his life - in a sense. Jenkins doled out $5,000 to each of the two officers and instructed them not to make any big purchases. They claimed they didnt see who did it. "I'm so sorry to the citizens of Baltimore.". His account and Jenkins claim that hed found the gun is evocative of testimony by two of Jenkins officers in the 2018 Gun Trace Task Force trial. And that is what they want, German said, according to an Internal Affairs report. Instead, while their cash and drugs were gone, the dealers were free men. In reality, he says, they were making arrests by any means necessary. As backup arrived, Jenkins spotted a man named George Sneed across the street. These units often operated with little supervision. Former Baltimore Police Department Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, currently inmate number 62928-037 at a federal prison in Kentucky, is on the line. The courtroom was also packed with Jenkins' family and friends. 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. Until this point, I'd only heard Jenkins on secretly taped FBI recordings, wiretapped phone calls, body camera footage and at the hearing in June 2018 when a federal judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison. 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". "It ain't over. Then they spilled out of the house and onto the sidewalk, struggling. 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. 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. "There was cameras everywhere, so I would never have took a dollar," he tells me. In a recent interview, Simon told The Sun, I never had no BB gun. Outside on the sidewalk, he saw a bunch of cops and yelled an expletive at one he knew who happened to be Jenkins supervisor. For example, in January 2006, Jenkins and Sergeant Michael Fries had an altercation with brothers Charles and Robert Lee after they continued to drink beer on the front step of their grandmother's home when the policemen had told them to stop. BALTIMORE One of the main players in the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force corruption scandal is asking for compassionate release from prison. Last month, Mr De Sousa was indicted for failure to pay his taxes by the same prosecutors who brought the GTTF case. "I'm so sorry for what you're going through. 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 . 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. HBO asked Stepp to be a consultant on the project, which he enthusiastically agreed to do. The GTTF did not hold a monopoly on harm, of course. Sergeants are the eyes and ears of the command, the front-line supervisors trusted to keep close tabs on their officers. Later in 2015, he took over a new squad of plainclothes officers within the latest rebranding, the Special Enforcement Section. Jenkins would stop bringing those big drug seizures to the evidence room, and instead give them to Stepp to sell. "I ain't have a trial because the simple fact is I knew [the court] would believe them over top of me," he told the jury. Jenkins explained that hed already tracked the man to Essex, so he thought they could stake out the home, go through the mans trash and find something to parlay into a search warrant. 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. "It's nothing I've ever imagined. 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. "He's never been a true friend," Stepp says. 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 couldn't get anyone to believe him at the time, and to this day, he fears law enforcement. Have we raised the possibility of a wire? Pineau asked. Although she did not address the court, in a letter to Judge Catherine Blake, Jenkins' wife Kristy asked for leniency. "It strikes at the foundation of our entire criminal justice system.". "Later on that evening, Gondo did give me money, that means hours later, I'm talking hours later, he gave me money.". Donny made every piece of that up.". "It shows what a committed, sophisticated, devious person can do," Mr Wise said. Prosecutors investigated and even presented evidence to a grand jury but concluded they didnt have enough evidence to obtain an indictment. I'm staring at my cell phone in the dark. Justin Fenton takes listeners inside the investigation on the Roughly Speaking podcast. He is serving the harshest sentence : 25 years . View all articles on the Gun Trace Task Force on The Baltimore Sun. And that's what I did.". "It was obvious to me, when I'm taking millions of dollars worth of drugs from the Baltimore Police Department and selling them, that this is not a normal police department.". 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. They tracked other dealers and broke into their houses when no one was home. It didn't take long before Stepp began to suspect that Jenkins ratted him out. He. Wayne Jenkins Image Credit: Baltimore Police Department/Associated Press. He gave me a few reasons. Hill could not be reached by The Sun for comment. Jon Bernthal embedded with Baltimore police to play city's dirtiest cop in HBO's "We Own This City" On "Salon Talks" Bernthal reveals he spoke to the real Sgt. But they needed more information. officers Wayne Jenkins, Ryan . Both men have requested new trials. Jenkins entered a department steeped in zero tolerance a war on crime fueled by arrests for even minor infractions. Current and former officers said he was generally regarded favorably as a cowboy type who found big cases through a frenetic pace of citizen stops, which sometimes yielded information leading the way up a chain of drug dealers. A squad of veteran police officers stood accused of committing numerous robberies, as well as extortion and overtime fraud. If Wayne Jenkins asked you to come work for him, you felt honored, Ward said. Detectives Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor went forward to trial and a jury found them guilty of robbery, extortion and fraud in February. So he gave up and entered a guilty plea. Federal prosecutors displayed the contents of a bag found in the trunk of Sgt. "Especially because we're short on time, is there anything that you kind of want to just say right off the bat?" "What chance do we have when you have people like Jenkins and his co-defendants fabricating evidence?". It was Jenkins, fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore. 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. On June 13, 2016, Jenkins became the Officer in Charge of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF,) a specialized unit within the Operational Investigation Division of the BPD. 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. But it's the big man upstairs," he says. In September 2021, Jenkins spoke with BBC journalist Jessica Lussenhop from behind bars, and he claimed he never took money from Baltimore citizens. Jenkins was stationed in North Carolina but often made the long trip back home to Middle River. Sure enough, no report was ever made. His drill sergeant described him as having the utmost flawless character Ive seen in two decades of service. Jenkins, who had been suspended during the investigation, went back to work, making no fewer than three dozen arrests over the rest of the year, most of them gun cases. Jenkins gave 150 percent on the street. Sergeant Wayne. What was Jenkins really going to do with the drugs? I ask this friend why he didn't say anything to anyone. In March, HBO announced a new miniseries by David Simon, the creator of the classic Baltimore true crime series, 'The Wire'. Jenkins was developing a reputation within the department as a cop whose aggressive style brought results. Used to tell me he won it playing poker.". The bondsman would take care of selling them, then split the profits with the police sergeant. Jenkins said: "I never had [theft complaints] because I never took money off individuals. They urged his supervisors to get him back to work and focused, according to an internal police department investigation conducted after the indictments. When I saw the video, Webb later told The Sun, it didnt corroborate what was in the statement of probable cause at all.. Burley's vehicle struck another, killing Mr Davis. And Jenkins, whod been identified as a rising talent early in his career, was celebrated among department brass and rank and file officers as a leader with an uncanny knack for delivering the goods. Jenkins got a bronze star for his part in the 2009 recovery of 41 kilograms of cocaine $1 million worth in a mans truck. The BBC is not naming these three former supervisors, since none of them has been charged with a crime in connection with this case. 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