The show briefly depicts Wayne Jenkins' wife in episode 5, and we are told that Wayne takes time off for the impending birth of his child. 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. He's doing, as he likes to say, "rather swell". I ask. 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. Wayne Jenkins is a former BPD Sergeant who served as the leader of the Gun Trace Task Force. In federal prison, inmates are only allowed to talk on the phone for 15 minutes before the line is automatically cut. But the scope of the corruption of Jenkins and his men remains a singular stain on the force. 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 . "I'm wrong, God knows I'm wrong," the 37-year-old said. Wayne Jenkins is the leader of the rogue police unit in Baltimore who was sentenced to 25 years of prison in a corruption scandal prosecutors called "breathtaking". I never aimed nothing at him . "Life in prison with three small children. Stepp and Jenkins' history runs deep. In Baltimores recent history, the police department has consistently relied on such units, even though the conduct of many of their officers would draw criticism from city residents. Outside on the sidewalk, he saw a bunch of cops and yelled an expletive at one he knew who happened to be Jenkins supervisor. Although she did not address the court, in a letter to Judge Catherine Blake, Jenkins' wife Kristy asked for leniency. 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. In an incident to which Jenkins would later plead guilty, the officers handcuffed two men. 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. I never heard back from the Baltimore Police Department. 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. 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 . When Jenkins called him to a house the GTTF was investigating, Stepp took pictures of the officers going in and out. The bag contained masks and other gear he used while stealing drugs and cash from people he and his team targeted. Youve got to be willing to dig into their s--- and confront them, Barksdale said. The fallout of the squad's crimes is still rippling through the city and undoubtedly made Baltimore a less safe place for everyone who lives there. But Jenkins wanted to argue the details in his plea agreement, saying many of them weren't true. They said he prepared an arsenal of weapons and tools to begin carrying out burglaries. Can this US city go 72 hours without a murder? 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. Sergeant Wayne. officers Wayne Jenkins, Ryan . 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'. 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. Jenkins must serve three years of supervised release after his custodial sentence. He says Stepp pressured him into it. "It's a surreal story. Over his tenure, he was. It took place as Jenkins and other officers were searching an apartment. When I point out he already pleaded guilty to all these incidents, Jenkins tells me he only signed the agreement because he feared that if he went forward to trial, he could've wound up behind bars for life. 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. 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. It was there that the full extent of the officers' misconduct became public. Wayne Jenkins and former Det. Inside was a stack of bills. It is simply not true., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake denied Oakleys motion to suppress the evidence. Then, in November 2017, he was given further charges of destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations, and deprivation of rights under color of law. They told me they were disturbed that he was being portrayed as a "monster". Jenkins had to affirm under oath in front of a federal judge that what the document said was true. He is serving the harshest sentence : 25 years . The department valued their work too much to end this style of police work. His promotion required him to return to uniformed patrol for a time, and he was assigned to the Northeastern District. Federal prosecutors displayed the contents of a bag found in the trunk of Sgt. Please sign up today and help make a difference. 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. Jenkins and Fries would later say in sworn depositions that Sneed had been yelling expletives about police and throwing glass bottles at them. They stole drugs and cash, sold seized narcotics and guns back on the street, planted evidence on people, even committed home invasions. Then they could enter the house and take the money, only later calling county officers to say they were executing the warrant. 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. All of the other officers would have to be inaccurate in their testimony if it is to be believed that Detective Jenkins was manufacturing information for the affidavit, she said. BALTIMORE, MD A Baltimore police sergeant has admitted to robbing citizens, selling stolen drugs and putting innocent men behind bars, among other offenses. The tape disputed Jenkins sworn account. Not all the allegations against Jenkins came from lawsuits. 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. When his case went to trial on January 5, 2018 Jenkins pled guilty to one count of racketeering, two counts of robbery, one count of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in a federal investigation, and four counts of deprivation of rights under color of law. It wasn't the first time I've heard that word to describe Jenkins. The line goes dead, and I feel like I've barely gotten anywhere. 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. I lived modest, we wasn't enriching ourselves," he answers. Credit: Baltimore Police Department, Its a Viking mentality: You go out into the field among the bad guys, and you bring back a bounty. 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. In the police academy, his peers saw a leader. This call is from", A human voice breaks in: "Wayne Jenkins.". You will not be charged for this call. After an FBI investigation into the unit discovered the GTTF's crimes, federal officers arrested Jenkins alongside several others in the unit. He thought Jenkins and Frieman might have been impersonating police. They claimed they didnt see who did it. One such warning came in 2010 from a Baltimore man caught drug dealing. 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. 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. But Whiting is not so optimistic. ", Paul Schiraldi/Baltimore Police Department/HBO, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Taxpayers footed the bill. I've been reporting on Jenkins, and the elite Gun Trace Task Force squad he once led, for nearly four years. Wayne Jenkins joined Baltimore's police department way back in 2003 as a beat cop patrolling the streets of Baltimore. For the first three years of his sentence, Jenkins was doing time at the federal prison in Edgefield, South Carolina . Sergeants are the eyes and ears of the command, the front-line supervisors trusted to keep close tabs on their officers. According to the Internal Affairs file, the only times Jenkins had been disciplined by the department was for twice failing to appear in court. He gave me a few reasons. 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. Jenkins was a decorated cop and had a reputation for his role in several high-profile drug busts. But two pronounced their innocence and went to trial, which I covered for the BBC. 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). Maurice Ward, the former detective now in prison, also remembers De Sousa coming to the rescue and reducing the punishment, though he believes Jenkins was still suspended. Claiming to be a DEA agent, Jenkins then confiscated the drugs and money but did not arrest the dealers. On Friday, both detectives Evodio Hendrix and Maurice Ward were sentenced to seven years in prison. 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. Later, Jenkins did more than talk about such a theft. Still, a yearlong investigation by The Baltimore Sun found warning signs that Wayne Jenkins wasnt such a good cop. She said she found Hersl in particular to be very credible.. Then he said something that struck Ward as bizarre: He said he was going to take the marijuana to his home, and burn it all. I asked Wayne Jenkins several times why he wanted to do the interview with me. In fact, Fries went on to promote Jenkins in June 2006 into a high-profile plainclothes unit called the Organized Crime Division. Jenkins, indignant, aggressively shot back at questions from OConnors attorney. "an inmate in a federal prison," the robot finishes. If I could take everything back in my life, I would have been a prosecutor," he says. 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. No single person was in a position to make unilateral discipline decisions.. And yet, here we are, me in my closet "studio" and him at the front of a line of 20 to 30 other inmates, all waiting for their turn on the prison phone. He said he started dealing drugs at age 9, selling. His supervisors and others either failed to see the red flags or chose to ignore them. The drop-offs included marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, all of which Stepp did his best to sell. What if one of the men who was robbed turned out to be a federal informant? The ringleader, former Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, admitted committing multiple armed robberies and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs. He and other officers had raided a car wash, recovering more than a kilogram of drugs and $4,000 from a hidden desk compartment which could be opened only using magnets within a fish tank. Officers in plainclothes units often operate in the shadows of a police department. Wayne was a cops cop, local hero kind of guy, said Cirello, the retired officer. They might not have been believed anyhow. He also apologised to Burley, who was not in the court, to his wife and to his father, and begged the judge for the opportunity to get out in time to be a grandfather. This series was supported by the Pulitzer Center. They said that while they had their backs turned, someone had clocked OConnor and taken off. Despite Jenkins bravado, the jury found in favor of OConnor and awarded $75,000. Now, the lawyers were sitting with Paul Pineau, chief of staff to then Baltimore States Attorney Gregg Bernstein, according to an account of the meeting obtained by The Sun. In my conversation with Jenkins, he spent a lot of time disputing Stepp's account of their partnership. I got gangster charges, racketeering charges, things they usually give the mob, who were burying bodies in cement.". Jenkins' lawyer mentioned that he has been assaulted at least once by another inmate who was targeting him for being a former police officer. 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. Seething frustration was spilling into the streets that afternoon in 2015. 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. "This is a saying we state: 'Don't let probable cause stand in the way of a good arrest,'" Jenkins says. "My dad would be alive today would it not be for his actions that day. Read about our approach to external linking. 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. Though Simon says he reported the incident to the police departments Internal Affairs office, he ultimately stopped cooperating on advice from his defense lawyer. In November 2012, Wayne Jenkins was promoted to the rank of sergeant giving him new authority and freedom. One was that he felt he'd been railroaded into his plea agreement by the US prosecutors (the Maryland US Attorney's Office declined to comment). "What chance do we have when you have people like Jenkins and his co-defendants fabricating evidence?". A squad of veteran police officers stood accused of committing numerous robberies, as well as extortion and overtime fraud. His punches came fast Jenkins was a trained boxer and OConnor soon felt the warmth of blood spilling down his cheek. In Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago, plainclothes teams have been charged with corruption. These officers often operate with a great deal of independence. In Baltimore, theyre often referred to as knockers, a reference to their historically aggressive tactics. Then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a news conference to tout one of Jenkins big drug busts. "I did, yes. Just in recent weeks, two officers have been criminally charged with misconduct. You tried catching me all day, and you cant, because Im telling the truth, Jenkins told the lawyer.

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