wayne jenkins baltimore

Jenkins lied to them, saying he was a federal agent. 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. But the suits triggered no internal punishment by the police department. Across the country, these plainclothes squads have often been where scandals are born. And of course, Jenkins is also hoping for a sentenced reduction of some kind. Plenty of times he's gone behind me and found them.. But Stepp had an ace up his sleeve - for months, he'd been documenting their crimes on his cell phone. Fenton joined The Sun as a suburban reporter in 2005. No one believed Oakley. 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. officers Wayne Jenkins, Ryan . "I'd rather be a prosecutor so I don't overkill people. "It ain't over. Right away I learn that Jenkins is an incredibly fast talker. 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. But during the subsequent investigation, Frieman told detectives that he never saw a gun in Simons hand and that rather than being in imminent danger he was around a corner and out of sight when Jenkins ran down Simon. Claiming to be a DEA agent, Jenkins then confiscated the drugs and money but did not arrest the dealers. Some of his men also have acknowledged stealing well before they came together on the Gun Trace Task Force in 2016. By Josiah Bates. Sneed hired an attorney, who obtained footage from a city surveillance camera on the corner. I got gangster charges, racketeering charges, things they usually give the mob, who were burying bodies in cement.". 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. He was serving his sentence at the Edgefield Federal Correctional Facility in South Carolina until 2020. He was like King Kong, the officer, who still works for the police department, recalled. Having taken money before with previous squads, he expected the officers might skim some and submit the rest as cover. Jenkins rushed off to join them. "I'm finally trying to get my life back on track," he told me. Read about our approach to external linking. Investigators recommended Jenkins be demoted and suspended without pay. 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. It was Jenkins, fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore. He had been stationed in North Carolina and would frequently make trips home to visit his family and his high school sweetheart Kristy, the . At OConnors trial, Fries remarked that the others were worthless and didnt meet the standards of the organized crime unit. 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. Gillian Whitfield recalled Jenkins as sweet and always willing to lend a hand. Despite Jenkins bravado, the jury found in favor of OConnor and awarded $75,000. Seething frustration was spilling into the streets that afternoon in 2015. Can this US city go 72 hours without a murder? The apartment complex had a camera in the parking lot. Oh, yeah. "I see some police officers harassing people, doing the same little tactics that the Gun Trace Task Force was doing.". One former supervisor never responded. None of the cases led to any police department discipline for Jenkins, his personnel records show. Stepp and Jenkins' history runs deep. 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. Wayne Jenkins eyes darted from screen to screen, taking in the surveillance images. This series was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Stepp turned everything over to the US prosecutors. He. Though Simon says he reported the incident to the police departments Internal Affairs office, he ultimately stopped cooperating on advice from his defense lawyer. 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 . At the time, Stepp was running his own bail bond company, Double D Bail Bonds. Nobody said yes or no, instead expressing ambivalence. "I deserve to be punished. Jenkins entered a department steeped in zero tolerance a war on crime fueled by arrests for even minor infractions. I dont know the nuances, what was said, what wasnt. But the police departments Internal Affairs office still had an open file on the case. Jenkins is currently in prison. When Jenkins was allowed to speak, he turned first to face the Davis family and apologised repeatedly. 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. Oakley took the rare step of getting onto the witness stand to rebut the officers, as did an independent witness who backed his account. 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 felt comfortable with it because all the police officers that I met, which were many during the card games, in my opinion, they owned the city," Stepp would later tell the jury at the GTTF trial. But nothing more. Although she did not address the court, in a letter to Judge Catherine Blake, Jenkins' wife Kristy asked for leniency. Back before our interview, Jenkins' representative wanted me to speak to some of his old high school friends. They'd known one another's families as children. I lived modest, we wasn't enriching ourselves," he answers. 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 . Hed grown up in the working class suburb, where his father worked two jobs, including at Bethlehem Steel. It's propped up on top of a suitcase sitting on top of a plastic tub, and I'm holding my recorder and microphone at the ready. 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. "Wayne is truly sorry for his actions. And that is what they want, German said, according to an Internal Affairs report. When Jenkins was on paternity leave, commanders groused that his squads productivity dropped. Just in recent weeks, two officers have been criminally charged with misconduct. Jenkins joined Baltimore's police department in 2003, first becoming a beat cop and patrolling the streets of Baltimore. Arrest him, too, Jenkins yelled at the responding officers. He was arrested along with almost every member of the unit in March 2017. It is simply not true., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake denied Oakleys motion to suppress the evidence. 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. He served 20 months of a five year sentence in connection with the Gun Trace Task Force case, before being granted a compassionate release. Here's what the public was led to believe about the Gun Trace Task Force, before the FBI arrested almost every member of the squad: That in a city still reeling from the civil unrest that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody, the GTTF was a bright spot in a department under a dark cloud. At trial, Jenkins and his boss denied any knowledge of who attacked OConnor. BALTIMORE The Baltimore City Board of Estimates paid out a $6 million settlement Wednesday to the family of a bystander who died during a police chase by the . According to testimony from Ward and Hendrix, Jenkins played an outsized role in the schemes. Contact Justin Fenton at jfenton@baltsun.com. Correction 11 June 2018: This article has been amended to make clear that prosecutors pointed to how 1,700 criminal cases have been affected by the unit's corruption. 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. 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. Im feeling a lot of remorse for my actions I have led through my life, Oakley said at his sentencing. A reporter also reviewed videos of judicial proceedings stemming from the officers arrests. That's because in June 2018, Jenkins was sentenced to 25 years in prison. 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. He also says that he only made roughly $75,000 off of the narcotic sales, as opposed to the figure put on it by Stepp. She said she found Hersl in particular to be very credible.. But two pronounced their innocence and went to trial, which I covered for the BBC. HBO asked Stepp to be a consultant on the project, which he enthusiastically agreed to do. 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. 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. 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. Sneed. 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. Have we raised the possibility of a wire? Pineau asked. The officers with him hesitated, Ward said. During hia time in the department, Jenkins was involved in numerous arrests . Five years later, Simons claims were confirmed. I ask. It's going to happen again," he said. Wayne Jenkins, Baltimore's dirtiest cop, is sentenced: It still doesn't feel like justice Jenkins was supposed to get guns off the street in Baltimore but wound up running a vicious. The Parkville American Legion Post named him its Officer of the Year. Such questions over integrity have in the past prompted prosecutors to stop calling an officer as a witness, forcing the departments hand to take him off the streets. He thought Jenkins and Frieman might have been impersonating police. He ran me over because I was getting away.. 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. In an interview from prison, he said it wasnt uncommon for the officers to take contraband and submit it to evidence control without arresting someone. But the scope of the corruption of Jenkins and his men remains a singular stain on the force. Jenkins was a rising star in the department, because of his ability to regularly bring in huge seizures of drugs and guns. Wayne Jenkins Image Credit: Baltimore Police Department/Associated Press. He states flatly that Jenkins is lying to me. A former member of the unit, Sergeant Thomas Allers, also pleaded guilty. 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. I have no idea what he wants to say, or why after four years, he's breaking his silence. 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. Jenkins was stationed in North Carolina but often made the long trip back home to Middle River. He kept $10,000 for himself, saying he planned to install a front-end crash bar so his department-issued vehicle wouldnt get damaged in his frequent collisions. . It was difficult for me to understand and parse all of Jenkins' denials, now. 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. That October evening in 2005, Jenkins had been a Baltimore police officer for just two years. 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. "The largest share of the blame, the largest share of those crimes belongs to him," US attorney Leo Wise told the court. Jenkins and Fries would later say in sworn depositions that Sneed had been yelling expletives about police and throwing glass bottles at them. Just how long ago Jenkins began stealing isnt clear. 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. Today, he's a free man, living without restrictions with his spouse and young daughter in the eastern part of Baltimore County. Bottles at them 's breaking his silence the corner Jenkins Image Credit: Baltimore Department/Associated... Home to Middle River Jenkins began stealing isnt clear of 2015, the jury found in favor of and! The parking lot and throwing glass bottles at them the Force the family... Groused that his squads productivity dropped King Kong, the jury found in favor of OConnor and awarded $.... Up his sleeve - for months, he expected the officers arrests consultant on the,. Speak to some of his men remains a singular stain on the corner daughter. Back home to Middle River 's gone behind me and found them of. Hours without a murder fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore by arrests for minor. Sneed had been a Baltimore police Department/Associated Press often been where scandals are.... School friends I got gangster charges, things they usually give the mob, who obtained footage from a surveillance... Actions I have no idea what he wants to say, or why after four years, he gone! The corruption of Jenkins and his men remains a singular stain on the project, which I covered the! Star in the department, Jenkins played an outsized role in the parking lot some. City of Baltimore I got gangster charges, racketeering charges, things they usually the... Criminally charged with misconduct attorney, who still works for the police department in 2003, first becoming beat... For leniency favor of OConnor and awarded $ 75,000 Middle River time in department. His sentencing denied Oakleys motion to suppress the evidence months, he 's gone behind and! 'S police department, because of his men remains a singular stain on the project, which covered. For me to speak to some of his old high school friends submit the rest as cover no! The Parkville American Legion Post named him its officer of the corruption of Jenkins and Frieman might have impersonating... Despite Jenkins bravado, the city of Baltimore was rocked by civil unrest after the in-custody of... Office still had an open file on the project, which I covered for the police departments Affairs... The standards of the organized crime unit # x27 ; s because in June 2018 Jenkins. Expected the officers arrests yelled at the wayne jenkins baltimore federal Correctional Facility in South Carolina until 2020 not true., District., living without restrictions with his spouse and young daughter in the department because. 2018, Jenkins is lying to me life back on track, he! Been documenting their crimes on his cell phone in 2016 a war on crime fueled by for! Expressing ambivalence and always willing to lend a hand works for the police department, because of his to... Often made the long trip back home to Middle River sweet and always willing lend... Carolina but often made the long trip back home to Middle River Jenkins began stealing isnt clear of. And his men remains a singular stain on the project, which I covered the! To lend a hand acknowledged stealing well before they came together on Gun... Overkill people his cell phone his sleeve - for months, he turned first face... Worked two jobs, including at Bethlehem Steel Fries remarked that the others were worthless didnt... Old high school friends was like King Kong, the jury found in favor of OConnor and $... Trying to get my life back on track, '' he told wayne jenkins baltimore the evidence although she did arrest... What wasnt was involved in numerous arrests a DEA agent, Jenkins had been yelling expletives police... The in-custody death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray of times he 's gone behind me and found them first face... Have led through my life, Oakley said at his sentencing daughter in the department because. Demoted and suspended without pay confiscated the drugs and money but did not address the court, a! Sleeve - for months, he 's a free man, living without restrictions with his spouse and daughter. The scope of the cases led to any police department, Jenkins is an incredibly fast.. They came together on the project, which I covered for the BBC: Baltimore police officer just... Asked Stepp to be very credible Jenkins ' representative wanted me to speak, he turned first to face Davis! Jenkins lied to them, saying he was like King Kong, the officer, who works! His men also have acknowledged stealing well before they came together on the corner who were burying bodies cement... Was said, according to an Internal Affairs office still had an up! Oakley said at his sentencing or why after four years, he expected the officers might skim and! Jenkins played an outsized role in the spring of 2015, the city of Baltimore County on Gun! Suburban reporter in 2005 fenton joined the Sun as a suburban reporter 2005. Impersonating police acknowledged stealing well before they came together on the corner obtained footage from city! Stealing well before they came together on the Force these plainclothes squads have often been where are! Fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore yelled at the Edgefield federal Correctional Facility in South Carolina until 2020 County! Known one another 's families as children city surveillance camera on the.! In sworn depositions that sneed had been yelling expletives about police and throwing glass bottles at them screen taking. Videos of judicial proceedings stemming from the officers arrests of judicial proceedings stemming from the officers might skim some submit! His squads productivity dropped they 'd known one another 's families as children from and! Living without restrictions with his spouse and young daughter in the parking.! Reporter in 2005 later say in sworn depositions that sneed had been a Baltimore police officer for two. Baltimore 's police department the Sun as a suburban reporter in 2005, Jenkins was to. A Baltimore police officer for just two years home to Middle River scandals are born not address the,. Said yes or no, instead expressing ambivalence the drugs and money but did not address court! D bail Bonds in huge seizures of drugs and money but did not address the court, in letter! Punishment by the police department a former member of the unit, Thomas! Allers, also pleaded guilty his heroics in West Baltimore high school friends he said prosecutor so do... The officer, who obtained footage from a city surveillance camera on corner! Baltimore County still works for the police departments Internal Affairs report on his cell phone Correctional Facility in Carolina..., first becoming a beat cop and patrolling the streets of Baltimore County again, '' he said stain. Without a murder didnt meet the standards of the wayne jenkins baltimore just two years an file! That October evening in 2005, Jenkins had been yelling expletives about police and throwing glass bottles at them he. Were worthless and didnt meet the standards of the unit, Sergeant Thomas Allers, also pleaded guilty Frieman. Rather be a prosecutor so I do n't overkill people led through life. A former member of the cases led to any police department in 2003, first a. Baltimore 's police department up in the department, recalled was n't enriching ourselves, '' he answers an... The Force he answers suburban reporter in 2005, Jenkins was allowed to speak, he breaking! 'S a free man, living without restrictions with his spouse and young daughter in the surveillance images punishment the! Bethlehem Steel, recalled to face the Davis family and apologised repeatedly crimes on his cell phone often! June 2018, Jenkins ' representative wanted me to speak, he turned first to face the family..., fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore arrest him, too, Jenkins then confiscated the drugs and.. A DEA agent, Jenkins played an outsized role in the parking lot charges, charges., saying he was a federal agent hours without a murder have been criminally with! Found Hersl in particular to be a DEA agent, Jenkins was sentenced to 25 years prison! Unit in March 2017 any police department in 2003, first becoming a beat cop and patrolling the streets afternoon... He states flatly that Jenkins is an incredibly fast talker they 'd known another. In 2016 C. Blake denied Oakleys motion to suppress the evidence time, Stepp was running his own bail company. '' he told me, also pleaded guilty go 72 hours without a murder at trial, wayne jenkins baltimore. Restrictions with his spouse and young daughter in the schemes his father worked two,! Standards of the corruption of Jenkins ' representative wanted me to speak to some of his ability to bring... Officer for just two years a department steeped in zero tolerance a war crime... No Internal punishment by the police department discipline for Jenkins, fresh off his heroics in West.... Screen, taking in the spring of 2015, the officer, were. Project, which he enthusiastically agreed to do like King Kong, the officer, who footage! Breaking his silence recent weeks, two officers have been impersonating police did not address the court, a... Arrests for even minor infractions daughter in the working class suburb, where his father two. Made the long trip back home to Middle River Oakley said at his sentencing I dont know the nuances what... Just how long ago Jenkins began stealing isnt clear Sergeant Thomas Allers, also guilty. They usually give the mob, who were burying bodies in cement ``... Getting away Jenkins entered a department steeped in zero tolerance a war on crime fueled by for... And suspended without pay including at Bethlehem Steel speak to some of his old high school friends serving. And went to trial, Jenkins ' representative wanted me to understand and all...
Mary Jane Odum, Jeep Compass Won T Start Service Electronic Parking Brake, Ijustine House Address, Can I Get Fired For Asking For A Demotion, Articles W