You guys willing to go kick in the dudes door and take the money? Wayne Jenkins in prison,. 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. Officers in plainclothes units often operate in the shadows of a police department. Wayne Earl Jenkins tearfully told the court: "I've tarnished the badge", (L-R) Evodio Hendrix, Daniel Hersl, Jemell Rayam, (L-R) Maurice Ward, Marcus Taylor, Momodu Gondo, Prosecutors showed evidence of Jenkins' building up the tools needed to do full-fledged robberies, Elbert Davis' daughters speak after Jenkins' sentencing, Former GTTF member Momodu Gondo testified during the trial, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece. "I never took nothing from a looter, so help me god. Despite the lawsuits and later, video evidence from his squads body cameras Jenkins supervisors failed to scrutinize the arrests he was making. In November 2012, Wayne Jenkins was promoted to the rank of sergeant giving him new authority and freedom. Back before our interview, Jenkins' representative wanted me to speak to some of his old high school friends. Just in recent weeks, two officers have been criminally charged with misconduct. But the scope and breadth of these allegations were staggering. Jenkins pleaded guilty in court on January 5, 2018, for numerous counts of four of these charges. Jenkins also tells me that any time an officer's misconduct gets picked up by Internal Affairs or by an outside law enforcement agency, it was routine for the involved officers to meet up, to tailor their stories to avoid punishment. 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. 49 . 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. 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. As Jenkins is telling me this, he is naming names. They said that while they had their backs turned, someone had clocked OConnor and taken off. It's a depressing fact that this is a viewpoint likely shared by many in Baltimore, and is a part of the reason why the GTTF got away with what they did for so long. It was his first public appearance since he was arrested along with six other officers last year. So I kind of had a mental, like maybe a messed up moral code.". Jenkins got a bronze star for his part in the 2009 recovery of 41 kilograms of cocaine $1 million worth in a mans truck. 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". 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. Wayne Jenkins posed as a . "He always had large sums of money in his pocket. In our conversation, Jenkins says that that's not true - members of the squad did steal money that day, but from somewhere else in the house. Jenkins started calling Stepp to the scenes of arrests, encouraging Stepp to try to get inside drug dealer's hideouts to steal whatever cash or narcotics he could find. "It ain't over. Stepp was on home confinement for six months with an ankle monitor until this summer. On June 7, 2018, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. 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. Oakley took the rare step of getting onto the witness stand to rebut the officers, as did an independent witness who backed his account. He popped the trunk and carried the drugs into the garage. Five years later, Simons claims were confirmed. The drop-offs included marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, all of which Stepp did his best to sell. That made it very tempting when, sometime around 2011, Jenkins approached Stepp and suggested they go into business together. Still, a yearlong investigation by The Baltimore Sun found warning signs that Wayne Jenkins wasnt such a good cop. 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. "Everything I tell you, I will take a polygraph," Jenkins says near the beginning of that first phone call. It was billed at the time as the largest cocaine seizure in department history, one of Jenkins many large-scale seizures. During his time on the streets of Baltimore Jenkins was involved. Stepp testified that the arrangement was so lucrative, he stuck with it for years before getting arrested himself in December 2017. . But Jenkins wanted to argue the details in his plea agreement, saying many of them weren't true. I mean, it had velocity, Jenkins said. 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. You're taught that - the second someone gets in trouble we meet up, and we talk face to face," he says. All seven now sit in federal prisons scattered across the country. 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. 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 . He tells me that the first time he ever stole money, he was just a rookie. We knew he wasn't the straight-and-narrow cop that all cops are supposed to be," he said. I wasnt privy. Others were raised by defense attorneys and their clients, who said an overzealous Jenkins skirted legal standards in making arrests. In 2010, when Deputy Commissioner Anthony Barksdale wanted a special squad to go after elusive suspects, Jenkins was picked for the group. He was like King Kong, the officer, who still works for the police department, recalled. We'll never be the same again.". 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. Image Credit: Baltimore Police Department. He suggested another option. The officers with him hesitated, Ward said. He says something that I've never heard anyone admit out loud. Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, along with Detectives Marcus Taylor and Maurice Ward, intercepted a drug deal at the Belvedere Towers in Baltimore and seized about 20 to 25 pounds of marijuana as well as $20,000 to $25,000 in a second bag. 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. But there was just enough room for doubt Sneed had been off camera briefly that Jenkins could argue the video didnt show the full story. The outfit change is designed to allow them to blend in. 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. These units often operated with little supervision. Sgt. For the past four years, Jessica Lussenhop has been reporting on the rise and fall of a corrupt squad of Baltimore police officers. 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. Lets get this done, but were going to do it 100 percent. Nothing was 10 percent.. 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. 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. In Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago, plainclothes teams have been charged with corruption. Jenkins and members of his squad were praised for their work getting guns off the streets in an October 2016 police department newsletter. De Sousa handled the discipline, and they had worked a deal, Hill said, according to a transcript of the interview. Four years after the Gun Trace Task Force officers were arrested, he says he sees no difference on the streets of Baltimore. 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. Wayne Jenkins eyes darted from screen to screen, taking in the surveillance images. "It's still hard though, because I get a lot of pain in my mouth at night. In September 2021, Jenkins spoke with BBC journalist Jessica Lussenhop from behind bars, and he claimed he never took money from Baltimore citizens. Read more: Inside one of America's most corrupt police squads. Five of the former officers, including Jenkins, pleaded guilty. Over the years, I wrote to all of these former officers in prison several times, asking them to help me understand their breathtaking crimes. The message read: "Greetings. 3.4M views, 20K likes, 1.4K loves, 6.8K comments, 52K shares, Facebook Watch Videos from The Baltimore Sun: A criminal with a badge: A Baltimore Sun investigation into the story of Baltimore Police. I've been reporting on Jenkins, and the elite Gun Trace Task Force squad he once led, for nearly four years. This is his senior portrait from 1998. "I'm grateful, very grateful.". Wayne Jenkins and former Det. 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. By Josiah Bates. Dan Horgan said his mentality was your typical Marine camaraderie, teamwork. He's doing, as he likes to say, "rather swell". Jenkins lied to them, saying he was a federal agent. She said she found Hersl in particular to be very credible.. A plea agreement is a document that lists specific criminal acts that the defendant is agreeing to plead guilty to. Homegrown commanders took pride in being known as having knockers. Can this US city go 72 hours without a murder? Wayne Jenkins was living a double life. "I've tarnished the badge," he said through tears. He started to worry. Over his tenure, he was. The first 15 minutes are over in a flash. The department valued their work too much to end this style of police work. The sergeant took no one else from the flex squad. ET on HBO. He's even got a clothing line coming out around his defunct bail bond business, Double D Bail Bonds. "I never took a thing. "If you've got to lie about what you've seen or what you heard or what you witnessed, as long as he's dirty, he's got the drugs and he's got the guns and he did the crime - just get him.". 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. 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". Donald Stepp was released from federal prison back in January of this year. Jerry Rodriguez, a career Los Angeles police officer who was a deputy commissioner in Baltimore from 2013 to 2015, said the department was resistant to change. 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. He says Stepp pressured him into it. He couldn't get anyone to believe him at the time, and to this day, he fears law enforcement. For the first three years of his sentence, Jenkins was doing time at the federal prison in Edgefield, South Carolina . Later that year, the mayor held a news conference for another of Jenkins busts. 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. 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. We Own This City, an HBO Max miniseries out April 25, about a Baltimore Police Department (BPD) task force unit that went rogue, highlights some of the . Stepp's moving on with his life - in a sense. Any attempts to make the force become less of a warrior and more of a guardian was looked at terribly, he said. "I still maintain my innocence. They might not have been believed anyhow. Historical Accuracy (Q&A): Is Sgt. "I thought it was a winner.". Then they spilled out of the house and onto the sidewalk, struggling. In federal prison, inmates are only allowed to talk on the phone for 15 minutes before the line is automatically cut. Victims like Bumgardner and Whiting had the courage to speak out. ", Paul Schiraldi/Baltimore Police Department/HBO, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Wayne Jenkins a former Marine? Sneed hired an attorney, who obtained footage from a city surveillance camera on the corner. An officer who sometimes worked with Jenkins, Keith Gladstone, pleaded guilty last month to going to the scene of Simons arrest to plant the BB gun a response, Gladstone admitted, to a phone call from a frantic Jenkins asking for the help. Instead, they go out looking for illegal activity people exchanging drugs or displaying bulges under clothing that could be guns. According to the Internal Affairs file, the only times Jenkins had been disciplined by the department was for twice failing to appear in court. On the off-ramp, I find four empty dime bags scattered along a section of sidewalk with no foot traffic. And of course, Jenkins is also hoping for a sentenced reduction of some kind. 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. There's no telling how many other people were affected, but were too afraid to come forward. Instead, while their cash and drugs were gone, the dealers were free men. He told me that frequently, when he or his fellow officers didn't feel like submitting the drugs they seized or doing arrest paperwork, they'd simply confiscate people's drug stashes and let them go. "Later on that evening, Gondo did give me money, that means hours later, I'm talking hours later, he gave me money.". "He's never been a true friend," Stepp says. Wayne Jenkins' police vehicle when he was arrested in 2017. 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. Wayne Jenkins is a former BPD Sergeant who served as the leader of the Gun Trace Task Force. Not likely, Ward thought. Later in 2015, he took over a new squad of plainclothes officers within the latest rebranding, the Special Enforcement Section. It showed Sneed calmly standing across the street looking on, never even raising his arms. 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 ordered a detective to drive them to the hospital and joined the front lines. That while the homicide rate was on a historic rise, this elite, eight-officer team was getting guns off the streets at an astonishing rate. I will continue to fight to prove my innocence.". The jury was shown axes, machetes and pry bars, as well as black masks that were found in Jenkins' van after his arrest. Wayne Jenkins from Baltimore was sentenced to 25-years-in-prison. "There was cameras everywhere, so I would never have took a dollar," he tells me. 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