The Stones Had it Right…

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About every cop being a criminal…

Baltimore police detectiveMaurice Kilpatrick Ward has been charged (along with members of his unit) with stealing from citizens and falsifying overtime slips. He is pleading guilty, his attorney confirmed.

Ward is charged with racketeering conspiracy and aiding and abetting racketeering.

He was among seven “hero” officers, all members of an elite police department unit, who were arrested in March following an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI.

Ward would be the first of the seven to enter a guilty plea in a case that raised fresh questions about oversight of the Baltimore Police Department and police and city prosecutors’ investigations of misconduct. The detectives allegedly committed the crimes as the U.S. Department of Justice was conducting a civil rights investigation of the agency, which led to a consent decree.

Federal prosecutors said at the time of the arrests that the “heroes” faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the conspiracy and for racketeering. They will probably receive the Blue Discount.

A trial in the case has been scheduled for January.

Ward joined the Baltimore Police Department in 2003 and was assigned to the Gun Trace Task Force in June 2016. The plain clothes unit was tasked with getting guns off the streets.

According to the indictment, the subject of a search warrant showed Ward, Detective Evodio Hendrix and Sgt. Wayne Jenkins a shoe box containing $10,000. The “heroes” sent the man downstairs, and stole $2,000 from the box and $15,000 from a boot in a bedroom, prosecutors say.

In another incident, prosecutors said, Ward wrote a false incident report to conceal the unit’s theft of “at least $1,000” from another man. Ward’s report said the “heroes” had seized a handgun, baggies of marijuana, a shoe bag and a T-shirt, but did not mention the cash.

In another incident, prosecutors said, he took part in the theft of $200,000 from a safe.

“These defendants were allegedly involved in stopping people who had not committed crimes, and not only seizing money but pocketing it,” said then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein at a news conference in March. “These are really robberies by people wearing police uniforms.”

The indictment also accused Ward of submitting false overtime slips when he was at home in Middle River or on vacation in Myrtle Beach, S.C. In fiscal year 2016, Ward earned $135,268 in total pay, on a base salary of $72,775.

The allegations prompted Mayor Catherine Pugh to order an outside audit of police overtime spending, which has skyrocketed in recent years.

Police blame the rising costs on a shortage of officers and the needs of a patrol staffing schedule, but the case raised questions about how much overtime was fraudulent. In May, a lieutenant overseeing the Horseshoe Casino district was charged with overtime theft, filling out time sheets that said he was working while he was observed at home on the Eastern Shore, police say.

The U.S. Attorney’s office acknowledged that a rearraignment was scheduled for Ward, but declined to comment Thursday. In a court filing in the case earlier this month, prosecutors said plea negotiations between “multiple defendants” and the government had been taking place since March 5.

In addition to Ward, Jenkins, and Hendrix, the other “heroes” charged in the case are Momodu Bondeva Kenton Gondo, Daniel Thomas Hersl, Jemell Lamar Rayam and Marcus Roosevelt Taylor.

All have pleaded not guilty except Jenkins, who has not been arraigned but is scheduled for arraignment on July 7.

Taylor, meanwhile, is fighting a judge’s order that he be detained pending trial, and has filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals, records show.

The investigation began when the Drug Enforcement Administration came across Gondo while investigating a drug organization. The probe eventually involved the FBI and electronic surveillance — including a recording device placed in a Baltimore police vehicle.

Gondo is accused in a separate indictment of participating in a drug organization and tipping its members off to investigations.

 

8 COMMENTS

  1. Got to know fire fighters in Odessa, Tx when living there. I inspected their compressed air tank as well as oxygen tanks. They’d bring in virtually new and sometimes unused air tanks that were ruined from simply riding in the truck racks
    The carbon fiber tanks cost $1500 each but they used the same racks they had on the old steel tanks.

    The carbon fiber outside would be eaten away rendering them unable to pass pressure testing.
    They came in wearing their expensive Polo shirts, shorts, caps and shoes supplied by the department.

    Nobody was ever dirty or even had rough hands. Good work if you can get on and all drove expensive personal vehicles unless they were department issued and those were expensive too.

    Most had lucrative side jobs since putting in 8 hours sitting around with a little PT thrown in leaves a young man with plenty energy
    They looked like the surfing crowd.

  2. It’s amazing to think how many cops can make that kind of money, 70k to 135k a year!

    What ever happened to the lower then average pay for public employees? I would say public pay is well above average now. Used to be a cop would have to do tons of overtime to even touch 50k. Teachers too. Now the average pay for a teacher in my town is above the average pay of the private sector suckers paying the taxes.

        • More than 1,400 Clark County NV employees made over $100,000 last year.

          A big chunk of the big salaries went to members of the fire department — which doled out millions of dollars in overtime pay and had about 540 six-figure earners. That was more than 70% of the department.

          In comparison, median earnings for full-time employees of private, for-profit companies in Clark County were about $37,400 in last year. The median household income was $51,600.

          Despite the disparity, the county is having state lawmakers change Nevada’s property tax cap laws, because tax revenue growth is falling behind an increased demand for county services.

          • Public employees have become a de facto ruling class who enjoy lavish salaries and benefits on the backs of people barely getting by. if they want more they just find more ways to forcibly extract it.

            The only reason these ‘heroes’ were prosecuted is that they pocketed the stolen money. Had they acted in their capacity as legalized thieves for their criminal employers and turned the funds over (“civil forfeiture”) they probably would have received promotions.

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