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. Of all seven men, the last person I thought would ever agree to an interview was Jenkins, the fallen "golden boy" of the Baltimore Police Department. During the altercation, a passerby named George Sneed was assaulted by officer Robert Cirello who broke his jaw, leading Sneed to sue. Become a subscriber today to support investigative reporting like this. She said she found Hersl in particular to be very credible.. "The largest share of the blame, the largest share of those crimes belongs to him," US attorney Leo Wise told the court. None of the cases led to any police department discipline for Jenkins, his personnel records show. "Everything I tell you, I will take a polygraph," Jenkins says near the beginning of that first phone call. Youve got to be willing to dig into their s--- and confront them, Barksdale said. Yet another of Jenkins' friends said something I wasn't expecting. 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 Police Departments go-to assets in the fight against violent crime. 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. Wayne was a cops cop, local hero kind of guy, said Cirello, the retired officer. At the time, Stepp was running his own bail bond company, Double D Bail Bonds. Jenkins did not testify at the trial, but in a way, he was the star of the entire proceeding. His punches came fast Jenkins was a trained boxer and OConnor soon felt the warmth of blood spilling down his cheek. In December 2017, eight months after Jenkins was arrested, the FBI and Baltimore County officers broke down Stepp's door and arrested him in his kitchen. Jenkins, along with Detective Ben Frieman, had followed an African American man driving a nice car through Northeast Baltimore. Contact Justin Fenton at jfenton@baltsun.com. Had the officers done things by the book, the cash and drugs would be registered with evidence control. Jenkins, who until his arrest was viewed within the Baltimore Police Department as one of its most high-performing officers, is serving 25 years in prison after he pleaded guilty in 2017 to. In federal court, Mickey Oakley argued that the officers who arrested him including Jenkins and future Gun Trace Task Force member Daniel Hersl had lied about the circumstances leading up to the arrest and had illegally searched his home. He points to the plea agreement, in which Jenkins agreed that his cut of their drug sales came to roughly $250,000. Jenkins was given a 25-year prison sentence on June 7, 2018, which he is currently in the midst of serving at a federal prison in Kentucky. He walked into the court wearing a maroon prison uniform. Jenkins, who later led the GTTF, pleaded guilty to civil rights violations for participating in the coverup and is serving 25 years in prison for crimes including robberies and selling drugs. He resigned and the top spot at the Baltimore Police Department remains vacant. "Pills of heroin, bags of marijuana," he says. "Later on that evening, Gondo did give me money, that means hours later, I'm talking hours later, he gave me money.". All this happened over nothing, one of the brothers, Charles Lee, recalled recently. In his plea deal, Jenkins admitted he planted heroin on Burley to try to justify the fatal collision. 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. 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". Stepp testified that the arrangement was so lucrative, he stuck with it for years before getting arrested himself in December 2017. 'You say this, you say that, right?' Another was to talk about how futile life inside the penal system is. Jenkins says that the veteran goaded him into taking money. His supervisors and others either failed to see the red flags or chose to ignore them. They walked far enough so they couldnt be seen from the street. "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.". Ignoring warning signs of misconduct, Baltimore Police praised and promoted Gun Trace Task Force leader. Prosecutors pointed to the fact that Jenkins fabricated evidence, like producing a bogus iPhone video of his officers cracking a drug dealer's safe, when they had in fact already broken into it and stolen $200,000 in cash. We Own This City airs Mondays at 9 p.m. When the man stopped his car and started to run away, Jenkins drove after him and into someones front yard, where he struck him. The ringleader, former Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, admitted committing multiple armed robberies and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs. 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. In the bedroom, Jenkins says he and a veteran supervisor found a suitcase filled with tens of thousands of dollars in cash. The tape disputed Jenkins sworn account. This partnership lasted for five years. For the past four years, Jessica Lussenhop has been reporting on the rise and fall of a corrupt squad of Baltimore police officers. On the off-ramp, I find four empty dime bags scattered along a section of sidewalk with no foot traffic. It was his first public appearance since he was arrested along with six other officers last year. But nothing more. Over the years, I wrote to all of these former officers in prison several times, asking them to help me understand their breathtaking crimes. "I never had [theft complaints] because I never took money off individuals. With the investigations behind him, Jenkins seemed emboldened. "He's never been a true friend," Stepp says. The department valued their work too much to end this style of police work. Jenkins admitted that he stole drugs from work and delivered them to Stepp, who would turn around and sell them. But two pronounced their innocence and went to trial, which I covered for the BBC. 2023 BBC. 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. During his 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. I think about Shawn Whiting, a former heroin dealer who went to prison for years after the officers robbed him. The daughters of 86-year-old Elbert Davis also told the court about the 2010 car crash Jenkins caused while he was pursuing a man named Umar Burley. 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. There's no telling how many other people were affected, but were too afraid to come forward. Both men have requested new trials. 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. The second declined to comment. In Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago, plainclothes teams have been charged with corruption. Others were raised by defense attorneys and their clients, who said an overzealous Jenkins skirted legal standards in making arrests. Your digital subscription helps pay for The Baltimore Sun's investigative reporting. Two officers said he spoke openly about doing home invasions on high-level drug dealers that he called "monsters", because of the amount of drugs and cash he hoped they'd have stashed in their houses. Wayne Jenkins Image Credit: Baltimore Police Department/Associated Press. So he gave up and entered a guilty plea. He thought Jenkins and Frieman might have been impersonating police. "Nobody still knows the truth about what's going on in the city," Taylor told the judge. Used to tell me he won it playing poker.". 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. Meanwhile, his Twitter account is full of pictures of him on set, hamming it up with Bernthal and some of the other actors. Wayne Jenkins was living a double life. Jenkins was a decorated cop and had a reputation for his role in several high-profile drug busts. That made it very tempting when, sometime around 2011, Jenkins approached Stepp and suggested they go into business together. 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. Jenkins, meanwhile, was the best officer I had working under my command, Fries said. 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. They employed tactics that straddled and sometimes clearly crossed the line that divides aggressive policing and trampling on civil rights. The spouse of the third left a message telling me I could take what Jenkins told me and "stuff it". Wayne Jenkins was on a mission to find big dealers and steal their drugs and cash. "And I remember taking the $10,000.". If I could take everything back in my life, I would have been a prosecutor," he says. But the scope of the corruption of Jenkins and his men remains a singular stain on the force. He's even got a clothing line coming out around his defunct bail bond business, Double D Bail Bonds. Officers in plainclothes units often operate in the shadows of a police department. "So you did take money, ultimately?" He acknowledged that he could tell something was off with Jenkins around the time of the GTTF crime spree. Near Druid Hill Park, amid the shouting, sirens and buzzing choppers overhead, he commandeered a state prison department van and helped pull injured officers inside. It showed Sneed calmly standing across the street looking on, never even raising his arms. But Stepp had an ace up his sleeve - for months, he'd been documenting their crimes on his cell phone. I'm standing in my pandemic "radio studio" - aka the closet in my apartment - surrounded by hangers holding button-up shirts and dresses. This is his senior portrait from 1998. No one believed Oakley. He was arrested along with almost every member of the unit in March 2017. 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. FOX45 looks at the 8 former officers of the Gun Trace Task ForceThe ring leader of the squad Wayne Jenkins is currently serving the longest sentence out of the members federally indicted on . 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". When the officers circled back later, the two were still outside holding beers. He ordered a detective to drive them to the hospital and joined the front lines. I asked Wayne Jenkins several times why he wanted to do the interview with me. 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. My hope - maybe a naive one - was that hearing one of these men speak candidly about how he crossed over to the dark side would help the public better understand the casual, day-to-day corruption that can happen in policing. It's going to take an almost unimaginable kind of effort to dig out the roots of corruption in the department, and it's much easier to just lock up the cops who get caught, and carry on with business as usual. The jury was shown axes, machetes and pry bars, as well as black masks that were found in Jenkins' van after his arrest. It was difficult for me to understand and parse all of Jenkins' denials, now. While Jenkins most serious crimes the drug dealing, the robberies appear to have been well hidden, it is not surprising they flourished within Baltimores permissive plainclothes culture. 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. Justin Fenton takes listeners inside the investigation on the Roughly Speaking podcast. Maurice Ward says he, Sgt. At trial, Jenkins and his boss denied any knowledge of who attacked OConnor. But Jenkins wanted to argue the details in his plea agreement, saying many of them weren't true. It was still daylight, and Jenkins opened a black and red duffel bag. 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