The matter was referred to the police integrity unit of the Baltimore states attorneys office for investigation. "I could have spoken up.". They stole drugs and cash, sold seized narcotics and guns back on the street, planted evidence on people, even committed home invasions. In June 2018, after pleading guilty on charges of. Attorneys in the integrity unit had approached another officer involved in the arrest, asking him pointed questions about whether Jenkins had lied about the drugs. He goes on and on gushing about Sergeant Jenkins, Assistant States Attorney Jenifer Layman said. Nobody said yes or no, instead expressing ambivalence. Later that year, the mayor held a news conference for another of Jenkins busts. 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. Detective Marcus Taylor on Thursday was sentenced to 18 years in prison on racketeering charges, including robbery and overtime fraud. Read more: Inside one of America's most corrupt police squads. A reporter also reviewed videos of judicial proceedings stemming from the officers arrests. They wanted to tell me that Jenkins was a dedicated father, a good football coach. As adults, they ran into each other again at an underground card game frequented by Baltimore Police officers. 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. You guys willing to go kick in the dudes door and take the money? I got gangster charges, racketeering charges, things they usually give the mob, who were burying bodies in cement.". 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. Police who went rogue - Wayne Jenkins and Momodu Gondo, Jenkins, centre, before he took command of the Gun Trace Task Force, Clockwise from top left: Evodio Hendrix, Daniel Hersl, Jemell Rayam, Maurice Ward, Marcus Taylor, Momodu Gondo, Equipment that two of the GTTF officers testified was going to be used for home invasions, Donald Stepp inside Baltimore Police headquarters, in a photo taken by Wayne Jenkins, Shawn Whiting, centre, at a press conference held by victims of the GTTF. 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. "There was cameras everywhere, so I would never have took a dollar," he tells me. 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 have no respect for him.". Would they report the incident? As Jenkins is telling me this, he is naming names. "I still maintain my innocence. In the annals of the Baltimore Police Department, Wayne Jenkins name was not being associated with wrongdoing. The BBC is not naming these three former supervisors, since none of them has been charged with a crime in connection with this case. It was difficult for me to understand and parse all of Jenkins' denials, now. Contact me.". At OConnors trial, Fries remarked that the others were worthless and didnt meet the standards of the organized crime unit. Relatives say he liked to visit his high school sweetheart, Kristy, who would become his wife. If his arrest was stunning, the depiction of his civil rights violations, robberies and more wasnt news to everyone certainly not to people who had been in Jenkins sights, fairly or not, over the years. But they needed more information. He started counting the money, $20,000 in all. He says Stepp pressured him into it. Wayne Jenkins will be played by Jon Bernthal, the same actor who portrayed "The Punisher". He states flatly that Jenkins is lying to me. He was like King Kong, the officer, who still works for the police department, recalled. In 2010, when Deputy Commissioner Anthony Barksdale wanted a special squad to go after elusive suspects, Jenkins was picked for the group. Used to tell me he won it playing poker.". In reality, he says, they were making arrests by any means necessary. They urged his supervisors to get him back to work and focused, according to an internal police department investigation conducted after the indictments. "My dad would be alive today would it not be for his actions that day. The plaintiffs prevailed in three of them, either through a jury verdict or the citys decision to settle the case. Hes given us all hes going to give us, Glenn said. But I think he also spoke to me because he doesn't like the image of himself that's been in the media - as a sociopath, as someone almost inhumanly evil. If I could take everything back in my life, I would have been a prosecutor," he says. 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". When Jenkins called him to a house the GTTF was investigating, Stepp took pictures of the officers going in and out. De Sousa handled the discipline, and they had worked a deal, Hill said, according to a transcript of the interview. That October evening in 2005, Jenkins had been a Baltimore police officer for just two years. On the off-ramp, I find four empty dime bags scattered along a section of sidewalk with no foot traffic. This kind of mindset assumes that the victims of the Gun Trace Task Force - many of them black and poor - deserved what happened to them. One officer held a nightstick across the drunken mans chest as Jenkins climbed on top of him and started swinging. "This is not the man I know," she wrote. "Nobody still knows the truth about what's going on in the city," Taylor told the judge. 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. The officers with him hesitated, Ward said. I think about Shawn Whiting, a former heroin dealer who went to prison for years after the officers robbed him. Wayne Jenkins, who led . Ward and the other cop followed Jenkins into the woods. The drop-offs included marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, all of which Stepp did his best to sell. You didnt catch me in nothing.. He says he was told that because these officers were so successful at seizing guns, there was nothing to be done. He's due to be released in 2038. This partnership lasted for five years. I am Agent and Representative as to Mr Jenkins. No one believed Oakley. Jenkins joined the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) on February 20, 2003 and was promoted to Sergeant on November 20, 2013. My thoughts return to Kenneth Bumgardner, a hard-working father who was chased by the squad when they suspected him of having marijuana. 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. "Now we're going to burn it down. In We Own This City, that dynamic is highlighted through the story of Wayne Jenkins - a star police officer played by The Walking Dead alum Jon Bernthal, with a pretty solid Baltimore accent . He idolizes this guy, said Shelley Glenn, another prosecutor. He's also at work on a memoir, which he says will reveal the contents of videos and photos he took of Jenkins that were never released publicly. Though Simon says he reported the incident to the police departments Internal Affairs office, he ultimately stopped cooperating on advice from his defense lawyer. 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. The jury was shown axes, machetes and pry bars, as well as black masks that were found in Jenkins' van after his arrest. 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. Stepp says Jenkins started bringing over shipments of drugs on an almost daily basis, putting them in a locked shed behind Stepp's house. They can let a suspect go, if they can lead to bigger fish. He served 20 months of a five year sentence in connection with the Gun Trace Task Force case, before being granted a compassionate release. The apartment complex had a camera in the parking lot. I continued working on this story for as long as I did out of some hope that the more the public learned about the corruption in the police department, the better chance there might be of some kind of true, systemic reform. The spouse of the third left a message telling me I could take what Jenkins told me and "stuff it". Historical Accuracy (Q&A): Is Sgt. By the time his criminal streak was in full swing, it entailed high-stakes robberies and breaking and entering even as he was bringing in paychecks totaling over $170,000 in a year, in part because of overtime fraud. The sergeant took no one else from the flex squad. In September 2021, Jenkins spoke with BBC journalist Jessica Lussenhop from behind bars, and he claimed he never took money from Baltimore citizens. In his plea deal, Jenkins admitted he planted heroin on Burley to try to justify the fatal collision. I'm losing a lot of teeth, you know, they used to be nice and pretty.". 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. "Everything I tell you, I will take a polygraph," Jenkins says near the beginning of that first phone call. Jenkins, indignant, aggressively shot back at questions from OConnors attorney. Jenkins had to affirm under oath in front of a federal judge that what the document said was true. He was arrested along with almost every member of the unit in March 2017. 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