wayne jenkins baltimore

When Jenkins was on paternity leave, commanders groused that his squads productivity dropped. There's no telling how many other people were affected, but were too afraid to come forward. Jenkins later alleged in official paperwork that Simon had pointed a weapon at Frieman and that he ran Simon down to stop the threat. Maurice Ward, a former detective now serving a seven-year prison term for committing crimes with Jenkins, said he and other officers jockeyed to get on his team. Critics argue Barksdale was among police leaders who fostered a warrior culture, to the citys detriment. Plainclothes officers must constantly be checked by leadership, Barksdale said, with commanders inquiring about irregularities in their work and excessive overtime pay. 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. It was difficult for me to understand and parse all of Jenkins' denials, now. In another man's house, the GTTF broke into a safe and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. 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. They weren't being paid by the taxpayers to keep the city safe, and weren't operating with all the power and protections that police have. Then, in November 2017, he was given further charges of destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations, and deprivation of rights under color of law. Then he said something that struck Ward as bizarre: He said he was going to take the marijuana to his home, and burn it all. Sure enough, no report was ever made. Victims like Bumgardner and Whiting had the courage to speak out. Investigators recommended Jenkins be demoted and suspended without pay. Barksdale, the former deputy commissioner who crafted department strategies from 2007 to 2012, leaned heavily on plainclothes units. Wayne Jenkins grew up in Middle River and is a graduate of Eastern Technical High School. 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. 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. But nothing more. But thats likely not what triggered the unprovoked beating of OConnor. His drill sergeant described him as having the utmost flawless character Ive seen in two decades of service. We'll never be the same again.". I dont know the nuances, what was said, what wasnt. He calls Stepp "the biggest exaggerator I've ever met in my life". In court, Ward apologised to the victims, to his family and to the Baltimore Police Department, as well as to his co-defendants. He's doing, as he likes to say, "rather swell". One officer recalled Jenkins taunting colleagues waiting in line to submit evidence at police headquarters, bragging about how many guns he was getting off the street. But Internal Affairs was still working on the case that the States Attorneys Office had decided it could not pursue: the suspicion that Jenkins might have planted drugs in a car to justify an arrest. Can this US city go 72 hours without a murder? Some drug dealers told their lawyers that Jenkins made stuff up to arrest them and had kept a good chunk of their money and drugs before taking them in. 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. The jury was shown axes, machetes and pry bars, as well as black masks that were found in Jenkins' van after his arrest. Some tried to complain, but were ignored. 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. "It ain't over. De Sousa, who later served as commissioner and is currently serving time on federal tax charges, says he doesnt remember the case. Wayne Jenkins Image Credit: Baltimore Police Department/Associated Press. Contact Justin Fenton at jfenton@baltsun.com. 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. But the scope and breadth of these allegations were staggering. 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. One of the most shocking incidents from the plea agreement is an event that Jenkins now unequivocally denies. They'd known one another's families as children. I ask. Jenkins idolized his sergeant, Michael Fries, the target of the expletive. They can let a suspect go, if they can lead to bigger fish. During his time on the streets of Baltimore Jenkins was involved. He's even got a clothing line coming out around his defunct bail bond business, Double D Bail Bonds. In Justin Fenton's book We Own This City, on which the HBO series is based, the Baltimore Sun journalist explained that Jenkins would often be "caught in a lie" while giving evidence to a jury, but no complaints were put on his record. Yes. At that time, I didnt think they were officers, Simon said. Credit: Baltimore Police Department, Its a Viking mentality: You go out into the field among the bad guys, and you bring back a bounty. "Hi, ma'am," Jenkins says when I pick up. Read about our approach to external linking. "My dad would be alive today would it not be for his actions that day. Although the indicted officers committed many robberies individually before joining the Gun Trace Task Force, prosecutors charge that they grew bolder and more prolific after Jenkins took over the unit in June 2016. 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. Jenkins, who had been suspended during the investigation, went back to work, making no fewer than three dozen arrests over the rest of the year, most of them gun cases. "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.". The officer they talked to didnt seem like a candidate for that, the lawyers said. Dan Horgan said his mentality was your typical Marine camaraderie, teamwork. 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. "What chance do we have when you have people like Jenkins and his co-defendants fabricating evidence?". Former Baltimore Police Sgt. He told the other officers to leave their cell phones and police vests in the car. 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. In the years since his arrest, he'd never given a public interview. Claiming to be a DEA agent, Jenkins then confiscated the drugs and money but did not arrest the dealers. He has covered the Baltimore Police Department and crime in Baltimore since 2008. 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. Why cant I be like this guy?. Turmoil has continued at the Baltimore Police Department, an agency that saw four commissioners in little more than a year among them De Sousa, now in prison for tax fraud. Jenkins is currently in prison. Sneed hired an attorney, who obtained footage from a city surveillance camera on the corner. The Parkville American Legion Post named him its Officer of the Year. No one had called police to complain, but Jenkins and Fries told the men to go inside. Prosecutors investigated and even presented evidence to a grand jury but concluded they didnt have enough evidence to obtain an indictment. All seven now sit in federal prisons scattered across the country. Jenkins, along with Detective Ben Frieman, had followed an African American man driving a nice car through Northeast Baltimore. "It was a front for a criminal enterprise," Stepp said of the Gun Trace Task Force. None of the cases led to any police department discipline for Jenkins, his personnel records show. . They drive unmarked vehicles. "I knew the things we were doing were wrong," he said. 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. Any attempts to make the force become less of a warrior and more of a guardian was looked at terribly, he said. He also acknowledged stealing the man's $4,000 (2,956) watch, which he gave to Stepp to sell. Ex-police sergeant Wayne Earl Jenkins apologised in court for the crimes he committed while heading an elite squad called the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF). They also didnt give chase. He started to worry. "Right off the bat, we wasn't living lavishly. Far from it. "This was a great abuse of the public trust," said Judge Blake. Others were raised by defense attorneys and their clients, who said an overzealous Jenkins skirted legal standards in making arrests. Jenkins must serve three years of supervised release after his custodial sentence. Ward, now working with Jenkins for the first time, recalled the officers pulling over a car in East Baltimore that had two trash bags full of money. They are not typically tethered to specific posts, or burdened by responding to 911 calls. His promotion required him to return to uniformed patrol for a time, and he was assigned to the Northeastern District. 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. "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. He. He popped the trunk and carried the drugs into the garage. Former Baltimore Police Department Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, currently inmate number 62928-037 at a federal prison in Kentucky, is on the line. "He's like, 'I'm not telling you to do anything, I'm just saying it sure would be nice if we had $10,000 apiece to go up to Atlantic City,'" Jenkins recalls. . "It's that simple.". It's no wonder people come out meaner than when they come in.". He resigned and the top spot at the Baltimore Police Department remains vacant. He said he started dealing drugs at age 9, selling. Detectives Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor went forward to trial and a jury found them guilty of robbery, extortion and fraud in February. Baltimore Police Sgt. It didn't take long before Stepp began to suspect that Jenkins ratted him out. He was serving his sentence at the Edgefield Federal Correctional Facility in South Carolina until 2020. According to the Internal Affairs file, the only times Jenkins had been disciplined by the department was for twice failing to appear in court. If I could take everything back in my life, I would have been a prosecutor," he says. "Pills of heroin, bags of marijuana," he says. 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. Taxpayers footed the bill. 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. "Obviously I'm in here now, so I see both sides. One former supervisor never responded. Wayne Jenkins, who led . 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. 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 ain't have a trial because the simple fact is I knew [the court] would believe them over top of me," he told the jury. Your digital subscription helps pay for The Baltimore Sun's investigative reporting. I lived modest, we wasn't enriching ourselves," he answers. OConnor, a house painter who missed weeks of work because of his injuries, sued Jenkins and put forward witnesses who backed his account: After OConnor yelled at Fries, officers had pulled him to the ground, and Jenkins walloped him. The in-custody death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray Sun 's investigative reporting ratted out. 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