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Reflecting on the revelations of his misconduct, Lt. Marjorie German concluded that department leaders gave Jenkins too much leeway because they were enamored of his results. The officer they talked to didnt seem like a candidate for that, the lawyers said. It was still daylight, and Jenkins opened a black and red duffel bag. 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. Jenkins doled out $5,000 to each of the two officers and instructed them not to make any big purchases. Become a subscriber today to support investigative reporting like this. The prosecutors characterised both men as having less culpability in the GTTF's schemes and that Ward in particular had provided valuable information that lead to additional charges against other officers. He is serving the harshest sentence : 25 years . I did give drugs to Donny for the last couple of years I was police, but I didn't take people's money because then they would know you were dirty. I was a hero," Jenkins says of his activity during the unrest. From 2006 to 2009, Jenkins was the subject of at least four lawsuits alleging misconduct. Victims like Bumgardner and Whiting had the courage to speak out. They'd known one another's families as children. You didnt catch me in nothing.. That made it very tempting when, sometime around 2011, Jenkins approached Stepp and suggested they go into business together. "It was obvious to me, when I'm taking millions of dollars worth of drugs from the Baltimore Police Department and selling them, that this is not a normal police department.". But two pronounced their innocence and went to trial, which I covered for the BBC. "We're not stupid. But most people who worked with him police and prosecutors asserted to The Sun they had no idea he and his officers were involved in criminal behavior. It showed Sneed calmly standing across the street looking on, never even raising his arms. 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. On 1 March, 2017, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins and six of his subordinate officers from the Gun Trace Task Force walked into the Baltimore Police Department's Internal Affairs building, believing they were there to clear up a minor complaint about a damaged vehicle. At the trial four years later, Jenkins and his fellow officers claimed that the witness had been throwing bottles at them, but security camera footage shown at the trial proved what Jenkins claimed was not true. 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, 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. "I'm wrong, God knows I'm wrong," the 37-year-old said. Updated: Mar 1, 2023 / 02:16 PM EST. As Jenkins is telling me this, he is naming names. He calls Stepp "the biggest exaggerator I've ever met in my life". Would they report the incident? This series was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Jenkins was stationed in North Carolina but often made the long trip back home to Middle River. One such warning came in 2010 from a Baltimore man caught drug dealing. Over the years, I wrote to all of these former officers in prison several times, asking them to help me understand their breathtaking crimes. Stepp's moving on with his life - in a sense. Jenkins joined Baltimore's police department in 2003, first becoming a beat cop and patrolling the streets of Baltimore. "I just go through this on a daily basis, scared of police, wondering when they gonna stop you, trying to plant drugs on you or something like that. "I'd rather be a prosecutor so I don't overkill people. However, he was also sued for misconduct before his arrest in 2017. What was Jenkins really going to do with the drugs? He woke up on a frigid city street with his jaw shattered, and couldn't eat solid food for months. Wayne Jenkins joined Baltimore's police department way back in 2003 as a beat cop patrolling the streets of Baltimore. "Pills of heroin, bags of marijuana," he says. All seven members were soon in handcuffs. 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. officers Wayne Jenkins, Ryan . 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. Jenkins had told his squad hed heard over wiretaps that Belvedere Towers, a high-rise apartment complex in North Roland Park, was the scene of large drug deals. One afternoon, he took two officers there and they wound up stopping a drug deal in progress. According to the Internal Affairs file, the only times Jenkins had been disciplined by the department was for twice failing to appear in court. Prosecutors investigated and even presented evidence to a grand jury but concluded they didnt have enough evidence to obtain an indictment. It was nicknamed The Barn an apparent homage to the offices of a corrupt police unit on the television series The Shield. The show, modeled after a 1990s Los Angeles Police Department scandal, featured a strike team that roughed up suspects, lied about their investigations and took a cut of their drug busts. The plaintiffs prevailed in three of them, either through a jury verdict or the citys decision to settle the case. Jenkins, meanwhile, was the best officer I had working under my command, Fries said. It's no wonder people come out meaner than when they come in.". "Now we're going to burn it down. Now, the lawyers were sitting with Paul Pineau, chief of staff to then Baltimore States Attorney Gregg Bernstein, according to an account of the meeting obtained by The Sun. 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. In fact, it's highly likely - if not certain - that many of the people Jenkins' put in prison himself had those tactics used on them by prosecutors. Contact me.". Baltimore Police Sgt. "It's that simple.". There is no love lost between these two former friends. It is simply not true., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake denied Oakleys motion to suppress the evidence. I also point out to him that it's a fairly common practice for prosecutors to level charges that are so serious that the defendant feels they have no choice but to plead guilty. 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. 'You say this, you say that, right?' The spouse of the third left a message telling me I could take what Jenkins told me and "stuff it". Can this US city go 72 hours without a murder? 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. He is very remorseful.". Donald Stepp was released from federal prison back in January of this year. 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. 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". But I did call them, and the Baltimore Police Department, to see if anyone would respond to this laundry list of allegations. The BBC is not naming these three former supervisors, since none of them has been charged with a crime in connection with this case. And in the midst of that investigation, another arose. Stepp and Jenkins' history runs deep. Over the course of four phone calls (courtesy of some traded bags of crisps), Jenkins paints a picture of the Baltimore Police Department as a place where indoctrination into corruption starts almost immediately. Jenkins tells me he traded some sausages with other inmates in the line, bartering his way to the front. They didnt call for an ambulance or even write a report. He goes on and on gushing about Sergeant Jenkins, Assistant States Attorney Jenifer Layman said. The GTTF was made up of eight officers, all but one of whom were indicted. Just in recent weeks, two officers have been criminally charged with misconduct. The message read: "Greetings. No one believed Oakley. Current and former officers said he was generally regarded favorably as a cowboy type who found big cases through a frenetic pace of citizen stops, which sometimes yielded information leading the way up a chain of drug dealers. "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 said he started dealing drugs at age 9, selling. Five years later, Simons claims were confirmed. "He perverted the criminal justice system.". Dan Horgan said his mentality was your typical Marine camaraderie, teamwork. 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. Jenkins was a rising star in the department, because of his ability to regularly bring in huge seizures of drugs and guns. 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. It didn't take long before Stepp began to suspect that Jenkins ratted him out. "He always had large sums of money in his pocket. Prosecutors urged the judge to sentence him to the maximum 30 years, adding that the unit's corruption affected 1,700 criminal cases. He gave me a few reasons. I asked him if he thinks that another scandal is inevitable. Prior to this, they'd been lauded as some of the best gun cops in the city - seizing dozens of illegal firearms every month, and demonstrating a "a work ethic that is beyond reproach", in the words of one supervisor. In part due to his cooperation in the case, he received a much shorter sentence than the officers of the GTTF. He also apologised to Burley, who was not in the court, to his wife and to his father, and begged the judge for the opportunity to get out in time to be a grandfather. In an interview from prison, he said it wasnt uncommon for the officers to take contraband and submit it to evidence control without arresting someone. In the gloom I see the number of the bureau of prisons light up my cell phone screen. Or harm you or even kill you.". 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. 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