From 2006 to 2009, Jenkins was the subject of at least four lawsuits alleging misconduct. 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. For example, in January 2006, Jenkins and Sergeant Michael Fries had an altercation with brothers Charles and Robert Lee after they continued to drink beer on the front step of their grandmother's home when the policemen had told them to stop. A squad of veteran police officers stood accused of committing numerous robberies, as well as extortion and overtime fraud. "Absolutely. "I did, yes. The department valued their work too much to end this style of police work. While it may seem incongruous that an officer would be hailed as a hero while racking up complaints, in the Baltimore Police Department it was not. I was a hero," Jenkins says of his activity during the unrest. Jenkins tells me he traded some sausages with other inmates in the line, bartering his way to the front. The bondsman would take care of selling them, then split the profits with the police sergeant. Until this point, I'd only heard Jenkins on. He said together, they'd sold about $1m worth of narcotics. One such warning came in 2010 from a Baltimore man caught drug dealing. He claims that it was Stepp's idea to start selling drugs together, not the other way around. The longest sentence was handed down to Jenkins: 25 years. Jenkins winced as the handcuffs were placed on his wrists, and US Marshals led him out of a back door of the courtroom. He reviewed hours of body camera footage from their arrests, watched tapes of their courtroom appearances, reviewed several thousand pages of documents, including internal police department files, and interviewed dozens of people including two of the convicted officers, some of the gun unit's victims, other current and former Baltimore police officers and commanders, defense attorneys and prosecutors. Detectives Maurice Ward, Evodio Hendrix, Momodu Gondo and Jemell Rayam all pleaded guilty. Jenkins says that the veteran goaded him into taking money. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. And that is what they want, German said, according to an Internal Affairs report. Some of the most upsetting conversations I had were with people who felt victimised twice -- by both the officers and by the criminals. 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". The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Sneed. That made it very tempting when, sometime around 2011, Jenkins approached Stepp and suggested they go into business together. 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. In a 26 page letter hand written from his cell at the Federal Corrections institution in South Carolina, former Baltimore Police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins tells a judge that he saved a . Yes. Jenkins is currently in prison. They had the autonomy to catch and release suspects and develop informants. This partnership lasted for five years. I asked Wayne Jenkins several times why he wanted to do the interview with me. "I'm wrong, God knows I'm wrong," the 37-year-old said. All of the other officers would have to be inaccurate in their testimony if it is to be believed that Detective Jenkins was manufacturing information for the affidavit, she said. Become a subscriber today to support investigative reporting like this. ", Paul Schiraldi/Baltimore Police Department/HBO, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. "It's still hard though, because I get a lot of pain in my mouth at night. A lot of what he told me was much more systematic. Barksdale, the former deputy commissioner who crafted department strategies from 2007 to 2012, leaned heavily on plainclothes units. He says Stepp pressured him into it. He says he couldn't risk it as a father with a young family. A few months after the OConnor incident, Jenkins was involved in another run-in where his sworn account was contradicted. But already he was working in a plainclothes flex unit that rewarded dynamic officers and gave them freedom to roam. It feels a little bit like splitting hairs. On Friday, both detectives Evodio Hendrix and Maurice Ward were sentenced to seven years in prison. Wayne Jenkins' police vehicle when he was arrested in 2017. 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 . It wasn't the first time I've heard that word to describe Jenkins. This past summer, as I was wrapping up work on "Bad Cops", a strange email appeared in my inbox. "What chance do we have when you have people like Jenkins and his co-defendants fabricating evidence?". By Justin Fenton June 12, 2019 More in the series Part 1 The rise of Wayne. I dont know the nuances, what was said, what wasnt. Any attempts to make the force become less of a warrior and more of a guardian was looked at terribly, he said. Jenkins was stationed in North Carolina but often made the long trip back home to Middle River. the dim light of the Baltimore Police Departments downtown nerve center, Sgt. Jenkins signed a plea agreement in 2017 that detailed seven robberies that he participated in along with other members of the unit, as well as his drug dealing partnership with Donald Stepp, the former bail bondsman and cocaine dealer who testified at trial. Jenkins admitted that he stole drugs from work and delivered them to Stepp, who would turn around and sell them. "Especially because we're short on time, is there anything that you kind of want to just say right off the bat?" But it's the big man upstairs," he says. "I never had [theft complaints] because I never took money off individuals. It was Jenkins, fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore. Five years later, Simons claims were confirmed. BALTIMORE One of the main players in the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force corruption scandal is asking for compassionate release from prison. It was during these games that Stepp heard Jenkins boasting about the large drug stashes he often came across during his work as a plainclothes police officer. I wasnt privy. But nothing more. 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. "I knew the things we were doing were wrong," he said. According to the Internal Affairs file, the only times Jenkins had been disciplined by the department was for twice failing to appear in court. 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. Far from it. He counters that the units helped bring down crime, and says he made it a point to scrutinize their conduct. 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. Claiming to be a DEA agent, Jenkins then confiscated the drugs and money but did not arrest the dealers. Sgt. A line prosecutor, Molly Webb, had been notified by a defense attorney of the footage footage that the police department hadnt submitted to her. . I deserve to go to jail.". Donny made every piece of that up.". One was that he felt he'd been railroaded into his plea agreement by the US prosecutors (the Maryland US Attorney's Office declined to comment). If I could take everything back in my life, I would have been a prosecutor," he says. Im feeling a lot of remorse for my actions I have led through my life, Oakley said at his sentencing. Credit: Baltimore Police. Washington (AFP) - A police officer described as perhaps the most corrupt in the history of the Baltimore police department was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday. 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. Jenkins started calling Stepp to the scenes of arrests, encouraging Stepp to try to get inside drug dealer's hideouts to steal whatever cash or narcotics he could find. Jerry Rodriguez, a career Los Angeles police officer who was a deputy commissioner in Baltimore from 2013 to 2015, said the department was resistant to change. 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. They testified he told them to carry BB guns to plant if they ever injured or killed an unarmed person, that he often took large quantities of drugs off of suspects without submitting them to the police evidence room. It's no wonder people come out meaner than when they come in.". "It ain't over. They said he prepared an arsenal of weapons and tools to begin carrying out burglaries. "This was a great abuse of the public trust," said Judge Blake. Another was to talk about how futile life inside the penal system is. Jenkins had joined the force at 23 after serving three years in the Marines, where he took up boxing. The BBC is not naming these three former supervisors, since none of them has been charged with a crime in connection with this case. "He's a pathological liar," Stepp says. He suggested another option. The ringleader, former Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, admitted committing multiple armed robberies and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs. Jenkins gave 150 percent on the street. Contact Justin Fenton at [email protected]. His eye socket was fractured. 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. At the time, Stepp was running his own bail bond company, Double D Bail Bonds. It took place as Jenkins and other officers were searching an apartment. Meanwhile, his Twitter account is full of pictures of him on set, hamming it up with Bernthal and some of the other actors. The officers with him hesitated, Ward said. 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. Now, the recommended punishment was significant: a demotion, a transfer and suspension for 15 to 20 days, including a period without pay, Hill told the television network Al-Jazeera. Burley's vehicle struck another, killing Mr Davis. Instead, while their cash and drugs were gone, the dealers were free men. He says something that I've never heard anyone admit out loud. 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. Or harm you or even kill you.". Yes, I did," he says. "And I remember taking the $10,000.". Historical Accuracy (Q&A): Is Sgt. 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