Jenkins, meanwhile, was the best officer I had working under my command, Fries said. Barksdale, the former deputy commissioner who crafted department strategies from 2007 to 2012, leaned heavily on plainclothes units. Your digital subscription helps pay for The Baltimore Sun's investigative reporting. No one took anything, but Jenkins later mused about the possibilities. Jenkins gave 150 percent on the street. I thought, How is he doing it? 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. He is very remorseful.". "Seen it done, honest to god, 500 times.". "You have nightmares about police officers harassing you, beating you up, just locking you up, it's just a nightmare that I have and it basically hasn't gone away yet," he said. In the annals of the Baltimore Police Department, Wayne Jenkins name was not being associated with wrongdoing. He woke up on a frigid city street with his jaw shattered, and couldn't eat solid food for months. It didn't take long before Stepp began to suspect that Jenkins ratted him out. 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. Lets get this done, but were going to do it 100 percent. Nothing was 10 percent.. Jenkins was hired by the Baltimore Police Department in 2003, according to state records obtained by The Baltimore Sun. The bondsman would take care of selling them, then split the profits with the police sergeant. But the Baltimore states attorneys office continued to use Jenkins. And of course, Jenkins is also hoping for a sentenced reduction of some kind. Amid controversies over the years, police brass would publicly disband the units, then reconstitute them with the same personnel under a different name. 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. Because believe me, I'll stand my ground in a second.". It was his first public appearance since he was arrested along with six other officers last year. And while searching the area, Jenkins claimed, he found a BB gun under a nearby car. One of the most surprising witnesses was a man named Donald Stepp, a bail bondsman, who revealed that he'd been selling drugs Jenkins brought him from work. After he was sent to federal lock-up, I wrote Jenkins a letter once a year - along with many other journalists, book authors, producers and documentary filmmakers - requesting an interview. Later on, he claims, they'd throw the drugs out the window or down a sewer grate. Gillian Whitfield recalled Jenkins as sweet and always willing to lend a hand. Jenkins, along with Detective Ben Frieman, had followed an African American man driving a nice car through Northeast Baltimore. They said he prepared an arsenal of weapons and tools to begin carrying out burglaries. "Nobody still knows the truth about what's going on in the city," Taylor told the judge. They walked far enough so they couldnt be seen from the street. They told me they were disturbed that he was being portrayed as a "monster". I just knew it was a lie, Ward recalls. Nobody said yes or no, instead expressing ambivalence. He admitted to knowing . What if a complaint was made? Stepp and Jenkins' history runs deep. "This was a great abuse of the public trust," said Judge Blake. A lot of what he told me was much more systematic. 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. Jenkins entered a department steeped in zero tolerance a war on crime fueled by arrests for even minor infractions. And that is what they want, German said, according to an Internal Affairs report. He reminds me that the US Attorney's office found him more credible than Jenkins. He said they were confiscating the cash and 20 pounds of marijuana. It feels a little bit like splitting hairs. Their work is not to be confused with undercover operations, in which police officers assume a different identity and worm their way into a criminal organization. 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 . It turned out that federal agents had the unit under surveillance for months. In fact, Fries went on to promote Jenkins in June 2006 into a high-profile plainclothes unit called the Organized Crime Division. Oakley took the rare step of getting onto the witness stand to rebut the officers, as did an independent witness who backed his account. He idolizes this guy, said Shelley Glenn, another prosecutor. They said that while they had their backs turned, someone had clocked OConnor and taken off. Both men have requested new trials. 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 BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. He told the other officers to leave their cell phones and police vests in the car. What Detective Wayne Jenkins wrote in his affidavit for the search warrant was a complete fabrication, Oakley said. One member of the task force during Jenkins leadership, Detective John Clewell, was not charged with any crimes. 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. For the past four years, Jessica Lussenhop has been reporting on the rise and fall of a corrupt squad of Baltimore police officers. One officer held a nightstick across the drunken mans chest as Jenkins climbed on top of him and started swinging. After three weeks of astonishing testimony, the jury found the two remaining officers guilty. This call is from", A human voice breaks in: "Wayne Jenkins.". At that time, it was within De Sousas purview as the deputy commissioner in charge of administrative matters to intervene to resolve a discipline case, according to another former deputy commissioner, Jason Johnson. 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. Former Baltimore Police Department Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, currently inmate number 62928-037 at a federal prison in Kentucky, is on the line. "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.". 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. That while the homicide rate was on a historic rise, this elite, eight-officer team was getting guns off the streets at an astonishing rate. But overall, plaintiffs prevailed in at least three lawsuits accusing Jenkins of beatings or other misconduct from 2006 to 2009, resulting in $90,000 in taxpayer payouts. Yes. The ringleader, former Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, admitted committing multiple armed robberies and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs. Using wiretaps and hidden recording devices, they had accumulated a wealth of evidence showing the officers were robbing citizens, filing for hundreds of hours of overtime they never worked, stealing drugs and even selling illegal firearms back on the streets. It was the perfect crime. Five of the former officers, including Jenkins, pleaded guilty. When Jenkins called him to a house the GTTF was investigating, Stepp took pictures of the officers going in and out. You tried catching me all day, and you cant, because Im telling the truth, Jenkins told the lawyer. My thoughts return to Kenneth Bumgardner, a hard-working father who was chased by the squad when they suspected him of having marijuana. While he may not be ready to let go of his animus towards Jenkins, Stepp's strange journey seems - at least for now - to be heading towards a happy ending. The courtroom was also packed with Jenkins' family and friends. 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 is no more than a common criminal," Davis' daughter, Shirley Johnson, said of Jenkins. 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. OConnor had spent much of the day tossing back beers at the Brewers Hill Pub & Grill in Southeast Baltimore when the manager asked him to leave. Jenkins got a bronze star for his part in the 2009 recovery of 41 kilograms of cocaine $1 million worth in a mans truck. Inside was a stack of bills. 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. I mean, it had velocity, Jenkins said. He also names two former supervisors who he says he complained to about his former subordinate officers, Momodu Gondo and Jemell Rayam, saying they had bad reputations for stealing money. His supervisors and others either failed to see the red flags or chose to ignore them. Becoming Wayne Jenkins: Jon Bernthal's Deep Dive Into We Own This City 's Corrupt Cop For the HBO miniseries, the actor went on nightly ride-alongs and spoke at length with the imprisoned. 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 could have spoken up.". In our conversation, Jenkins says that that's not true - members of the squad did steal money that day, but from somewhere else in the house. Command created the monster, she said, and allowed it to go unchecked.. 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. "He drew first blood," Stepp says of Jenkins. 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. He goes on and on gushing about Sergeant Jenkins, Assistant States Attorney Jenifer Layman said. Jenkins earned praise outside the department, too. The sergeant took no one else from the flex squad. 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 calls Stepp "the biggest exaggerator I've ever met in my life". He has covered the Baltimore Police Department and crime in Baltimore since 2008. Stepp was on home confinement for six months with an ankle monitor until this summer. In federal prison, inmates are only allowed to talk on the phone for 15 minutes before the line is automatically cut. "It's that simple.". Within days, prosecutors issued a letter to police saying they were declining to charge Jenkins with a crime. The jury found against the officer who broke Sneeds jaw but cleared Jenkins. April 25, 2022 5:45 PM EDT. Hill told Al-Jazeera it was because then-Deputy Commissioner De Sousa got involved. At the time, Stepp was running his own bail bond company, Double D Bail Bonds. In January 2018, a long list of victims took the stand - many of whom had ties to the drug trade - and told harrowing stories of how they were robbed by the officers during car stops and searches of their homes. In a recent interview, Simon told The Sun, I never had no BB gun. 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. Please sign up today and help make a difference. Jon Bernthal embedded with Baltimore police to play city's dirtiest cop in HBO's "We Own This City" On "Salon Talks" Bernthal reveals he spoke to the real Sgt. And were not getting Jenkins.. Would they report the incident? "Now we're going to burn it down. Critics argue Barksdale was among police leaders who fostered a warrior culture, to the citys detriment. "We're not stupid. The show briefly depicts Wayne Jenkins' wife in episode 5, and we are told that Wayne takes time off for the impending birth of his child. 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. 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. 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. Yes, I did," he says. 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. Plainclothes officers must constantly be checked by leadership, Barksdale said, with commanders inquiring about irregularities in their work and excessive overtime pay. As backup arrived, Jenkins spotted a man named George Sneed across the street. He started to worry. Become a subscriber today to support investigative reporting like this. Jenkins did not testify at the trial, but in a way, he was the star of the entire proceeding. He points to the plea agreement, in which Jenkins agreed that his cut of their drug sales came to roughly $250,000. 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. 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. Wayne was a cops cop, local hero kind of guy, said Cirello, the retired officer. Plainclothes officers made the most arrests, they seized the most drugs and money, assets, former Police Commissioner Kevin Davis told The Sun. The conversation with Jenkins gets more complicated when we turn specifically to the crimes of the Gun Trace Task Force. "I have no respect for him.". The drop-offs included marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, all of which Stepp did his best to sell. Then the feds found him. Over the years, I wrote to all of these former officers in prison several times, asking them to help me understand their breathtaking crimes. 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. He says he couldn't risk it as a father with a young family. He was like King Kong, the officer, who still works for the police department, recalled. "I still maintain my innocence. 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