We Own This City, an HBO Max miniseries out April 25, about a Baltimore Police Department (BPD) task force unit that went rogue, highlights some of the . Judge Blake ultimately decided to sentence him to 25 years, saying she was taking into consideration the fact that he pleaded guilty and co-operated to some extent with the prosecutors. While researching the We Own This City true story, we confirmed that the real Wayne Jenkins had spent three years in the Marines before joining the Baltimore Police Department in 2003. A lot of what he told me was much more systematic. Ward wasnt sure what to make of it. Hill could not be reached by The Sun for comment. Instead, they go out looking for illegal activity people exchanging drugs or displaying bulges under clothing that could be guns. 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 resigned and the top spot at the Baltimore Police Department remains vacant. A reporter also reviewed videos of judicial proceedings stemming from the officers arrests. He was convicted on multiple counts including racketeering, robbery and falsification of records. "an inmate in a federal prison," the robot finishes. He took pictures of himself and Jenkins together inside the police department, where Stepp would sometimes pick up 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. 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. He calls Stepp "the biggest exaggerator I've ever met in my life". Sure enough, no report was ever made. Stepp turned everything over to the US prosecutors. 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. He has covered the Baltimore Police Department and crime in Baltimore since 2008. I sold drugs as a dirty cop," he says. Jenkins said hed tried to be nice, but now they were going to jail. 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 . One of the most shocking incidents from the plea agreement is an event that Jenkins now unequivocally denies. But he says he was also struggling with a gambling addiction and dealing large amounts of cocaine. 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. Jenkins pleaded guilty in court on January 5, 2018, for numerous counts of four of these charges. April 25, 2022 5:45 PM EDT. The GTTF did not hold a monopoly on harm, of course. I just knew it was a lie, Ward recalls. In his plea deal, Jenkins admitted he planted heroin on Burley to try to justify the fatal collision. 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. The pair also stole valuables, like high-end wrist watches, in break-ins. I wasnt privy. Then they could enter the house and take the money, only later calling county officers to say they were executing the warrant. "What chance do we have when you have people like Jenkins and his co-defendants fabricating evidence?". Victims like Bumgardner and Whiting had the courage to speak out. It was billed at the time as the largest cocaine seizure in department history, one of Jenkins many large-scale seizures. 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. 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. It took place as Jenkins and other officers were searching an apartment. The leaked case file doesnt say why. Wayne Jenkins and former Det. 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 never took nothing from a looter, so help me god. 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. "Immediately, we get together and you go over your story. In 2010, when Deputy Commissioner Anthony Barksdale wanted a special squad to go after elusive suspects, Jenkins was picked for the group. He said he started dealing drugs at age 9, selling. The apartment complex had a camera in the parking lot. "I'm in prison for 25 years, there's no reason to lie.". And that is what they want, German said, according to an Internal Affairs report. The important difference, however, is that the drug dealers never swore an oath to serve and protect. He popped the trunk and carried the drugs into the garage. I got gangster charges, racketeering charges, things they usually give the mob, who were burying bodies in cement.". 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. "Now we're going to burn it down. Jenkins winced as the handcuffs were placed on his wrists, and US Marshals led him out of a back door of the courtroom. He and other officers had raided a car wash, recovering more than a kilogram of drugs and $4,000 from a hidden desk compartment which could be opened only using magnets within a fish tank. "Especially because we're short on time, is there anything that you kind of want to just say right off the bat?" Read about our approach to external linking. Prosecutors pointed to the fact that Jenkins fabricated evidence, like producing a bogus iPhone video of his officers cracking a drug dealer's safe, when they had in fact already broken into it and stolen $200,000 in cash. They walked far enough so they couldnt be seen from the street. He told me that frequently, when he or his fellow officers didn't feel like submitting the drugs they seized or doing arrest paperwork, they'd simply confiscate people's drug stashes and let them go. "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.". However, the focus on quantity rather than quality led Jenkins and the seven other GTTF officers to start planting evidence, take money from the homes they invaded, and even resell the drugs they seized back onto the streets. The jury was shown axes, machetes and pry bars, as well as black masks that were found in Jenkins' van after his arrest. That made it very tempting when, sometime around 2011, Jenkins approached Stepp and suggested they go into business together. "It's that simple.". Please sign up today and help make a difference. But already he was working in a plainclothes flex unit that rewarded dynamic officers and gave them freedom to roam. Jenkins, shown here with then-Commissioner Kevin Davis, was awarded a bronze star in April 2016 for his efforts to save injured officers during the unrest a year earlier. "I still maintain my innocence. This series was supported by the Pulitzer Center. With the investigations behind him, Jenkins seemed emboldened. What had he gotten himself into? Wayne Jenkins a former Marine? And were not getting Jenkins.. His supervisors and others either failed to see the red flags or chose to ignore them. His account and Jenkins claim that hed found the gun is evocative of testimony by two of Jenkins officers in the 2018 Gun Trace Task Force trial. I deserve to go to jail.". He served 20 months of a five year sentence in connection with the Gun Trace Task Force case, before being granted a compassionate release. Jenkins names two specific locations where he says the drugs get tossed: a train bridge near the Eastern District police station, and a wooded highway off-ramp on the way to the Northern District police station. But Jenkins wanted to argue the details in his plea agreement, saying many of them weren't true. I asked him if he thinks that another scandal is inevitable. A plea agreement is a document that lists specific criminal acts that the defendant is agreeing to plead guilty to. BALTIMORE, MD A Baltimore police sergeant has admitted to robbing citizens, selling stolen drugs and putting innocent men behind bars, among other offenses. Wayne Jenkins. Stepp was on home confinement for six months with an ankle monitor until this summer. His police department personnel file shows no punishment related to the case. It was difficult for me to understand and parse all of Jenkins' denials, now. BALTIMORE The Baltimore City Board of Estimates paid out a $6 million settlement Wednesday to the family of a bystander who died during a police chase by the . Your digital subscription helps pay for The Baltimore Sun's investigative reporting. 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. On an oddly balmy January night, Jenkins and Fries were working the McElderry Park neighborhood in East Baltimore when they noticed two brothers drinking Steel Reserve beers on the sidewalk outside their rowhouse. And of course, Jenkins is also hoping for a sentenced reduction of some kind. But nothing more. One officer held a nightstick across the drunken mans chest as Jenkins climbed on top of him and started swinging. They claimed they didnt see who did it. 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. Amid controversies over the years, police brass would publicly disband the units, then reconstitute them with the same personnel under a different name. There's no telling how many other people were affected, but were too afraid to come forward. In Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago, plainclothes teams have been charged with corruption. Later in 2015, he took over a new squad of plainclothes officers within the latest rebranding, the Special Enforcement Section. Ex-police sergeant Wayne Earl Jenkins apologized in the courtroom for the crimes he committed at the same time as he was head of an elite squad referred to as the Gun Trace Task . Despite Jenkins bravado, the jury found in favor of OConnor and awarded $75,000. All this happened over nothing, one of the brothers, Charles Lee, recalled recently. 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 . But the Baltimore states attorneys office continued to use Jenkins. 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". "He is no more than a common criminal," Davis' daughter, Shirley Johnson, said of Jenkins. On Friday, both detectives Evodio Hendrix and Maurice Ward were sentenced to seven years in prison. They are not typically tethered to specific posts, or burdened by responding to 911 calls. 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. "Later on that evening, Gondo did give me money, that means hours later, I'm talking hours later, he gave me money.". 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. 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. "It ain't over. But he added, All disciplinary decisions were put through the proper consideration by command staff and BPD legal department. In the gloom I see the number of the bureau of prisons light up my cell phone screen. The topic: Can we get Wayne Jenkins? In another man's house, the GTTF broke into a safe and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm standing in my pandemic "radio studio" - aka the closet in my apartment - surrounded by hangers holding button-up shirts and dresses. Donny made every piece of that up.". At OConnors trial, Fries remarked that the others were worthless and didnt meet the standards of the organized crime unit. Yes, I did," he says. 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. "He drew first blood," Stepp says of Jenkins. Once it left my shop they had reduced the punishment.. 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. No single person was in a position to make unilateral discipline decisions.. Maurice Ward, the former detective now in prison, also remembers De Sousa coming to the rescue and reducing the punishment, though he believes Jenkins was still suspended. 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). He said they were confiscating the cash and 20 pounds of marijuana. For example, I asked him about the robbery of a man who lived in a large mansion in the suburbs of Baltimore - a robbery he pled guilty to in his plea agreement. 2023 BBC. I've been reporting on Jenkins, and the elite Gun Trace Task Force squad he once led, for nearly four years. He's doing, as he likes to say, "rather swell". It is simply not true., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake denied Oakleys motion to suppress the evidence. ', "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 crimejust get him.". "Obviously I'm in here now, so I see both sides. 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. He counters that the units helped bring down crime, and says he made it a point to scrutinize their conduct. Then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a news conference to tout one of Jenkins big drug busts. I never heard back, and he didn't seem to be responding to anyone else, either. 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". Jenkins said: "I never had [theft complaints] because I never took money off individuals. He was serving his sentence at the Edgefield Federal Correctional Facility in South Carolina until 2020. "This was a great abuse of the public trust," said Judge Blake. Read about our approach to external linking. Yet another of Jenkins' friends said something I wasn't expecting. Jenkins, who until his arrest was viewed within the Baltimore Police Department as one of its most high-performing officers, is serving 25 years in prison after he pleaded guilty in 2017 to. Credit: U.S. Attorney's Office. Jenkins must serve three years of supervised release after his custodial sentence. Jenkins would stop bringing those big drug seizures to the evidence room, and instead give them to Stepp to sell. The GTTF was made up of eight officers, all but one of whom were indicted. Then the feds found him. I did give drugs to Donny [Stepp, who testified he and Jenkins sold $1 million worth of narcotics] 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. Jenkins was a member of the Baltimore police department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a plain-clothed unit tasked with finding guns and drugs in bulk in a bid to tackle the city's high murder. Wayne Jenkins posed as a . They'd known one another's families as children. From 2006 to 2009, Jenkins was the subject of at least four lawsuits alleging misconduct. Both men have requested new trials. His fee will be donated to the victims of the Gun Trace Task Force. Human error to blame for train crash - Greek PM, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece. 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. 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