Prosecutors in the case of seven indicted Austin District police officers used the officers’ own statements as well as audio and videotapes made during the last year to portray the cops as brazenly pursuing a pattern of corruption.
One of the group’s robberies, which authorities captured on videotape, shows two officers jumping out of an unmarked squad car and holding up at gunpoint an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer. Another robbery, authorities allege, occurred in the Austin District police station.
The motive for the robberies?
“It was easy money,” tactical unit officer M.L. Moore, one of the defendants, allegedly told officer Alex Ramos while trying to convince him to escort cocaine shipments for a drug kingpin.
Ramos related that oral exchange to investigators after his arrest, according to testimony in court Monday.
In another instance–this one captured on audio tape, tactical officers Edward Lee “Pacman” Jackson and Cornelius “Peanut” Tripp spoke with the man who tipped them off about a potential robbery.
Tripp and Jackson, who was described in court as a high-ranking gang member, allegedly had just ripped off a drug house of money and jewelry but were disappointed they didn’t find more cash.
“There wasn’t nothing but 13 (thousand) in there,” Jackson shouts into a telephone, his voice high-pitched and agitated. “We went in, there wasn’t nothing in there.”
The tape was played by federal prosecutors Brian Netols and Mark Filip in a hushed courtroom Monday at a detention hearing for six of the seven Austin tactical officers who are charged with robbing and extorting $65,990 from drug dealers during the last year.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ordered four of the suspended officers–Jackson, Moore, Tripp and Lennon Shields–detained until trial, saying the charges against them “represent the grossest violation of the public trust that can be imagined.”
“I know this is a time families like to be together,” Pallmeyer said in the courtroom, still crowded at 7 p.m. Monday as she ruled. “I know it’s very hard. I do not make this decision lightly.”
Pallmeyer appeared to be leaning toward releasing officers Gregory Crittleton and James Young on electronic monitors as long as their families post substantial bonds, but they remain in custody in the meantime.
Lawyers for two other defendants, officer Ramos and Charles Vaughan–who is not employed by the Police Department–had their bond hearings delayed until Friday.
City officials were in full-damage control mode Monday as Mayor Richard Daley applauded his Police Department for helping to uncover the ring of allegedly corrupt cops.
“I was never prouder of the Chicago Police Department than I was last week because after a two-year investigation, they uncovered–unfortunately–corruption within the Austin District,” Daley said at an impromptu news conference following a graduation for 99 police recruits at Navy Pier.
Both Daley and Police Supt. Matt Rodriguez acknowledged that more indictments of police officers could be forthcoming. One reason for their fears is that the indicted officers face such stiff prison terms that they might cooperate with the government and perhaps implicate other officers.
Despite Monday’s allegation that Jackson is a high-ranking gang member, police officials defended their hiring procedures. The department conducts a criminal background check on any police recruit, including Jackson, and also interviews neighbors and associates, said Police Department spokesman Paul Jenkins.
“There was nothing to indicate gang affiliation in his background,” Jenkins said.
Complaints that Austin tactical officers were robbing drug dealers first started trickling into the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division about two years ago. Austin neighborhood residents have long complained about corruption in the tactical unit. Last December, the police asked for help from the FBI.
The indictment, which was made public Friday, includes 12 instances in which the officers either robbed or extorted money from undercover agents.
Monday’s hearing provided a glimpse into the conduct of officers whom Rodriguez has described as “brazenly corrupt.”
Among the most startling allegations: Jackson, a 26-year-old whose nickname is Pacman, is a “high-ranking” officer in the Conservative Vice Lords, a powerful West Side street gang.
Just a week ago, four of Jackson’s gang associates allegedly paid a surprise visit to a key government informant, nicknamed “Boogi,” who hadn’t seen the gang members in four months.
“He was in fear of his life,” FBI Special Agent R. Lee Walters testified. “We took him into protective custody and relocated him.”
After Jackson’s arrest, investigators searched his locker at the Austin District station and found a photograph of him and about 15 other men, many of whom were “throwing” the Conservative Vice Lords hand signal, Walters testified. The photograph was part of a funeral card for a slain Vice Lord.
They also found newspaper articles about Willie Lloyd, a Vice Lord rival now in a federal prison in Colorado, Walters told the court.
Other new details that surfaced in court Monday:
– An undercover agent posing as a drug dealer and using the name “Silky” was brought to the Austin District and stripped search because several of the indicted officers feared he was working for the government and wearing a wire.
– Two weeks ago, the Austin District tactical unit held a Christmas party during which the officers openly discussed fears that they may be indicted, even though the investigation had not yet been made public.
– Moore allegedly threatened a witness in a wrongful death suit that was filed against him by the mother of a wheelchair-bound teenager who died during a skirmish with Moore. Moore allegedly first suggested that he might plant drugs on the witness and later threatened violence. Earlier this year, the jury awarded the teenager’s mother $100,000.
– Drugs were found in the police lockers of four of the indicted police officers, and all but Jackson allegedly made admissions to investigators after their arrests. Investigators also found 11 guns in the officers’ homes; they suspect some of them had been confiscated in police investigations.
The tapes that were played Monday suggest that “Boogi” was a key cog in the investigation– someone who had the trust of the tactical officers and directed them to the undercover agent who was posing as a drug kingpin, an easy and lucrative target.
He was the one who tipped Jackson and Tripp to the drug house in November. Later he would collect $5,000 and a gold chain as payment under a car at a beef stand in Oak Park, according to testimony.
According to testimony at Monday’s hearing, when Tripp, who has been on the police force for less than two years, was taken into custody Friday, he told the arresting officers: “You got me. You caught me. I ruined my family.”
Rodriguez could have been quoting Tripp when he addressed the police academy graduates: Do your job with honesty and integrity or watch your lives be destroyed like those of the indicted Austin officers.
“Their careers, their lives are changed,” Rodriguez said. “Their loved ones are scarred by their involvement in corruption.
“They made the wrong decision,” he said, adding, “Don’t you make the wrong decision.”
