An undercover Chicago police officer who posed as a drug dealer testified Wednesday that Officer Baxter Streets pulled $12,000 in cash from a jacket pocket of the undercover officer in a robbery Streets and two other tactical unit officers allegedly pulled off while on duty last year.
Streets and his partner, Tyrone Francies, say they were conned by a third officer, Gerald Meachum, and didn’t realize a robbery had taken place.
But testimony by the undercover officer, Lorenzo Jackson, a 29-year Chicago police veteran, and audio tapes of the incident appeared to put Streets in the middle of the robbery.
The three Gresham District officers and co-defendant Robert Meeks, an alleged drug dealer, are on trial on charges of robbing Jackson and a second undercover officer in separate incidents in November and December 1996.
Meeks allegedly recruited Garry Brown to help find drug dealers to set up to be robbed by the officers, but Brown was cooperating with authorities after a drug arrest and tipped officials to the scheme.
“Whose’s this?” a transcript of an audio tape of the December incident quoted Streets as asking Jackson as he allegedly pulled the $12,000 from Jackson’s pocket. “Man, what the (expletive) you doing with all this, man?”
Moments later, Streets told Francies to “handcuff (Jackson), must be selling dope over here,” according to Jackson and the transcript of the conversation.
Streets then produced a half of a kilogram of phony cocaine from the car in which Jackson had been sitting with Brown.
“So this here isn’t your drugs then either, is it?” the transcript quoted Streets as asking.
Despite the evidence that a drug deal had been interrupted–the recovery of what appeared to be a substantial amount of cocaine and $12,000 cash–the officers decided to let the undercover officer leave, though without the drugs or cash.
“What you all want to do with him, give him a break?” Meachum was quoted as saying in the transcript. “I, I believe this guy.”
“Send him on his way,” the transcript quoted Streets as saying.
