A Gresham District police officer took the witness stand Monday to deny robbing two drug dealers, who were in fact undercover officers, and said he acted in good faith in the two incidents by running suspected criminals out of the neighborhood.
Baxter Streets, the only one of three officers on trial to testify, conceded that no arrests had been made in what he believed at the time to be interrupted drug deals involving large sums of cash.
But no narcotics were recovered in the first incident, Streets said. And a package intended by authorities to look like a half-kilogram of cocaine was quickly discounted as being real by the officers involved in the second case.
Since there wasn’t enough evidence of criminal activity either time to justify arrests, Streets contended he and the other two officers fulfilled their responsibilities by scaring the apparent drug dealers from the area.
Streets insisted that was what he meant when moments after one of the alleged robberies he was secretly recorded announcing, “We so (expletive) smooth, it’s ridiculous.”
“That’s doing your job,” Streets said of what he contended was a self-congratulatory comment. “I’ve never robbed anybody in my life.”
Prosecutors have a different view of the actions by Streets and two other officers on trial, contending they robbed the undercover agents posing as drug dealers of a total of $23,000 last year.
Streets admitted in each case he either handled or saw money but insisted he didn’t personally take any cash, nor share in any that was stolen by another officer.
Streets said he and his partner, Tyrone Francies, were providing backup for officer Gerald Meachum in both of the incidents, even though the three arrived in the same car at the scene of the second alleged robbery.
Streets said that in both cases, one of Meachum’s street informants, Garry Brown, had tipped him to drug deals Brown said were to be carried out.
But Brown testified earlier as a prosecution witness that he had become an FBI informant hoping for lenient treatment after being arrested for drug possession and that he tipped off authorities that the three officers and a friend of his, Robert Meeks, were seeking other drug dealers to rip off.
Authorities said that information led them to set up a sting operation in which two undercover Chicago police officers posed as drug dealers.
On Nov. 15, 1996, Streets admitted he promptly went to where $11,000 was concealed in what he believed to be the vehicle of a drug dealer. He denied Meachum had told him where the money would be, saying the bag containing the cash was openly in view and the only thing visible inside the car.
Streets said he left the bag in car and assumed the suspect left with it when police decided there was not enough evidence to charge him.
During the second case, on Dec. 4, 1996, Streets said he pulled a wad of cash from the suspected drug dealer’s jacket pocket and handed it to Meachum.
But he testified that as far as he knew, none of the officers kept what authorities said was $12,000.
Streets, who is married with two young children, also admitted he had an affair with Jamie Wright beginning in June 1991, a month after she turned 18. At the time. he believed she was in her early 20s because “I met her in a bar,” he said. The relationship produced possibly one child , Streets said.
Wright, who testified earlier in the trial that she witnessed Streets steal cash from other drug dealers about 20 times, also said their relationship began when she was only 15 and that Streets fathered three children with her.
During his cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jerome Krulewitch brought out videotapes time-stamped from late 1988 and 1989, that were recovered from Streets’ police locker, showed him having sex with Wright.
“I didn’t even know she existed in 1988,” Streets said. “The dates (on the videotapes) obviously are not right.”
Streets’ co-defendants–Francies, Meachum and Meeks, who is charged in helping set up the robberies–chose not to testify.
Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Tuesday in a trial now in its fifth week.
