Pubdate: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 Source: Newsday (NY) Copyright: 2000, Newsday Inc. Contact: (516)843-2986 Website: http://www.newsday.com/ Author: Graham Rayman COPS IN DRUG BUST Federal Prosecutors Say They Transported Cocaine, Heroin Willie Parson was a highly decorated detective in the elite Manhattan North Homicide Task Force, which handles most of the big murder cases in the borough. He earned the Combat Cross for bravery under fire, and he had his brother locked up for cocaine possession. But federal prosecutors say that beginning sometime in 1998, Parson embarked on a double life. For three years, they said yesterday, Parson drove bricks of cocaine and heroin from a Manhattan-based drug network to customers in Detroit and Baltimore, making tens of thousands of dollars. Parson, 43, Det. Steven Fuller, 43, and Phillip Moog, 56, a retired detective and former police union delegate, were among 13 people arrested yesterday on charges of conspiring to distribute heroin and cocaine as part of a multistate drug distribution network affiliated with a Queens-based Colombian drug ring. Federal prosecutors charged that Fuller, a detective assigned to the Manhattan Warrants Squad, was a heroin chauffeur for the same group, which operated out of a clothing store at 158th Street and Broadway. The ring allegedly employed Moog, a private investigator working in Pennsylvania. According to a federal indictment filed yesterday at U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, Parson, Fuller and Moog were undone by one of their own handlers, clothing store owner Miladys Tineo, who turned against them after her arrest. Tineo agreed to allow federal agents to secretly record her phone conversations and wire her apartment for sound and video. "Once again, we have seen how the corrupt and the greedy fall prey to the allure of drug trafficking and the myth of its easy money," said U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch. According to the indictment, the officers were paid $3,000 per kilogram of heroin and $700 per kilogram of cocaine for delivery. Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart Altman said the officers used private cars but that records showed they employed their Police Department beepers to communicate with the drug dealers, that they carried their badges and that they they made and took calls in the precinct offices. "The benefit of using police officers was in if they ever got stopped," Altman said. Parson attended the Police Academy with Fuller and grew up with one of the people involved in the drug ring, a law enforcement official said. The allegation that police officers were working for the drug ring surfaced when Tineo complained to an informant that one of the police officers working for her had "ripped her off for $200,000." Tineo was arrested last month and began to cooperate with the FBI. Parson won the Combat Cross, one of the department's highest honors, for foiling a supermarket robbery in 1994 in Harlem. At their arraignment last night, Parson and Fuller pleaded not guilty. A bail hearing was scheduled for tomorrow. Parson's lawyer, John Jacobs, called the indictment a "single witness case" against a "highly decorated detective." He added that Parson's fiancee is a police sergeant. "I see no tape recordings, no seizures, I don't see representations as to tape recordings," said Jacobs. "It seems like a bald allegation. I want to see additional evidence." Fuller's lawyer, Paul Madden, declined to comment before the bail hearing. Altman said the officers face up to 15 years in federal prison if convicted. In a 1994 New York Newsday article about the supermarket case, law enforcement sources said Parson went to the market to buy a soda and happened on a security guard being robbed. He traded gunfire with the robbers and was wounded; the security guard died in the shoot-out. A week later, three suspects were arrested. In the article, it was reported that Parson, who grew up in Harlem, had his brother arrested when he became addicted to cocaine. The brother later became a successful salesman. - --- MAP posted-by: Terry F