Pubdate: Mon, 07 May 2001
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2001 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/homepage.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: Leonard Levitt
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption)

DRUG-TRAFFICKING PROBE CONTINUES

Federal officials are investigating whether one or more police officers 
were involved with a recently demoted deputy inspector accused of narcotics 
violations while in a Bronx homicide-narcotics task force six years ago, 
sources told Newsday yesterday.

The deputy inspector, Dennis Sindone, was demoted to captain Friday, less 
than a month after Commissioner Bernard Kerik had promoted him. After the 
promotion, he had been placed on modified assignment, his badge taken from him.

Police sources say his promotion, which came after he had been a captain 
for about a year, had been recommended to Kerik by a sergeant in Kerik's 
security detail who had served with Sindone in the same Bronx task force.

Kerik's spokesman Tom Antenen declined to comment.

Police sources said the task force was put together in the 1990s as police 
officials determined that most homicides were drug related. The unit, which 
worked closely with the detective bureau, was disbanded about a year and a 
half ago, the sources said.

In what appears to be the first whiff of major police corruption under 
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the department has portrayed Sindone's actions as 
isolated and occurring while he was off duty, but sources said the feds are 
investigating the possibility that more cops may have been involved. 
Neither the department nor the feds have described the specific allegations 
against Sindone.

But three sources told Newsday last week that Sindone is accused of 
protecting a drug shipment, a charge his attorney Philip Karasyk said, 
"Sindone categorically denies." Most disturbing to top department officials 
is, first, that Sindone, an 18-year veteran, is the highest ranking 
department official ever implicated in alleged drug trafficking and, 
second, that he was enormously well-regarded at One Police Plaza.

As a chief for whom he worked put it last week, "If Dennis did this, he 
must have been desperate." Police sources say the allegations against 
Sindone were first brought to the feds by a confidential informant seeking 
a better deal for himself after his arrest on undisclosed charges. Yet 
despite the source of the allegations, no one in the department has rushed 
to defend Sindone.

A top police official said last week, "The question is not whether or not 
Sindone will lose his job but whether or not he will go to jail." 
Apparently, the feds have more than the word of a confidential informant.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager