Pubdate: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 Source: Detroit News (MI) Copyright: 2003, The Detroit News Contact: http://detnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/126 Author: Ronald J. Hansen, The Detroit News Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm ( Corruption - United States) DETROIT COP ADMITS HE FALSIFIED REPORT, AGREES TO TESTIFY AGAINST FELLOW OFFICERS DETROIT -- A Detroit police officer on Friday acknowledged he lied about finding cocaine in a woman's purse and agreed to become a witness for federal prosecutors in a police misconduct case involving 18 current and former officers. By pleading guilty to depriving the woman of her civil rights -- a misdemeanor -- Hubert Brown of Detroit becomes a central witness to the government's case, believed to be one of the largest of its kind. Eighteen officers have been indicted on charges they falsified reports, planted evidence on suspects, conducted illegal searches, stole money and assaulted people. The bombshell allegations grew out of a U.S. Justice Department civil-rights investigation of the Detroit Police Department that began in December 2000. "I wrote a false report," Brown, 37, told U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn matter of factly during his guilty plea. Brown, who remains free on bail, and his attorney declined to comment after the hearing. Brown faces up to a year in prison and a fine for his crime and has agreed to quit the department. In court papers, Brown said that on May 2, 2000, Officers Matthew Zani and Christopher Ruiz convinced him to write a police report in which he claimed to arrest Tracey Marie Brown outside her Detroit house. At the time, he said he found crack cocaine in her purse. Hubert Brown now says Zani and Ruiz, along with others, entered the woman's house without a search warrant. Hubert Brown lied in testimony against Tracey Brown, and she eventually pleaded guilty in that case, records show. The Browns are not related. Hubert Brown's agreement to testify for the government is the first crack in what has so far been solid support within the department's rank-and-file for the officers. Nine of the 18 accused officers are scheduled for a Jan. 20 trial. The government's case calls into question scores, if not hundreds, of criminal convictions that were based on the work of the indicted officers, who served an average of 10 years each on the force, officials have said. At least five people currently in state prison may have been wrongfully convicted, prosecutors have said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake