Pubdate: Mon, 22 Mar 2004
Source: New York Times (NY)
Section: New York Region
Copyright: 2004 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Authors:  Jim Dwyer, William K. Rashbaum
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm (Drug Raids)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States)

TELLTALE WORDS ON A 1996 TAPE ARE RECALLED IN A POLICE INQUIRY

Except for one extraordinary twist, the raid on Apartment 10B in March 1996 
would have vanished long ago into the dense annals of New York 
crime-fighting. A team of police officers and federal agents, hunting for 
evidence against a drug gang, broke into the apartment, on upper Madison 
Avenue. They pulled open drawers, looked in closets and upended cushions. 
They left behind their search warrant, on which they noted that they had 
not found the very first item they had come looking for: "monies."

Yet a fluke event - "once in a hundred years," as a lawyer later said - 
provided a candid glimpse of the search and raised troublesome questions.

During the commotion, someone turned on a telephone answering machine's 
recorder, apparently without realizing it. For the next 30 minutes, the 
machine captured the clamor and chatter of the search: an exclamation, "My 
God, that's a lot of money;" a wisecrack about the Constitution; a crude 
racial remark about the apartment's residents, who were not home.

Seven minutes into the tape, a man can be heard quietly counting. "Six 
hundred," he says. "Eight hundred. Nine hundred." Twenty-nine seconds 
later, the sound of a zipper is heard.

Annette Brown, who lived in the apartment and played a minor role in her 
son's drug business, later told authorities that $900 in cash had 
disappeared from a zippered portfolio. The police and federal agents all 
denied seeing money. At least three official investigations of Ms. Brown's 
claim and tape led to no charges.

Now, eight years later, as the New York Police Department faces allegations 
of corruption on a much grander scale, Carlos Rodriguez, the detective who 
was in charge of tallying evidence from the Brown apartment, has again come 
under scrutiny, for an entirely separate episode. This time, a retired 
detective claims to have shared money taken from a drug dealer with 
Detective Rodriguez, according to a person who has been briefed on the inquiry.

Detective Rodriguez is among 10 current or former police officers who 
worked drug cases in upper Manhattan and are now under investigation for 
their conduct over the last decade, based on claims of corruption from the 
retired detective and his partner, according to law enforcement officials 
and people with knowledge of the case. So far, the retired detective, 
Thomas Rachko, and his partner, Julio C. Vasquez, are the only current or 
former officers who have been charged in the case, indicted on narcotics 
conspiracy, money laundering and other charges. Both men, along with 
Detective Rodriguez and at least one former officer also under scrutiny, 
have had discussions with prosecutors, people with knowledge of the 
investigation have said.

Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of 
New York, whose office, along with the Police Department's Internal Affairs 
Bureau, is investigating the case, would not comment. Neither would a 
lawyer for Detective Rodriguez.

The Police Department believes that no money was taken in the 1996 
incident, Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne said, so the case could not 
represent a missed opportunity to stop the sort of misconduct now under 
investigation. The department contends that the tape is a kind of audio 
illusion, with the provocative-sounding section actually best understood as 
jokes, sarcastic remarks or, in the case of the racial slur, simply 
inappropriate language.

Even so, the accidental taping of the raid, and the investigation that 
followed, offer a rare view of the perilous intersections of police, drug 
dealers and cash. At times, drug dealers have been able to use false 
allegations of wrongdoing as a weapon against aggressive police work. It is 
also true that corrupt police officers have been able to steal from drug 
dealers, assured that any accusation could come only from criminals whose 
stories of wrongdoing would be viewed with the utmost skepticism.

In the Brown case, department officials said last week that they did not 
think the tape by itself established that money was in the apartment, and 
that Ms. Brown's credibility was weak. Her lawyer, Peter J. Neufeld, said 
that Ms. Brown gave a straightforward account of petty theft, and did not 
embroider her story with the more garish sums often mentioned in such cases.

Mr. Neufeld provided a copy of the tape from Ms. Brown's answering machine 
that was returned to him by federal prosecutors after the investigation. An 
account of the search of her apartment, as well as subsequent events in 
1996, has been pieced together from the tape, from records that were 
disclosed as part of an unrelated court proceeding, and from interviews 
with Ms. Brown and law-enforcement officials.

The intrigue began shortly after the raid, when Ms. Brown returned home on 
March 22, 1996, to find her apartment, at 1735 Madison Avenue, near 115th 
Street, in disarray. A grown son, Garrick, was involved in dealing P.C.P., 
and though he lived in the Bronx, he was an occasional visitor to Ms. 
Brown's apartment. Ms. Brown would eventually plead guilty to abetting his 
operation, in exchange for a sentence of probation. Her son, who also 
pleaded guilty, is serving a 15-year term in federal prison.

In an interview at her home on Friday evening, Ms. Brown said she recalled 
seeing the answering machine dangling by its cord from the dresser, but it 
was not her first worry. "That was my bedroom, and it was so messed up," 
she said. "I said, 'Where's my money?' It was in, like a binder that closed 
along the sides with a zipper. The money was stuck down in it. The binder 
was in the bottom drawer in my dresser. I think it was about a thousand 
dollars. The binder was gone. Nothing else personal was taken - my jewelry 
was still there, my coats."

As she and her sister began to straighten the apartment, the answering 
machine was beeping or making some sort of noise, she said. "Evidently, 
they knocked it over and they didn't know it was running," she said.

The next day, she met with Mr. Neufeld, who spoke directly with Mary Jo 
White, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. 
Ms. White assigned the case to an assistant in charge of public corruption. 
A grand jury began hearing evidence. Ms. Brown gave the prosecutors her 
PhoneMate 3700 answering machine and the original tape. Mr. Neufeld 
arranged for her to take a polygraph test at the New York Lie Detection 
Laboratories. The examiner said she truthfully answered all the questions 
about the missing money, a report from May 9, 1996, shows. The prosecutors 
later repeated the polygraph; the results of that test were not disclosed, 
but Mr. Neufeld said he thought that the prosecutors would have notified 
him if Ms. Brown had failed.

The police inquiry into Ms. Brown's statement was handled by its Internal 
Affairs Bureau, according to Deputy Commissioner Browne, the department's 
chief spokesman.

On Sept. 4, 1996, nearly six months after the apartment was searched, 
Detective Rodriguez met with Internal Affairs investigators and the federal 
prosecutor. They asked about the zippered portfolio. "He does not 
specifically remember the black organizer, but asserts that if it was in 
the dresser he probably removed and searched it," an Internal Affairs 
report says. "Rodriguez claims to have only vouchered receipts (beepers, 
rent and cars) and only one list."

The answering machine tape was played for Detective Rodriguez, and the 
investigators questioned him about the man heard saying, "Six hundred. 
Eight hundred. Nine hundred."

"When asked to explain the counting he stated that it was not his voice but 
that of Agent Fred DiRenzo," the report states, referring to an agent from 
the federal Drug Enforcement Administration who had taken part in the raid. 
"He believes that DiRenzo could have been counting 'chump change' or receipts."

Agent DiRenzo said he could not discuss the incident, but did not dispute 
any of Detective Rodriguez's account. The agent is not under investigation, 
according to Anthony P. Placido, the head of the drug agency's office in 
New York. An internal agency investigation brought no charges of theft. 
Detective Rodriguez was also asked about the statement made by a female 
voice: "Oh my God, that's a lot of money." He said they had gone to the 
apartment in search of a strongbox, which they found. The officer, he said, 
apparently "observed the fairly large box and in anticipation of finding 
the money, made the comment, 'that's a lot of money.' " The box turned out 
to be empty, the detective said.

On that point, his version is consistent with what Ms. Brown says about 
money in the apartment - that there simply was not much on hand. The 
detective, however, denied that there was any cash. "Rodriguez firmly 
asserts that at no time did he see money in the bedroom," the report states.

Ms. Brown went before the grand jury, and she said that most questions were 
aimed at linking her to the drug ring. Little attention, she says, was paid 
to the small amount of cash she said had been taken.

As an example, she cited investment documents taken from the apartment 
during the search. These papers concerned money held for a granddaughter 
who was living with her, she said. The child's aunt was the custodian of 
the account, Ms. Brown said. "They were trying to say that was proceeds 
from drugs, because the documents were coming here under the aunt's name," 
she said. "They were not concerned about my money in the drawer. They were 
concerned about drug money. How did I get to a thousand dollars? I told 
them I would save some every month. My son received S.S.I. I was on public 
assistance. I knitted it together. They were giving the impression that 
they didn't believe it was my personal money, that it was some other money."

Mr. Browne said Internal Affairs investigators felt she was vague about the 
source for the $900 she claimed to have lost, and they could not confirm 
that she had cashed the government checks in certain locations. He also 
said that that she had changed her story "about where the money was in the 
apartment."

Ms. Brown insisted that was simply not true. She said she told the 
authorities her story only once, to the grand jury, and was certain about 
the location. "That was my life savings. I chose to put it down there, in 
the bottom drawer," said Ms Brown, who now works in a nursing home.

The police investigation also looked at the personal bank accounts of the 
officers who had taken part in the raid. Asked if it were likely that 
anyone would deposit a sum of $900 into a bank account, Mr. Browne agreed 
that it was not, but said the efforts showed the vigor of the Internal 
Affairs inquiry. "They went to great lengths to see if there was any 
movement of money," he said.

The one area where the investigation found fault was with Detective 
Rodriguez's language. While Mr. Browne said that the reference to the 
Constitution having gone "out the door," was made in jest, a later remark 
was deemed offensive. On the tape, Detective Rodriguez is heard discussing 
the contents of a closet or medicine chest. "You're talking about nigger 
people," he said. The detective told investigators that he was speaking to 
Agent DiRenzo, a white man, and that the remark was not offensive in 
context. Later, Detective Rodriguez changed that account to say he made the 
remark not to Agent DiRenzo, but to another agent, who is black. The 
detective was docked six days' pay, Mr. Browne said.

"Everybody who's looked at it feels that neither Rodriguez nor anyone else 
did anything wrong, with the exception of the use of the racial slur," Mr. 
Browne said last week. "The consensus is that there was no cash and nobody 
stole anything."

In the end, neither the grand jury, the police nor the Drug Enforcement 
Administration brought criminal or administrative charges for theft. The 
federal authorities were not nearly as emphatic or sweeping as the Police 
Department, at least in their only known public statement on the results of 
the inquiry. More than a year after Ms. Brown turned over her telephone 
answering machine, an assistant United States attorney, I. Bennett Capers, 
told a federal judge that his office's "determination of the evidence" of 
stealing "remains inconclusive," according to a transcript of an April 7, 
1997, court hearing. Mr. Neufeld, the lawyer for Ms. Brown, said that he 
was told by federal prosecutors handling the case at the time that they 
thought money had been stolen, but could not determine who had taken it. A 
spokesman for the United States attorney's office in Manhattan would not 
comment.
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