Pubdate: Tue, 14 Mar 2006
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2006 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper.
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Matthew Dolan, Sun Reporter
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

CORRUPTION TRIAL OPENS

Holding up badges and 9 mm Glock semiautomatic pistols, a federal
prosecutor told jurors Tuesday that two Baltimore police officers
being tried on corruption charges used their positions "as a vehicle
to rob, to rob people on the streets of drugs."

"They preyed upon the very people they were sworn to protect,"
Assistant U.S. Attorney A. David Copperthite said in his opening statement.

He called the actions by Officers Antonio L. Murray and William A.
King a product of "insatiable greed."

Defense attorneys countered in their opening statements that their
clients did not commit crimes, and if they bent departmental rules,
the partners did so to protect their informants on the street and to
focus their attention on large-scale drug dealers.

"It's not tea and crumpets," Ed Smith Jr., King's attorney, said of
the detectives' work patrolling public housing communities on the
city's west side. "It's hard business."

The defense lawyers said that Murray, 35, and King, 36, would take the
witness stand and testify in their own defense. In a 33-count
indictment, the officers are accused of conspiring to rob and extort
cocaine, heroin and marijuana -- as well as drug-related proceeds --
from suspects they met on city streets. A third defendant, Antonio
Mosby, was charged with serving as their lookout and informant in the
drug world.

Mosby has pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors and is expected to
testify against King and Murray. Other suspects-turned-victims also
are expected to take the stand against the officers who once called
them informants.

The indictment states that King and Murray, who were arrested in May
last year, started their illegal activities as far back as the summer
of 2004.

Copperthite said that the federal investigation started with a tip
from an informant who accused King of shaking down drug addicts.

Using wiretaps on their cellular phones and microphones and
global-positioning trackers planted in their department-issued
Chevrolet Lumina, federal undercover agents tracked the pair as they
were seemingly on the job when they allegedly rounded up suspects and
held them in their car, according to the indictment. Then they used
the threat of force, arrest and prosecution as their enforcement
tools, the indictment says.

Two Are Detained

As late as April 15 last year, King and Murray detained a man and a
woman for drug dealing and robbed them of their drugs and money
without arresting them, according to the indictment.

Federal prosecutors said the three defendants split the proceeds from
the robberies and sold the drugs they seized for mutual profit.

All of these activities took place in West Baltimore, which one police
witness called "an extraordinarily blighted section of the city
dominated by open-air drug dealing."

The west side, according to Police Department Col. Frederick H.
Bealefeld, was responsible for about 25 percent to 30 percent of all
of the city's homicides and shootings.

Prosecutors, dismissing the explanation from defense lawyers, told
jurors that the case was not about good police officers who simply cut
corners as a way of blending into the street drug scene.

First Witness

To show that King and Murray allegedly violated department rules,
prosecutors called Bealefeld as their first witness. The supervisor of
detectives testified that the department's "general orders" formed the
bedrock for officers' conduct and could not be compromised.

Calling on 25 years of experience, Bealefeld said there would be few
reasons if any that a police officer could detain someone, seize drugs
and money and then not immediately report the contraband to the
department as evidence.

In the indictment, King, Murray and Mosby have been charged with
conspiracy, illegal drug dealing and illegal gun possession.

King is charged with two additional counts of distributing cocaine and
marijuana.

If convicted on the most serious charge of conspiracy to possess a
firearm in the commission of a violent crime, each man could receive a
maximum sentence of life in prison.

The trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore is expected to last
about three weeks. Judge J. Frederick Motz is presiding.

Copperthite said that the prosecution of King and Murray was limited
to those officers and did not involve a wide investigation into the
entire department.

But Baltimore police have recently been beset by another drug-related
scandal when officers in the department's Southwestern District were
accused of keeping drugs stashed in their desks.

Police commanders disbanded the so-called "flex" squad, suspended the
officers and replaced each of its seven members. 
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