I am Agent and Representative as to Mr Jenkins. Stepp says Jenkins started bringing over shipments of drugs on an almost daily basis, putting them in a locked shed behind Stepp's house. Later, Jenkins came out carrying two kilos of cocaine he tossed in Stepp's vehicle. Youve got to be willing to dig into their s--- and confront them, Barksdale said. Im feeling a lot of remorse for my actions I have led through my life, Oakley said at his sentencing. When Jenkins was allowed to speak, he turned first to face the Davis family and apologised repeatedly. "Immediately, we get together and you go over your story. It's going to take an almost unimaginable kind of effort to dig out the roots of corruption in the department, and it's much easier to just lock up the cops who get caught, and carry on with business as usual. During hia time in the department, Jenkins was involved in numerous arrests . Wayne Jenkins from Baltimore was sentenced to 25-years-in-prison. Video, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Read the full story of Baltimore's Gun Trace Task Force, Inside one of America's most corrupt police squads, Harry and Meghan told to 'vacate' Frogmore Cottage, Fungus case forces Jack Daniels to halt construction, Rare Jurassic-era bug found at Arkansas Walmart, China and Belarus call for peace in Ukraine, Ed Sheeran says wife developed tumour in pregnancy, NFL hopeful accused of racing in deadly car crash, Beer and wine sales in Canada fall to all-time low, Dozens of girls treated after new Iran poisonings. Critics argue Barksdale was among police leaders who fostered a warrior culture, to the citys detriment. "He's like, 'I'm not telling you to do anything, I'm just saying it sure would be nice if we had $10,000 apiece to go up to Atlantic City,'" Jenkins recalls. Jenkins joined Baltimore's police department in 2003, first becoming a beat cop and patrolling the streets of Baltimore. VideoAt the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Havana Syndrome unlikely to have hostile cause - US, How 10% of Nigerian registered voters delivered victory, Sake brewers toast big rise in global sales, The Indian-American CEO who wants to be US president, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip. Then the feds found him. After the indictments, one of Jenkins supervisors told Internal Affairs investigators she had believed he was the best gun cop this department has ever seen.. They stole drugs and cash, sold seized narcotics and guns back on the street, planted evidence on people, even committed home invasions. "Hi, ma'am," Jenkins says when I pick up. Nobody said yes or no, instead expressing ambivalence. She described how the unnamed officer talked about Jenkins: Hes probably the best drug detective in the city. Here's what the public was led to believe about the Gun Trace Task Force, before the FBI arrested almost every member of the squad: That in a city still reeling from the civil unrest that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody, the GTTF was a bright spot in a department under a dark cloud. But Jenkins wanted to argue the details in his plea agreement, saying many of them weren't true. If I could take everything back in my life, I would have been a prosecutor," he says. Arrest him, too, Jenkins yelled at the responding officers. During his time on the streets of Baltimore Jenkins was involved in several arrests that resulted in the injuries of the people he took into custody. Judge Blake ultimately decided to sentence him to 25 years, saying she was taking into consideration the fact that he pleaded guilty and co-operated to some extent with the prosecutors. Wayne Jenkins, who led . Jenkins is currently in prison. Oakley took the rare step of getting onto the witness stand to rebut the officers, as did an independent witness who backed his account. Across the country, these plainclothes squads have often been where scandals are born. Even though we've known for weeks that Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal), Daniel Hersl (Josh Charles), Jemell Rayam (Darrell Britt-Gibson) and the rest of Baltimore's Gun Trace Task Force were . The plaintiffs prevailed in three of them, either through a jury verdict or the citys decision to settle the case. The fallout of the squad's crimes is still rippling through the city and undoubtedly made Baltimore a less safe place for everyone who lives there. Sgt. While no one should forget for an instant that Jenkins and his officers caused untold harm to Baltimore citizens, I don't find it helpful to try to write him off as a "monster". Amid controversies over the years, police brass would publicly disband the units, then reconstitute them with the same personnel under a different name. The unit began looking into a case involving Jenkins, in which he had run down a young man with his unmarked Dodge Avenger early in 2014. Baltimore leaders have agreed to pay a $6 million settlement to the family of a driver who was killed during a 2010 police chase involving Gun Trace Task Force officers. They are not typically tethered to specific posts, or burdened by responding to 911 calls. The GTTF was made up of eight officers, all but one of whom were indicted. "He always had large sums of money in his pocket. While researching the We Own This City true story, we confirmed that the real Wayne Jenkins had spent three years in the Marines before joining the Baltimore Police Department in 2003. "I just go through this on a daily basis, scared of police, wondering when they gonna stop you, trying to plant drugs on you or something like that. So he gave up and entered a guilty plea. "My dad would be alive today would it not be for his actions that day. In 2018, Jessica wrote a piece which detailed the explosive trial at a Baltimore federal courthouse that revealed the unit's crimes, She then turned that story into a new seven-part podcast series called Bad Cops which you can listen to in its entirety below. He started counting the money, $20,000 in all. Today, he's a free man, living without restrictions with his spouse and young daughter in the eastern part of Baltimore County. Jenkins, along with Detective Ben Frieman, had followed an African American man driving a nice car through Northeast Baltimore. Jenkins was a member of the Baltimore police department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a plain-clothed unit tasked with finding guns and drugs in bulk in a bid to tackle the city's high murder. Stepp was on home confinement for six months with an ankle monitor until this summer. On June 13, 2016, Jenkins became the Officer in Charge of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF,) a specialized unit within the Operational Investigation Division of the BPD. These officers often operate with a great deal of independence. Jenkins started calling Stepp to the scenes of arrests, encouraging Stepp to try to get inside drug dealer's hideouts to steal whatever cash or narcotics he could find. Wayne Jenkins, Baltimore's dirtiest cop, is sentenced: It still doesn't feel like justice Jenkins was supposed to get guns off the street in Baltimore but wound up running a vicious. This partnership lasted for five years. Still, a yearlong investigation by The Baltimore Sun found warning signs that Wayne Jenkins wasnt such a good cop. He also names two former supervisors who he says he complained to about his former subordinate officers, Momodu Gondo and Jemell Rayam, saying they had bad reputations for stealing money. "It ain't over. Gillian Whitfield recalled Jenkins as sweet and always willing to lend a hand. We Own This City airs Mondays at 9 p.m. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, L-R: Former Baltimore police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and Jon Bernthal as Jenkins in HBO true-crime drama "We Own This City. At that time, I didnt think they were officers, Simon said. . Jenkins was given a 25-year prison sentence on June 7, 2018, which he is currently in the midst of serving at a federal prison in Kentucky. Several of the former officers also took the stand - now wearing prison jumpsuits instead of uniforms - and detailed the tactics encouraged by their leader, Jenkins. Despite the lawsuits and later, video evidence from his squads body cameras Jenkins supervisors failed to scrutinize the arrests he was making. In federal court, Mickey Oakley argued that the officers who arrested him including Jenkins and future Gun Trace Task Force member Daniel Hersl had lied about the circumstances leading up to the arrest and had illegally searched his home. When Jenkins called him to a house the GTTF was investigating, Stepp took pictures of the officers going in and out. However, the focus on quantity rather than quality led Jenkins and the seven other GTTF officers to start planting evidence, take money from the homes they invaded, and even resell the drugs they seized back onto the streets. Then-Police Commissioner Anthony Batts had created a Force Investigation Team to inspire public trust that police leaders were keeping an eye on officers use of force. De Sousa, who is now serving a federal sentence for tax evasion, said through his attorney that he does not remember the Jenkins case. They might not have been believed anyhow. Later, Jenkins did more than talk about such a theft. He told me that frequently, when he or his fellow officers didn't feel like submitting the drugs they seized or doing arrest paperwork, they'd simply confiscate people's drug stashes and let them go. Then 34, he was already an admired leader of aggressive street squads and would go on to head the elite Gun Trace Task Force, one of the Baltimore Police Departments go-to assets in the fight against violent crime. "I could have spoken up.". Jenkins tells me he traded some sausages with other inmates in the line, bartering his way to the front. "There was cameras everywhere, so I would never have took a dollar," he tells me. I ask this friend why he didn't say anything to anyone. It was Jenkins, fresh off his heroics in West Baltimore. Now, the lawyers were sitting with Paul Pineau, chief of staff to then Baltimore States Attorney Gregg Bernstein, according to an account of the meeting obtained by The Sun. What was Jenkins really going to do with the drugs? I couldn't help thinking about the many victims of the squad that I'd met over the three years I've been working on this story. Jenkins pleaded guilty in January and admitted taking part in at least 10 robberies of Baltimore citizens, planting drugs on innocent people and re-selling drugs he stole from suspects on an almost daily basis, including heroin, cocaine and prescription painkillers. Burley was sentenced to 15 years in prison, which he was serving until federal prosecutors uncovered the task force's corruption and freed him. Jenkins must serve three years of supervised release after his custodial sentence. The indictment of Jenkins and six of his gun task force officers on federal racketeering charges rocked Baltimore when the announcement came in March 2017. The departments Internal Affairs chief at the time says then-Deputy Commissioner Darryl De Sousa intervened to prevent the punishment. All seven now sit in federal prisons scattered across the country. OConnor had spent much of the day tossing back beers at the Brewers Hill Pub & Grill in Southeast Baltimore when the manager asked him to leave. Jenkins, meanwhile, was the best officer I had working under my command, Fries said. I think about Shawn Whiting, a former heroin dealer who went to prison for years after the officers robbed him. Some drug dealers told their lawyers that Jenkins made stuff up to arrest them and had kept a good chunk of their money and drugs before taking them in. Contact me.". He states flatly that Jenkins is lying to me. It turned out that federal agents had the unit under surveillance for months. To single him out as a flawed individual in an otherwise perfectly functioning system is a way to avoid change in the police department, to shirk the responsibility of actually preventing this from happening again. He tells me that the first time he ever stole money, he was just a rookie. Jenkins had joined the force at 23 after serving three years in the Marines, where he took up boxing. Plainclothes officers made the most arrests, they seized the most drugs and money, assets, former Police Commissioner Kevin Davis told The Sun. They claimed they didnt see who did it. Blake who in 2017 would wind up presiding over the Gun Trace Task Force corruption case noted that the other officers present backed Jenkins account. I never aimed nothing at him . "Right off the bat, we wasn't living lavishly. I thought, How is he doing it? But overall, plaintiffs prevailed in at least three lawsuits accusing Jenkins of beatings or other misconduct from 2006 to 2009, resulting in $90,000 in taxpayer payouts. He said together, they'd sold about $1m worth of narcotics. When I point out he already pleaded guilty to all these incidents, Jenkins tells me he only signed the agreement because he feared that if he went forward to trial, he could've wound up behind bars for life. He was arrested along with almost every member of the unit in March 2017. On the citys west side, officers were being pelted with bricks; some were hurt. Yet another of Jenkins' friends said something I wasn't expecting. Jenkins signed a plea agreement in 2017 that detailed seven robberies that he participated in along with other members of the unit, as well as his drug dealing partnership with Donald Stepp, the former bail bondsman and cocaine dealer who testified at trial. Then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a news conference to tout one of Jenkins big drug busts. Then they spilled out of the house and onto the sidewalk, struggling. His drill sergeant described him as having the utmost flawless character Ive seen in two decades of service. He admitted to knowing . "He is no more than a common criminal," Davis' daughter, Shirley Johnson, said of Jenkins. Wayne Jenkins. He was like King Kong, the officer, who still works for the police department, recalled. But two pronounced their innocence and went to trial, which I covered for the BBC. Hed grown up in the working class suburb, where his father worked two jobs, including at Bethlehem Steel. He kept $10,000 for himself, saying he planned to install a front-end crash bar so his department-issued vehicle wouldnt get damaged in his frequent collisions. April 25, 2022 5:45 PM EDT. But I think he also spoke to me because he doesn't like the image of himself that's been in the media - as a sociopath, as someone almost inhumanly evil. During the altercation, a passerby named George Sneed was assaulted by officer Robert Cirello who broke his jaw, leading Sneed to sue. Wayne Jenkins, 37, pleaded guilty in January to robbery . "And I remember taking the $10,000.". Finally, in March 2015, Internal Affairs chief Rodney Hill informed Jenkins that he was being charged internally with misconduct, neglect of duty and failure to supervise the officer in his charge, according to a leaked copy of the case file obtained by The Sun. We Own This City, an HBO Max miniseries out April 25, about a Baltimore Police Department (BPD) task force unit that went rogue, highlights some of the . He was serving his sentence at the Edgefield Federal Correctional Facility in South Carolina until 2020. He woke up on a frigid city street with his jaw shattered, and couldn't eat solid food for months. Stepp's moving on with his life - in a sense. He names the veteran he says coached him into stealing for the first time. Jenkins idolized his sergeant, Michael Fries, the target of the expletive. Wayne Jenkins fist felt like a hammer to Tim OConnors face. Jenkins, shown here with then-Commissioner Kevin Davis, was awarded a bronze star in April 2016 for his efforts to save injured officers during the unrest a year earlier. Contact Justin Fenton at jfenton@baltsun.com. Ex-police sergeant Wayne Earl Jenkins apologized in the courtroom for the crimes he committed at the same time as he was head of an elite squad referred to as the Gun Trace Task . But Whiting is not so optimistic. The first 15 minutes are over in a flash. 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