NYPD Officers' crime spree is detailed
- OFR -
Officers' crime spree is detailed
Testimony includes plan by NYPD partners to kill fellow
detective
By TOM HAYS
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - On a summer morning in 1997, patrolman Anthony Trotman
reported for duty at
Brooklyn's 77th Precinct, but he had no intention of fighting crime.
The officer instead got permission to leave work early. Two hours later,
authorities say, he and
other men wearing masks and gloves pulled an armed holdup at a Long
Island jewelry store.
In some ways, it was an ordinary crime made extraordinary only because
it was committed by a
cop. But because of a series of charges brought last week in Brooklyn
federal court, the case has
taken on broader and darker dimensions.
Prosecutors allege Trotman and his partner, Jamil Jordan, brazenly
erased the line between cop and
criminal as members of a violent robbery crew - and got away with it for
three years.
The partners regularly robbed businesses and drug dealers, sometimes
while on duty and in uniform,
court papers said. Worse, they allegedly plotted to kill a detective in
retaliation for his revealing they
had lied on the witness stand in a gun case.
Deadly intentions
As part of a plea deal with prosecutors, Trotman, 35, admitted in court
Wednesday he had "agreed
with others to kill Detective Michael Paul."
The former officer is expected to detail that scheme and others Monday
when he takes the witness
stand at the trial of one of the crew members.
Trotman's courtroom confession recalled scandals of the late 1980s and
early 1990s: the "Buddy
Boys," corrupt cops who robbed drug dealers in the same Brooklyn
precinct; the "Morgue Boys,"
patrolmen who divided up stolen cash in an abandoned coffin factory; the
"Dirty 30," the nickname
earned by Harlem's 30th Precinct after more than two dozen officers were
charged with raiding
drug dens for profit.
Police officials insist that, this time, the accused cops are not the
tip of a corruption iceberg, noting
that no other officers have been charged or named as suspects. Still,
the case once again raised
concerns about supervision in the New York Police Department, the
nation's largest force.
Questionable oversight
One senior police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
internal affairs investigators were
aware of the activities of Trotman and Jordan as early as 1997. But the
source refused to discuss
why the partners were not disciplined until last year, when the
department accused them of lying in
the gun case, then fired them.
Federal investigators say the case involving the arrest of an alleged
gun dealer in 1997 is another
example of how crooked cops try to fabricate probable cause for arrests
- a practice sometimes
called "testilying."
Trotman and Jordan testified that they were in a bodega by chance when
one of them brushed up
against a backpack worn by the suspect. They claimed the suspect bolted
toward the door - giving
them legal grounds to stop and search him for what turned out to be a
stolen gun.
But during his turn on the stand, the detective, Michael Paul, disclosed
he had directed the
uniformed officers into the store to make the arrest. Federal officials
said Paul's testimony
apparently violated an understanding between the three that they would
stick to one version.
One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described Paul as a
reluctant witness.
"He was going out of his way to try to exculpate [Trotman and Jordan],
but I guess he admitted
enough for them to want to have him killed," the source said.
Last week, Trotman admitted using a police computer to learn Paul's
address. Prosecutors say he
and Jordan, 28, then enlisted the leader of their crew - a murder
suspect named Vere Padmore - to
kill Paul, and drove to Paul's house before the scheme fizzled.
The crime spree
In his plea, Trotman also admitted to charges detailing a crime spree
that began shortly after he
became partners with Jordan in 1997. The on-duty officers met with
fellow bandits - hardened
career criminals from Jordan's old neighborhood with nicknames "Joker"
and "Pyscho" - in a
Brooklyn park to plan their heists, court papers said.
Trotman was along when one team hit the Long Island jewelry store twice,
both times busting in,
breaking glass cases and grabbing everything in sight. The second time,
they made off with
$500,000 in Swiss watches and diamond jewelry.
Prosecutors say that on three other occasions, Trotman and Jordan robbed
drug dealers to
supplement police incomes of about $50,000 a year.
In one case, they pulled over a dealer, stole $2,100 and left him
handcuffed to his car; in another,
they robbed a Jamaican dealer of $8,000 by showing their badges and
searching his car.
The crimes were the alleged work of two men police officials say were
"unremarkable" as cops.
The accused
Trotman is a native of Barbados who grew up in Brooklyn. In 1994, he and
another officer shot and
killed a man after the suspect started to pull a BB gun that looked like
a real gun; a stray bullet killed
a bystander as well.
Court records also show Trotman once sued a Brooklyn hospital for $150
million, alleging his son
suffered severe electrical shock while being treated for sickle cell
anemia. Both Trotman and Jordan
also filed a lawsuit last year in a bid to get their jobs back. All the
suits are pending.
Whatever bond the former partners had left disintegrated when Trotman
agreed to help the FBI
secretly record a meeting between them last week. Trotman asked Jordan
if he remembered their
plan to "whack" Paul.
Jordan's alleged response: "I don't want to talk about that."
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