Draft:Gun Trace Task Force

The Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), initially the Gun Tracing Task Force, was a plainclothes unit of the Baltimore Police Department. Led by Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, the unit engaged in widespread racketeering,

Background

Wayne Jenkins

Main article: Wayne Jenkins

[Jenkins] would always be the guy saying, 'Dawg, you gotta shine those boots,' 'You gonna put a hot rock [an iron] on that uniform?' Wayne was always that person who stuck out.

A colleague describing Jenkins as a Marine

Wayne Jenkins, the leader of the GTTF, was born in June 1980. Growing up in Middle River, Maryland, he graduated from Eastern Technical High School in 1998 and joined the United States Marines. As a Marine, Jenkins was described as a poster child and by his sergeant as "the utmost flawless character that I've ever ran into over my twenty years of serving this great country." He was honorably discharged as a corporal on August 15, 2001. He attempted to join the Maryland State Police (MSP) in 2002 but was rejected for "fail[ure] to meet testing standards".

After being rejected by the MSP, Jenkins attempted to join the Baltimore Police Department (BPD). Despite receiving a C on a psychological test, his interviewer described him as "by far the most polite applicant that I have ever had the opportunity to talk to", and he was accepted as a cadet in February 2003. He graduated from the academy in November and his first assignment was on Monument Street.

Assault of Tim O'Connor

It was like taking a hammer to the face. I couldn't protect myself. It was a pain I’ve never felt before in my life.

O'Connor describing his assault

In early October 2005, Tim O'Connor was asked to leave the Brewer's Hill Pub in Southeast Baltimore for being too intoxicated. As his friends attempted to move him up the street, a group of officers including Jenkins came to the scene from a nearby Royal Farms. O'Connor recognized Michael Fries, the supervisor of the officers, and yelled "Fuck you, Mike Fries. You ain't shit!" O'Connor was dragged to the ground and Jenkins punched him repeatedly in the face. The assault fractured his orbital bones.

After the assault, neither Jenkins nor Fries filed a report or requested medical assistance. O'Connor's friend called for an ambulance and O'Connor's wife reported the assault to the police while he was in the hospital. When an officer came to the hospital to write a report, O'Connor claimed that "Mikey Fries and the Baltimore City Police Department did this to me."

O'Connor sued Jenkins and Fries in 2006. At trial in 2008, the officers claimed another person beat O'Connor while the officers weren't looking and they did not request medical assistance because O'Connor's friends asked to take him home. Domenic Iamele, O'Connor's attorney, accused Jenkins of attempting to manipulate the jury, which he denied. The jury ruled in favor of O'Connor, awarding him US$75,000 ($106,136 in 2023). The award was paid by taxes and Jenkins was not punished by the BPD.

McElderry Park assault

They’re just treating these people like animals. And it was over drinking beer on the step. They run into this guy’s house—hot pursuit of a beer drinker? They were in this mode of: There’s no minor offense. Everything, we enforce. We're the law, and in their minds, they’re doing patrols in Afghanistan.

Michael Pulver, Sneed's attorney, describing the incident

In January 2006, a few months after the assault of O'Connor, Jenkins and Fries spotted two brothers, Charles and Robert Lee, drinking beer outside their grandmother's home while patrolling the McElderry Park neighborhood. The officers asked the brothers to go inside, which they refused. When the officers returned to the home, Charles and Robert were still outside. While Charles attempted to enter the house, Jenkins and Fries pulled him back out.

Passerby George Sneed watched the altercation. Robert Cirello, an officer who arrived at the scene, ran after Sneed and smashed him into the ground, breaking his jaw. Sneed sued; at trial four years later, the officers claimed that Sneed was throwing bottles and yelling profanities at them. Fries claimed Sneed was "yelling fuck you, I'll kill all you police, fuck you bitches". Michael Pulver, Sneed's attorney, accessed security cameras that showed Sneed standing calmly before Cirello ran after him. While the jury ruled in favor of Sneed, Jenkins was cleared of wrongdoing and was not punished by the BPD. Cirello later claimed that his fellow officers "ordered me to fuck him up".

The BPD under Martin O'Malley

See also: Martin O'Malley § Police and crime

Martin O'Malley in 2001

After he was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1999, Martin O'Malley instituted a policy of zero tolerance modeled after that of New York City. He made Ed Norris, a deputy commissioner of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), commissioner of the BPD in 2000 and hired the creators of CompStat, a management system used by the NYPD, to write a report analyzing the BPD. The report claimed that residents saw the police as unwilling to counter the illegal drug trade, officers felt unsupported, and almost a quarter of BPD officers believed a quarter of their colleagues stole drugs and money from criminals. After this report, the BPD ran over 200 sting operations against officers, of which only four officers failed.

Norris was replaced by Kevin P. Clark, also from the NYPD, who sought to counter the illegal drug trade using two strategies: teaching more undercover detectives to buy drugs and citing suspected dealers for petty crimes. In 2003, Norris was indicted and sentenced to six months in prison for misusing an unreported bank account as commissioner. Clark was removed by O'Malley in 2004 amid accusations of domestic violence.

In 2005, a DVD titled Stop Fucking Snitching began to spread throughout Baltimore, deriding dealers who cooperate with the police. In one scene, a person accuses a group of dealers in West Baltimore of being protected by William King and Antonio Murray, a duo of BPD officers. Other drug dealers helped the case against the duo: in one case, a dealer who was supplied drugs by King and Murray to split the profit but told he would face consequences if he didn't help take down other dealers went to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. King and Murray were convicted of around 36 charges and sentenced to 315 years and one month and 139 years in prison, respectively.

Under O'Malley's zero-tolerance policy, arrests increased to over 100,000 in 2005, of which only two-thirds were prosecuted. While O'Malley rejected the notion that his policies "encourage[d] arrests for the sake of arrests", officers later claimed that BPD culture encouraged making many arrests. According to court records, Jenkins was involved in over 400 arrests in 2005, sometimes making six per day.

The BPD under Sheila Dixon and Frederick H. Bealefeld III

See also: Sheila Dixon § Mayor of Baltimore, and Frederick H. Bealefeld III

Sheila Dixon

Frederick H. Bealefeld III

After Martin O'Malley became governor of Maryland, acting mayor Sheila Dixon sought to move away from her predecessor's policy. She appointed Frederick H. Bealefeld III, a member of the department's narcotics and homicide units and the de facto head of the department for a few months, as commissioner of the BPD.

Bealefeld wished to shift the department from focusing on drugs and indiscriminate arrests towards repeat offenders and illegal guns. Bealefeld also helped improve officer training. Bealefeld appointed Anthony Barksdale as deputy commissioner of operations. Barksdale believed that while tough policing was needed, the department could control itself with tight oversight. The BPD formed the Violent Crimes Impact Division, a roughly 300-member plainclothes unit of high-ranking officers. The department identified high-risk areas and kept these officers in those areas.

In 2007, shootings decreased and the homicide rate went below 200 for the first time since the 1980s. Despite this, officer-involved shootings doubled and the department did not review if these shootings were avoidable and followed department rules. Patricia Jessamy, state's attorney of Baltimore, created a "do not call" list for cops known to have poor integrity but remained employed. These officers could not be called as witnesses of a crime, which high-ranking officers and the police union opposed. The department proposed a "gun offender registry", where people convicted of gun-related crimes would be checked for compliance.

History

The Gun Tracing Task Force was founded in 2007, including officers from the Maryland State Police (MSP), the Baltimore County Police Department (BCoPD; unrelated to the city police force), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). The unit was intended to pursue the distributors of illegal guns through detailed investigations instead of street-level criminals. Ryan Gwinn, a founding member of the GTTF, described it as "like one big unit, and we went everywhere". In its first year, the GTTF seized 268 guns through only 41 arrests.

Racketeering indictment

Death of Sean Suiter

Main article: Death of Sean Suiter

References

Works cited

Academic sources

Books

• Fenton, Justin (2021). We Own This City: a True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption. Random House. ISBN 978-0-593-13366-8.
• Woods, Baynard; Soderberg, Brandon (2020). I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-250-22180-3.
• Wise, Leo (2023). Who Speaks for You? The Inside Story of the Prosecutor Who Took Down Baltimore's Most Crooked Cops (autobiography). Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-4650-9.

News stories

• Bykowicz, Julie; Fritze, John; Reddy, Sumathi (October 5, 2007). "Bealefeld Picked as Commissioner". The Baltimore Sun. pp. 1A, 8A–9A, 1B – via Newspapers.com.

Miscellaneous