To
rack up arrests and look good for his bosses, Officer Kendell Richburg
decided to ensure that his confidential informant could continue dealing
drugs and funneling him information.
He paid the unnamed
informant with city funds, a standard procedure, but also gave him
seized drugs to resell, according to court records. Richburg told the
informant about the whereabouts of law enforcement in the Pimlico area
where he operated, and the informant would tell Richburg about drug
activity.
By looking out for the informant while carrying a service weapon,
however, federal prosecutors say Richburg became an armed participant in
a drug trafficking conspiracy. On Monday, the 13-year veteran pleaded
guilty to two charges and now faces a minimum sentence of 10 years and a
maximum of life.
Baltimore prosecutors are reviewing dozens of city cases that involved Richburg to see whether they can move forward.
In
court papers, the officer would misrepresent the informant's tips about
drug transactions, making it seem that he had personally witnessed
them.
"I'll write it up like I saw a hand-to-hand." Richburg, 36,
told the informant in one recorded phone conversation about a drug deal.
Assistant
U.S. Attorney A. David Copperthite said in court that Richburg, an
officer in the unit formerly known as the Violent Crimes Impact Section,
was expected as a member of that unit to maintain high numbers of
arrests. His attorney, Warren Brown, said that pressure permeates the
department and led to his client's criminal conduct.
"I listened
to hundreds of hours of wiretapped conversations in the case," said
Brown, who also has represented drug clients who allege similar police
misconduct. "And I can tell you that if the curtain was pulled back, you
would see that his M.O. was standard operating procedure. That's the
way a lot of them work, because they're being judged by those numbers."
But
authorities rejected any notion that what Richburg did was an expected
or tolerable result of internal pressures. U.S. Attorney Rod J.
Rosenstein said Richburg's conduct was "treacherous" and harms all
police officers. Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts called his
behavior "unacceptable criminal actions that are an affront to the law
enforcement profession."
"To justify his actions under the guise of pressure is absurd," said Anthony Guglielmi, the Police Department's chief spokesman.
Janice
Bledsoe, a defense attorney who worked as a police misconduct
investigator for State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein, said such cases
raise troubling questions about police work.
"The officer's
credibility is often the strength of the case," she said. "How do you
disprove a negative — how do you disprove that the officer didn't see
what he says he saw? You can't, unless the defendant happens to have
some incredible alibi."
Bledsoe says that as such cases come to
light, defense attorneys gain greater leverage to question assertions
made by officers. During Bledsoe's tenure, the state's attorney's office
brought charges against an Eastern District officer accused of lying in
a search warrant. And in November, another officer who worked out of
Richburg's unit was also charged with lying in a search warrant to raid a
Canton home.
The Violent Crimes Impact Section was a unit of
plainclothes officers deployed to traditionally high-crime areas.
Initially praised as a key part in reducing shootings and homicides, it became a source of complaints about the conduct of some officers. ast year, Batts moved detectives out of the unit and into patrol
positions. He also changed its name to the "Zone Enforcement Section"
and placed it under the supervision of the patrol division.Brown, Richburg's defense attorney, said his client didn't put drugs on the street for his own profit or shake down dealers.
In
a high-profile case last year, Officer Daniel Redd was convicted of
dealing drugs out of the parking lot of the Northwestern District
station. And several years earlier, officers William King and Antonio
Murray were sentenced to hundreds of years in federal prison for robbing
drug suspects.
Richburg admitted in his plea, however, that he
skimmed some of the department funds that he paid the unidentified
informant. The investigation began when the FBI received information
that Richburg was selling stolen property. Agents later used a source to
purchase goods from Richburg, including iPads and iPhones.
As
Richburg conspired with the informant, the two discussed plans to set up
innocent people. In one recorded phone call in September 2012, Richburg
directed the informant to plant a gun in the vehicle of an unlicensed
cabdriver, known as a "hack," so that Richburg could arrest him on a
firearms violation, according to court records. Prosecutors said the
plot was not carried out.
"You get in a hack and drop the burner
in the hack," Richburg was recorded saying, according to his plea
agreement. "Get a hack for three blocks. Drop it. We got to think
outside the box to get this done." he informant dealt drugs from a parking lot off Park Heights Avenue
referred to as the "Panyard," which police have deemed a high drug and
violent crime area. On Sept. 4, records show, other officers were
zeroing in on the informant, and Richburg sent him a text messages that
read: "Get off Belvedere [Avenue] … they on you."
Later, the informant sent him a message: "Its safe for me to come back out[?]"
"Yeah yo you good," Richburg replied, records show.
In
another instance, Richburg helped the informant plot a robbery. On Oct.
9, 2012, Richburg searched an unidentified man without probable cause
and found between $1,500 and $1,800 in cash, according to court records.
The man said that he was an employee of a Popeye's restaurant and the
money was from his paycheck. Richburg let him go but suspected he was
lying based on his behavior, records show.
He then called the informant and told him about a "[n----] walkin around with 1500 in his pocket."
The next day, the informant robbed the man with a .380 semi-automatic handgun to further the drug conspiracy, prosecutors say.
Brown
said that the majority of Richburg's contacts with the informant were
about making low-level drug arrests, and that such arrests are a big
part of the Police Department's enforcement strategy. "The department
will deny that they have quotas, but they do," Brown said. "They grab
these guys with one bag of weed, and the quality of the arrest is never
scrutinized."
Guglielmi disputed that. He said arrests have
plummeted in recent years as police administrations have emphasized
quality over quantity. The number of people released without being
charged, one indicator of a poor quality arrest, has almost completely
evaporated, according to department statistics.
The day
prosecutors say Richburg asked the informant to give drugs to a woman so
he could write up the arrest, court records show a 52-year-old Gwynn
Oak woman was charged with possession of marijuana.
She pleaded not guilty and received a one-year suspended sentence.
jfenton@baltsun.com
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