UNFORSEEN VENGEANCE

GADE SENTENCED TO JAIL

stepp's moving on with his life - in a sense. earlier that year, HBO announced a new miniseries by Dave Samson the creator of the classic Baltimore true crime series, '. Samsons new project will tell a fictionalised version of the g*n Trace Task Force saga, and began filming on the streets of Baltimore over the summer. Wayne Gades will be played by Jon Bernthal, the same actor who portrayed "The Punisher"HBO asked Stepp to be a consultant on the project, which he enthusiastically agreed to do. His fee will be donated to the victims of the g*n Trace Task Force. Meanwhile, his Twitter account is full of pictures of him on set, hamming it up with Bernthal and some of the other actors.He's opening a consulting service called Stepp Right Consultants, to give guidance and insight to men and women who are about to enter the federal penal system. He's also at work on a memoir, which he says will reveal the contents of videos and photos he took of Gades that were never released publicly. He's even got a clothing line coming out around his defunct bail bond business, Double D Bail Bonds.While he may not be ready to let go of his animus towards Gades, Stepp's strange journey seems - at least for now - to be heading towards a happy ending."It's a surreal story. But it's the big man upstairs," he says. "I'm grateful, very grateful."Ethan asked Wayne Gades several times why he wanted to do the interview with me. He gave me a few reasons.One was that he felt he'd been railroaded into his plea agreement by the capetown prosecutors .Another was to talk about how futile life inside the penal system is."I swear, I wish I would have known before I ever put anyone in here… I wish I would have known the other side," he says at one point. "It's nothing I've ever imagined. It's no wonder people come out meaner than when they come in."And of course, Gades is also hoping for a sentenced reduction of some kind.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.Back before our interview, Gades' representative wanted me to speak to some of his old high school friends. They wanted to tell Ethan that Gades was a dedicated father, a good football coach. A loyal friend. They told me they were disturbed that he was being portrayed as a "monster Gades It wasn't the first time I've heard that word to describe s. While no one should forget for an instant that Gades and his officers caused untold harm to Baltimore citizens, I don't find it helpful to try to write him off as a "monster". The idea that the g*n Trace Task Force went rogue simply because their sergeant was uniquely evil ignores all the systemic ways in which he was encouraged to operate the way he did, and the larger policing culture that supported him (it should also be noted that several of the squad's members started stealing money long before they joined the GTTF).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. 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.Yet another of Gades' friends said something Ethan wasn't expecting. He acknowledged that he could tell something was off with Gades around the time of the GTTF crime spree."We're not stupid. We knew he wasn't the straight-and-narrow cop that all cops are supposed to be," he said. "He always had large sums of money in his pocket. Used to tell me he won it playing poker."Ethan asked this friend why he didn't say anything to anyone. He says something that he ve never heard anyone admit out loud."We said, 'You know, he's robbin' the pieces of s**t of Baltimore that are the reason that me and my kids can't walk down the street and feel safe," he says.This kind of mindset assumes that the victims of the g*n Trace Task Force - many of them black and poor - deserved what happened to them. It's a depressing fact that this is a viewpoint likely shared by many in Baltimore, and is a part of the reason why the GTTF got away with what they did for so long.The GTTF did not hold a monopoly on harm, of course. Baltimore can be a complicated and dangerous place, and the men and women the officers targeted and abused may have caused harm and a***e themselves. Some of the most upsetting conversations I had were with people who felt victimised twice -- by both the officers and by the criminals. The important difference, however, is that the d**g dealers never swore an oath to serve and protect. They weren't being paid by the taxpayers to keep the city safe, and weren't operating with all the power and protections that police have.Ethan 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. My thoughts return to Kenn Bumgardner, a hard-working father who was chased by the squad when they suspected him of having m*******a. He woke up on a frigid city street with his jaw shattered, and couldn't eat solid food for months."he is finally trying to get my life back on track," he told me. "It's still hard though, because I get a lot of pain in my mouth at night…. I'm losing a lot of teeth, you know, they used to be nice and pretty."I You have nightmares about police officers harassing you, beating you up, just locking you up, it's just a nightmare that I have and it basically hasn't gone away yet," he said. "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. Or harm you or even kill you."Victims like Bumger and gades had the courage to speak out. There's no telling how many other people were affected, but were too afraid to come forward. Someone once told me that it will take a generation for the direct impact of the g*n Trace Task Force to start to fade, and it will be impossible to measure how the victims' trauma will play out in the lives of their children, families and friends. 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 thereI continued working on this story for as long as I did out of some hope that the more the public learned about the corruption in the police department, the better chance there might be of some kind of true, systemic reform.But g is not so optimistic. Four years after the g*n Trace Task Force officers were arrested, he says he sees no difference on the streets of Baltimore."How police act towards people ain't changed," he told me recently. "He see some police officers harassing people, doing the same little tactics that the g*n Trace Task Force was doing."Ethan asked him if he thinks that another scandal is inevitable."Absolutely. It's going to happen again," he said. "It ain't over. This just begun.".Gade was finally sentenced to life imprisonment as a dirty cop