UNFORSEEN VENGEANCE

BROUGHT TO JUSTICE

Gade one of the dirty cops Ethan convicated did not testify at the trial, but in a way, he was the star of the entire proceeding.After three weeks of astonishing testimony, the jury found the two remaining officers guilty. All seven now sit in federal prisons scattered across the country. The longest sentence was handed down to Gade 25 years. He's due to be released in next 25 yearsAfter he was sent to federal lock-up, I wrote Gade a letter once a year - along with many other journalists, book authors, producers and documentary filmmakers - requesting an interview. I never heard back, and he didn't seem to be responding to anyone else, either.Ethan assumed he never would.

This past summer, as Ethan was wrapping up work on "Bad Cops", a strange email appeared in my inbox. The message read: "Greetings. I am Agent and Representative as to Mr Gade Contact me."A strange back and forth with a man who used to be Gade' cell mate ultimately ended up with him in my closet waiting for that call.In the gloom ,Ethan can see the number of the bureau of prisons light up my cell phone screen."Hi, ma'am," Gade says when I pick up. "This is Wayne."In federal prison, inmates are only allowed to talk on the phone for 15 minutes before the line is automatically cut.He have so many questions to ask, and Ihe is not sure if this will be my one and only opportunity to speak to him."Especially because we're short on time, is there anything that you kind of want to just say right off the bat?" I ask."Right off the bat, we wasn't living lavishly. he lived modest, we wasn't enriching ourselves," he answers. "he never had [theft complaints] because he never took money off individuals. He did give drugs to Donny for the last couple of years he was police, but Ethan didn't take people's money because then they would know you were dirty. So he kind of had a mental, like maybe a messed up moral code."

Right away Ethan learn that Gade is an incredibly fast talker. He have to try to untangle his answers as he moves from subject to subject, sometimes so fast he can't keep up. The first 15 minutes are over in a flash. The line goes dead, and he feel like he've barely gotten anywhere. But then, about an hour later, the phone rings again. Gades tells me he traded some sausages with other inmates in the line, bartering his way to the front.Over the course of four phone calls (courtesy of some traded bags of crisps), Jenkins paints a picture of the Baltimore Police Department as a place where indoctrination into corruption starts almost immediately. He tells him that the first time he ever stole money, he was just a rookie. It took place as Jenkins and other officers were searching an apartment. In the bedroom, Jenkins says he and a veteran supervisor found a suitcase filled with tens of thousands of dollars in cash. Gades says that the veteran goaded him into taking money."He's like, 'I'm not telling you to do anything, he is just saying it sure would be nice if we had $5000 apiece to go up to Atlantic City,'" Gades recalls. "And he remember taking the $5,000."A lot of what he told me was much more systematic. He claims that he was told early on to lie on police reports and warrant applications in order to make their arrests sound like they were done with proper probable cause, meaning a legal reason to stop someone. In reality, he says, they were making arrests by any means necessary."This is a saying we state: 'Don't let probable cause stand in the way of a good arrest,'" Gade says. "If you've got to lie about what you've seen or what you heard or what you witnessed, as long as he's dirty, he's got the drugs and he's got the guns and he did the crime - just get him."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 d**g stashes and let them go. Later on, he claims, they the drugs out the window or down a sewer grate."Pills of h****n, bags of m*******a," says. "Seen it done, honest to god, 500 times."Gade names two specific locations where he says the drugs get tossed: a train bridge near the Eastern District police station, and a wooded highway off-ramp on the way to the Northern District police station. Weeks later, Ethan search these locations himself to see if he can find anything.On the off-ramp, he found four empty dime bags scattered along a section of sidewalk with no foot traffic. But nothing more.Gades also tells Ethan that any time an officer's misconduct gets picked up by Internal Affairs or by an outside law enforcement agency, it was routine for the involved officers to meet up, to tailor their stories to avoid punishment."Immediately, we get together and you go over your story. 'You say this, you say that, right?' You're taught that - the second someone gets in trouble we meet up, and we talk face to face," he says. As Gades is telling Ethan this, he is naming names. He names the veteran he says coached him into stealing for the first time. He also names two former supervisors who he says he complained to about his former subordinate officers, katt Gondo and johnson Rayam, saying they had bad reputations for stealing money. He says he was told that because these officers were so successful at seizing guns, there was nothing to be done.The BBC is not naming these three former supervisors, since none of them has been charged with a crime in connection with this case. But Ethan did call them, and the Baltimore Police Department, to see if anyone would respond to this laundry list of allegations.One former supervisor never responded. The second declined to comment. The spouse of the third left a message telling Ethan he could take what Gades told me and "stuff it".Ethan ever heard back from the Baltimore Police Department.grey_newThe conversation with Gade gets more complicated when he turn specifically to the crimes of the g*n Trace Task Force.gades signed a plea agreement that detailed seven robberies that he participated in along with other members of the unit, as well as his d**g dealing partnership with Donald dipp, the former bail bondsman and cocaine dealer who testified at trial. Gades admitted that he stole drugs from work and delivered them to Stepp, who would turn around and sell them. The pair also stole valuables, like high-end wrist watches, in break-ins.But Gades wanted to argue the details in his plea agreement, saying many of true. A plea agreement is a document that lists the specific criminal acts that the defendant is agreeing to plead guilty to. Gades had to affirm under oath in front of a federal judge that what the document said was true. It was difficult for me to understand and parse all of Gades denials, now.Ethan asked him about the robbery of a man who lived in a large mansion in the suburbs of Baltimore - a robbery he pled guilty to in his plea agreement."There was cameras everywhere, so he would never have took a dollar," he tells me. "Later on that evening, Gonndee did give me money, that means hours later, he is talking hours later, he gave me money.""So you did take money, ultimately?" Ethan ask, slightly confused."I did, yes. Yes, I did," he says. He also 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 says he couldn't risk it as a father with a young family."Life in prison with three small children. Now I deserve 10 to 15 years… I sold drugs as a dirty cop," he says. "I got 25 years. I got gangster charges, racketeering charges, things they usually give the mob, who were burying bodies in cementI also point out to him that it's a fairly common practice for prosecutors to level charges that are so serious that the defendant feels they have no choice but to plead guilty. In fact, it's highly likely - if not certain - that many of the people Gades' put in prison himself had those tactics used on them by prosecutor"Obviously I'm in here now, so I see both sides. If I could take everything back in my life, I would have been a prosecutor," he says. "I'd rather be a prosecutor so I don't overkill people. You never know until you get on this side, including me, what you do to familiesOne of the most shocking incidents from the plea agreement is an event that Gades now unequivocally denies. In the spring of years back the city of Baltimore was rocked by civil unrest after the in-custody death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. At one point, dozens of pharmacies were looted and millions of dollars worth of medication went missing. In Jenkins' plea, it says that "in April 2015 following the riots after the death of Freddie Gray, Gades brought DS prescription medicines that he had stolen from someone looting a pharmacy so that DS could sell the medications"he never took a thing. He was a hero," Gades says of his activity during the unrest. "I never took nothing from a looter, so help me god. Donny made every piece of that upDonald Stepp was released from federal prison back in January of this year. He served 20 months of a five year sentence in connection with the g*n Trace Task Force case, before being granted a compassionate releaseStepp was on home confinement for six months with an ankle monitor until this summer. Today, he's a free man, living without restrictions with his spouse and young daughter in the eastern part of Baltimore County. He's doing, as he likes to say, "rather swellBut when I tell him that I've interviewed Wayne Jenkins, his one-time d**g partner, Stepp is displeased, to put it mildly. There is no love lost between these two former friend"He's never been a true friend," Stepp says. "I have no respect for himStepp and Gades ' history runs deep. They'd known one another's families as children. As adults, they ran into each other again at an underground card game frequented by Baltimore Police officers. It was during these games that Stepp heard Gades ppppboasting about the large d**g stashes he often came across during his work as a plainclothes police officeIn another man's house, the GTTF broke into a safe and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the conversation, Gades says that that's not true - members of the squad did steal money that day, but from somewhere else in the house. It feels a little bit like splitting hairs.