Philly Rouge Cops Case: Dirty Cop Fingers Brothers In Blue

Veteran crime reporter and author George Anastasia (seen in the above photo) is covering the federal trial of Philadelphia narcotics officers for bigtrial.net

They broke all the rules, Jeffrey Walker told a federal jury, but they made big arrests, so their supervisors looked the other way.

"It was nothing but a dog and pony show, that's all that it was," Walker said of the headline grabbing arrests and the enhanced status his unit had within the Philadelphia Police Department. All the while, he said he and other members of the Narcotics Field Unit were routinely stealing cash and narcotics from drug dealers and falsifying police reports to cover their tracks.

Asked how many times during his 10 plus years in the unit that he had robbed drug dealers and submitted false reports, Walker calmly replied, "Can't count them there were so many times."

Testifying today in the ongoing corruption trial of six other members of that narcotics squad, Walker, 46, said lying and stealing were a routine part of the job in the squad run by Thomas Liciardello, who has emerged as the lead defendant in the corruption case.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bigtrial.net/2015/04/dirty-cop-fingers-brothers-in-blue.html#more

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of George Anastasia's Gotti's Rules via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/02/my-philadelphia-inquirer-review-of.html

Philly Rogue Cops Case: "Nineteen Mutts And A Dirty Cop"

Veteran reporter Ralph Cipriano at bigtrial.net reports on the federal trial of allegedly corrupt Philadelphia police narcotics officers.

A trio of veteran defense lawyers today took turns dismantling the government's case against a band of alleged rogue cops.

Jack McMahon got the party started by describing the government's star witness, former Police Officer Jeffrey Walker, as a "wicked, despicable liar." The rest of the government's stable of witnesses, McMahon said, are a bunch of lying drug dealers who amount to "nineteen bags of trash."

To cap the day, Jimmy Binns, batting third in a lineup of six defense lawyers, described the government's case as "nineteen mutts and a dirty cop."

In the longest opening argument of the day, Binns spent two hours delivering a lengthy, eye-popping recitation of the numerous witnesses in the case that the government supposedly never got around to interviewing. Those witnesses that Binns said would be testifying on behalf of the defendants include a bunch of supervisors in the police department who allegedly were eyewitnesses to many of the incidents in the case, and a couple of young female bartenders who supposedly overheard nightly confessions from a drunken and drooling Officer Walker, before he would pass out.

Most astonishingly, Binns said, the defense plans to call as their witnesses a trio of federal TFOs -- task force operators who work alongside the feds who investigated this case, on the same floor of the office building they share, but somehow were never interviewed by the government.

"This is not a proud day for the Department of Justice," Binns told the jury.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bigtrial.net/2015/03/nineteen-mutts-and-dirty-cop.html#more 

You can also read Jeremy Roebuck's coverage of the trial at the Philadelphia Inquirer via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150331_At_trial_of_rogue_narcotics_officers__a_war_of_words.html?nlid=8337531

Philadelphia Bodega Owners Question The Injustice

Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker, two Pulitzer Prize-winning Philadelphia Daily News reporters and authors of Busted: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love, offer a follow-up on their series about allegations of abuse and theft against Philadelphia police narcotics officers who raided several bodegas.

You can read the piece and watch a video of one of the police raids via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20140430_Bodega_owners_question_the_injustice.html