Wayne Jenkins.Photo:Courtesy of Greenwich Ent.
Courtesy of Greenwich Ent.
A decorated gun trace task force in Baltimore began stealing and reselling millions of dollars in drugs and framing citizens with planted evidence and falsified police reports.
Enter Ivan J. Bates, a defense lawyer, who found himself with the job of getting his clients out of jail and helping prove the police officers who had put them there belonged behind bars instead.
“When you’re a criminal defense attorney, you’re used to fighting the system,” Bates tells PEOPLE.
But, he says, the injustice became a personal mission when, he claims, prosecutors ignored video evidence of the task force breaking into one of his client’s homes: “That got me like: ‘I’m going to fight all of ya’ll.’”
Without accountability, director Kevin Casanova Abrams said,a powerful task force with latitude to fight crimecan become “a breeding ground” for rampant corruption — enabling police officers with high rates of arrests and takedowns to target the very people they pledged to protect. Seven other task force members — Sgt. Thomas Allers and Detectives Momodu Gondo, Evodio Hendrix,Daniel Hersl, Marcus Taylor, Jemell Rayam, and Maurice Ward – were also convicted and incarcerated for racketeering.
But building a case against Jenkins and his team proved difficult because internal affairs documents were sealed and could not be used to prove a pattern of bad behavior. So Bates began compiling evidence the other way around: from the stories of the people he represented. Clients began recommending him around the jails and more stories of the same abuse came together, as the FBI launched their own secret wiretap operations and began interviewing Bates’s clients. As Abrams told PEOPLE: “The victims eventually became the witnesses.”
Baltimoreans came together to bring down the task force that had unjustly targeted them for years.Courtesy of Greenwich Ent.
“For us the main thing that drove the story was really putting a face to the people you tend to scan passed in these stories,” Abrams said, noting that the documentary is more than a sensational story about “the terrible behavior of cops” but rather seeks to pay homage to the traumas and repercussions inflicted on children who watched their mother unjustly arrested and people who served jail time for crimes they did not commit.
Only after holding the corrupt officers accountable and giving voice to the people they had hurt, Bates added, could Baltimore “hopefully then begin the healing process.”
Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up forPEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletterfor breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.
After Jenkins was incarcerated, his wife gave Bates a call– and asked him to represent her husband. Recalling the incident in the documentary, Bates deemed her offer “flattering,” but declined. Jenkins wassentenced to 25 yearsin prison for racketeering, robberies, planting evidence– and overtime fraud. Bates became Baltimore City’s State’s Attorney this year.
source: people.com
