CITY POLICEMAN ACCUSED OF FALSE COCAINE ARREST

Six-Year Veteran Is Charged After Undercover Sting; Crackdown On Corruption

A Baltimore police officer was charged with criminal misconduct yesterday
after authorities said he fell for a random, undercover sting and falsely
arrested a city resident on drug charges.

Officials said the case represents the first failure under random integrity
checks that are being conducted by Internal Affairs detectives and FBI
agents to rout out corruption under a new city police administration.

Officer Brian L. Sewell, a six-year veteran assigned to the Central
District, surrendered to authorities yesterday; he had been suspended since
the incident occurred last month.

"This is a horrible breach of the public trust," Police Commissioner Edward
T. Norris said at a news conference yesterday, adding that since he took
over in April, he has "heard a lot from the public about false arrests and
evidence being planted."

Prosecutors said charges filed against the man Sewell arrested Sept. 4 will
be dropped. But they acknowledged that that man, identified in court
documents as Frederick L. McCoy, 18, spent three hours locked in Central
Booking before he was released.

"If an innocent citizen is arrested and charged with possession of
narcotics he did not possess, that's outrageous," Norris said.

Police said undercover detectives put crack cocaine on a park bench in West
Baltimore and placed a phony call complaining about drugs to the
department's nonemergency 311 line.

Sewell responded and wrote in his report that he saw McCoy "placing a clear
plastic bag into a crack of a park bench."

Sewell was charged with perjury and misconduct in office. He could not be
reached for comment yesterday, but his lawyer, Henry Belsky, questioned the
legalities of using random, undercover sting operations to uncover corruption.

"My officer says he did not commit perjury," Belsky said. "He did what he
believes was appropriate police work."

The tough internal policing was promised by Mayor Martin O'Malley and
Norris, who came under fire by introducing a crime-fighting strategy that
calls for aggressive patrols and more arrests to bring down a high crime
and homicide rate. Critics voiced concern that the strategies would give
officers a green light to be brutal and corrupt.

O'Malley said yesterday's arrest proves the critics wrong.

"We said this city needs to do a better job policing our own police," the
mayor said. "We owe it not only to the people of this city, but we also owe
it to the 99.9 percent of our officers who every day risk their lives to
protect the rest of us."

The biggest concern for police commanders is whether this case is isolated.
Norris said other officers who responded along with Sewell to the drug call
are being questioned.

Police officials would not disclose how many sting operations they've done
nor describe them.

City officers have been arrested in the past for forming allegiances with
violent drug dealers, stealing Oriole playoff tickets from scalpers and
taking money from Hispanic residents.

Residents who live where drug dealing is prevalent have long complained
that the narcotics trade is so open it could not exist without complicity
on the part of police.

In a recent private consultant's survey of officers - to which 80 percent
of the 3,200-member force responded - 23 percent said they believed that
more than a quarter of the department "is involved in stealing money or
drugs from drug dealers."

Attorney Jack B. Rubin said he has had clients complain about corruption.
He represented former Officer Erick McCrary, who in 1998 was sentenced to
five years in federal prison for conspiring with a drug lord to abduct and
kill a narcotics dealer.

"Occasionally, I've heard it from six people, none of whom know each other,
and it's the same cop," Rubin said, adding that any drug cases Sewell is
involved in will most likely be dismissed.

State Sen. Clarence M. Mitchell IV, a West Baltimore Democrat, called for
federal intervention and said in a statement that the arrest confirms his
fears "that there are officers ... who are manufacturing cases, and in some
cases, planting evidence on innocent citizens."

Norris rejected the plea for outside monitoring and said FBI agents have
been working with his Internal Affairs Division since April.

"We are way ahead of Senator Mitchell's proposal," he said.

The incident that led to Sewell's arrest began Sept. 4 when Internal
Affairs detectives placed a plastic bag containing seven smaller bags of
crack cocaine on a park bench in the 400 block of Presstman St., in the
Druid Heights neighborhood of West Baltimore, and then called police to
report it.

Police said Sewell picked up the drugs from the bench and then responded to
a burglary call in the 1900 block of McCulloh St., two blocks away. He said
he saw McCoy leave through the front door of the Druid Heights Development
Corp.

Sewell wrote in his report that the manager, Stephen Turner, told him that
the apartment was unoccupied and that McCoy did not have permission to be
inside. Sewell arrested McCoy on a burglary charge, which police said
yesterday also will be dismissed.

Police officials said they believe that Sewell simply added the drug charge
to the burglary charge; why has not been determined, they said.

Sewell wrote in his report that he saw McCoy place the drugs on the bench
and then run away when a police cruiser pulled up.

"Based on my training and expertise, as well as over 600 narcotic arrests
this officer has made in my 7 years as a Baltimore City police officer, I
believed Mr. McCoy was selling and in possession of a controlled dangerous
substance," Sewell wrote in his report.

McCoy's mother, Iris Williams, said her son proclaimed his innocence from
the start. "He said he didn't do it," she said. "He said he was just
walking and some officer pulled him up."

Williams said she does not have a lot of confidence in Baltimore police.
"If don't have to call them, I won't," she said.