CURRENT AND EX-OFFICERS CHARGED IN ROBBERY SPREE

MIAMI - Two current and former Hialeah police officers were charged Friday
with setting up three robberies, serving as lookouts and providing a police
badge, handcuffs and pepper spray to help pull them off.

The retired officer also offered his services to protect cocaine in Hialeah
and suggested deliveries be wrapped as gifts so whoever was holding the
drugs could deny knowing what was inside, an investigator said.

The investigation, nicknamed "Bad Apple," was organized by a task force of
federal and state agents targeting corrupt officers. The Hialeah department
cooperated with the investigation.

Former Officer Orestes DeSoto and Officer Cecilio Nunez were arrested
Friday and face court appearances next week on federal robbery, narcotics
and gun charges. The robberies were committed in a little more than a month
early last year.

In the most extreme case, a restaurant manager was abducted, beaten and
threatened with a gun by DeSoto, who thought the man doubled as a cocaine
dealer, according to a court affidavit filed by an investigator.

The victim was stopped by Nunez in a marked car and handcuffed before a
hood was placed over his head, according to Thomas Chittum, an agent with
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The man was taken to a warehouse, where DeSoto punched and kicked him and
put a gun in his mouth to get him to say where he kept cocaine, Chittum
wrote in the report supporting the charges.

The owner denied having any drugs, was robbed of his cash and jewelry and
was dropped off near a hospital, still blindfolded and cuffed, Chittum said.

In other robberies, DeSoto set up a 7-Eleven store manager to be robbed of
$10,100 and provided the pepper spray needed to overpower the man,
Chittum's affidavit said.

A store videotape showed DeSoto in the convenience store just before the
robbery, and he allegedly made a cell phone call to accomplices to alert
them that it was time to move in.

In the third holdup, both DeSoto and Nunez served as lookouts when a bakery
owner was robbed of $2,000 while getting out of her car when she arrived
home from work.