COPS JAILED IN DRUG STING ORDERED FREED

Two Chicago police officers accused of stealing cash and five bricks
of phony cocaine from a drug stash house set up as a ruse by the FBI
were ordered released from custody Wednesday after their pastors,
relatives and friends vouched for their honesty and character.

Prosecutors said they hadn't decided if they would appeal the
decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Morton Denlow in an attempt to keep
Sgt. William M. Patterson and Officer Daryl L. Smith locked up in the
Metropolitan Correctional Center pending trial.

The two could be released to house arrest as soon as Friday if the
relatives and friends post property valued at $100,000 for each
defendant.

At the detention hearing Wednesday, prosecutors said Patterson, 51,
the first active command-level Chicago police officer arrested in
nearly two decades, and Smith, 40, were both on duty Feb. 1 when they
allegedly stole $20,000 and the fake cocaine from a South Side
apartment as an undercover video camera recorded the scene.

Michael Falconer and Michael Rovell, lawyers for the two officers,
contended it was a legitimate police raid of a suspected drug house.

But charges alleged Patterson and Smith wore ski masks over their
faces and later dropped off the phony cocaine in a vehicle owned by a
drug dealer who helped set up the theft from the purported stash
house. In reality, the drug dealer was working undercover for the FBI
after his arrest in November, secretly taping conversations with the
officers, authorities said.

If the raid had been legitimate, the drugs and cash should have
properly inventoried as evidence, said Assistant U.S. Attorneys
Morris Pasqual and Brian Havey.

Prosecutors also revealed Wednesday that after his arrest last week
Patterson gave a statement to FBI agents in which he admitted the
$20,000 was in a front hallway closet in his Far South Side residence.

Patterson consented to a search of his house, and authorities
recovered the money from the closet, FBI Special Agent John Mark
Burbridge testified at the hearing.