BROOKLYN OFFICERS ACCUSED AS BRAZEN ROBBERS

Two police officers were part of a brazen Brooklyn robbery gang for
several years, federal authorities said yesterday, holding up drug
dealers, plotting armed robberies of businesses and even using a
patrol car and police raid jackets for a robbery scheme.

The two officers, both assigned to the 77th Precinct in
Bedford-Stuyvesant, became so reckless, according to court papers
unsealed yesterday, that they are accused of a crime sure to send
shock waves through the force: conspiring to murder a fellow officer.

The target of the conspiracy, a veteran detective, had testified in an
unrelated case in 1997, contradicting the officers' statements and
leaving them open to federal perjury charges, the court papers said.

In the months after the detective's testimony, the pair, using a
mobile computer in their police car, tracked down the detective's home
address and drove by with an accomplice in tow to plan his murder, the
court papers said. They never followed through, but the pair's
testimony eventually caught up to them last June, officials said, when
the Police Department accused them of lying to federal prosecutors and
fired them.

The accusations revealed in court papers yesterday echoed a notorious
corruption scandal in the same police precinct 14 years ago, when a
dozen officers known as the Buddy Boys were charged with robbing drug
dealers and other crimes. This case, however, did not appear to be
part of a wider pattern, federal prosecutors and police officials said
yesterday.

But the level of brazen criminal behavior detailed in court papers was
as serious as has surfaced in the department in several years. It
raised questions about how the two officers were able to operate
undetected, robbing drug dealers in three boroughs, as the court
papers say they did, and in the case of one officer, leaving work
early one day in 1997 to take part in a $500,000 jewelry store robbery
in Garden City on Long Island.

The firing of the officers last summer for lying about a gun arrest
was unrelated to the crimes with which they have been charged, police
officials said. Their shadow lives of crime came to light when one of
the former officers, Anthony Trotman, 35, was charged with the Long
Island jewelry store robbery in a federal indictment on Jan. 11.

Mr. Trotman, who had been on the force for 11 years, then began
cooperating with federal authorities. The information he provided led
to a criminal complaint unsealed yesterday against the second former
officer, Jamil Jordan, 28. Mr. Jordan is charged with conspiring to
commit robberies, credit card fraud and conspiring to murder the detective.

Yesterday, neither the lawyer for Mr. Jordan, Frank Handelman, nor the
lawyer representing Mr. Trotman, Valerie Amsterdam, returned calls
seeking comment.

Mr. Jordan was arraigned before Magistrate Judge Marilyn D. Go in
federal court in Brooklyn yesterday afternoon. Magistrate Go held Mr.
Jordan without bail.

In the same courthouse, the trial of one of the other men prosecutors
say was part of the robbery crew, James Woodard, was getting under
way. Jack Smith, an assistant United States attorney, told jurors in
Mr. Woodard's trial that they would hear testimony from Mr. Trotman,
who as a police officer had robbed drug dealers and, on Aug. 1, 1997,
helped carry out the 36-second armed robbery at H. L. Gross jewelers
in Garden City. The crime, which netted $500,000 in jewelry, was the
second trip to the store by the crew. Four months earlier, without Mr.
Trotman, four of the men used the same smash-and-grab tactics to
hammer through the shop's glass display cases and grab as many watches
and other pieces of jewelry as they could carry, officials said.

Officials said the crew conducted surveillance of their robbery
targets; usually chose days when the weather was bad for their
robberies, to slow the police response; and used a Lexus as a getaway
car.