DETROIT COP ADMITS HE FALSIFIED REPORT, AGREES TO TESTIFY AGAINST FELLOW
OFFICERS

DETROIT -- A Detroit police officer on Friday acknowledged he lied
about finding cocaine in a woman's purse and agreed to become a
witness for federal prosecutors in a police misconduct case involving
18 current and former officers.

By pleading guilty to depriving the woman of her civil rights -- a
misdemeanor -- Hubert Brown of Detroit becomes a central witness to
the government's case, believed to be one of the largest of its kind.

Eighteen officers have been indicted on charges they falsified
reports, planted evidence on suspects, conducted illegal searches,
stole money and assaulted people. The bombshell allegations grew out
of a U.S. Justice Department civil-rights investigation of the Detroit
Police Department that began in December 2000.

"I wrote a false report," Brown, 37, told U.S. District Judge Avern
Cohn matter of factly during his guilty plea. Brown, who remains free
on bail, and his attorney declined to comment after the hearing. Brown
faces up to a year in prison and a fine for his crime and has agreed
to quit the department.

In court papers, Brown said that on May 2, 2000, Officers Matthew Zani
and Christopher Ruiz convinced him to write a police report in which
he claimed to arrest Tracey Marie Brown outside her Detroit house. At
the time, he said he found crack cocaine in her purse.

Hubert Brown now says Zani and Ruiz, along with others, entered the
woman's house without a search warrant. Hubert Brown lied in testimony
against Tracey Brown, and she eventually pleaded guilty in that case,
records show. The Browns are not related.

Hubert Brown's agreement to testify for the government is the first
crack in what has so far been solid support within the department's
rank-and-file for the officers. Nine of the 18 accused officers are
scheduled for a Jan. 20 trial.

The government's case calls into question scores, if not hundreds, of
criminal convictions that were based on the work of the indicted
officers, who served an average of 10 years each on the force,
officials have said. At least five people currently in state prison
may have been wrongfully convicted, prosecutors have said.