COP'S ARREST STUNS KIN, POLICE

Feds Claim Atlanta Officer Was A Kingpin In Drug Ring

A dozen years ago, when Police Chief Eldrin Bell approved the hiring of
David Freeman as a rookie Atlanta officer, the chief rhetorically asked a
police commander about the new recruit.

"Show me how a man can go from Perry Homes to be student government
president at Georgia State University and not be eligible to be an
officer," the chief said.

"The kid had proved to me that he had the aptitude and the drive for the
job by rising from a housing project to graduate from college," Bell, who
retired in 1994, recalled recently.

Bell and other Atlanta police officers and those who know Freeman now are
scratching their heads over the turn of events that has rocked the life of
the once acclaimed cop.

Freeman, a nine-year veteran of the force chosen zone Officer of the Year
for his shift in 2002, is in jail, accused of being a leader of a violent
narcotics gang that operated where he grew up in northwest Atlanta.

While Freeman was unavailable for comment, those who know him best ---
members of his close-knit family --- are trying to sort through what has
happened. When older brother Michael, a retired Army sergeant in Virginia,
learned of the charges, he said, "It hurt me to the heart."

"That's not like my brother," Michael Freeman added. "They got the wrong
guy. They really do."

Freeman, 38, was arrested Aug. 13 by agents of the federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives during a morning police roll
call. A day earlier, a federal grand jury had added his name to a
racketeering indictment. Freeman denies the racketeering charges.

Federal authorities say Freeman was a key figure in the Diablos drug gang
for at least four years. The U.S. attorney's office contends the Diablos
trafficked in cocaine and other drugs in northwest Atlanta, where Freeman
grew up and later patrolled as a city cop.

According to federal prosecutors, Freeman encouraged, participated in or
had knowledge of acts by the gang, including killings, kidnappings,
beatings and intimidation of rival drug dealers and police informants.

Freeman has been suspended from duty without pay and is in federal custody
at an undisclosed location after being denied bail. A U.S. marshal's
spokesman declined to provide details of Freeman's whereabouts, citing
security.

"If it is proven that he has done what they accuse him of, he has
disappointed and fooled me," Bell said. "And he's fooled a lot of other
people as well."

A Cop In The Making

An Atlanta native, David Alan Freeman grew up in Perry Homes, a public
housing project of barracks-style brick apartments often beset by crime and
random violence. The apartment complex was torn down two years ago.

"Everybody in Perry Homes called him 'Day Day.' Everybody everywhere called
him 'Day Day,' said his mother, Juanita Freeman. She disputed claims by
authorities that Freeman used the name as part of his alleged involvement
in gang activities.

Freeman's niece, Debbie Carter, who is a year older than her uncle, recalls
that she and Freeman's older brother began calling him "Day Day" when they
were toddlers and couldn't pronounce David. "Somehow it came out 'Day Day.'
We were all babies. . . . It's just a family nickname, not a gang or a
street name," Carter said.

Freeman is the youngest of seven children --- six sons and a daughter ---
of Elijah and Juanita Freeman. His father, a truck driver who moved
furniture in the Atlanta area, died of cancer when the couple's youngest
child was 10.

Freeman's mother worked 17 years as a day care worker, tending babies and
toddlers. She said she made a point of being at home when her children got
out of school.

"We always were home for dinner together growing up," Michael Freeman
recalled. "My brother would never do anything that would get back to and
hurt my mom. You can bank on that."

Kathy Cook has known Freeman since the eighth grade at Archer High School,
where Freeman graduated with academic honors in 1983.

She recalled a teen athlete and bright student "who was pretty respectable,
never got into trouble. His mother kept a nice home, and David was always
clean and well-dressed."

Juanita Freeman said that while the family didn't have a lot of money, she
never thought of them as poor. Freeman entered Georgia State University in
1986 and majored in criminal justice. His mother and his niece said he
wanted to become a lawyer.

"I remember asking him once about law school, and he said he didn't pass
the law SAT," Carter said. "He may have been considering [law\] as a future
possibility, but I know once he started on the police force, he liked the
work so much he kept at it."

The GSU yearbook, The Rampway, noted that Freeman was a member of the
Governor's Commission for State Drug Policy and the Atlanta Housing
Authority board.

Freeman, then 24, was quoted in a 1989 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article
about a Housing Authority youth leadership organization in which he served.
He said African-Americans who were better off than he was would often asked
him, "Why don't you act like you live in public housing? . . . They assume
that you deal with drugs, that you're violent, that you drive a Cadillac
and wear gold chains," he told a reporter.

Freeman was elected student government president his senior year ---
becoming the second African-American student to hold the office since GSU
was founded in 1913. He graduated in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in
criminal justice.

He joined the Atlanta Police Department in 1991, starting as a license and
permit clerk and later becoming a radio dispatcher. Around 1994, Freeman
entered the department's police academy to train to become an officer.

"There was crime when we were growing up, and it's just gotten more intense
and frequent over time," Michael Freeman said. "I think he wanted to do his
part to help change that, and his way was to join the police force."

Freeman's first two years as a patrol officer were in Buckhead's Zone 2. He
then was assigned to Zone 1 in northwest Atlanta, where he worked seven
years until his arrest.

He patrolled neighborhoods around Bankhead Highway, as it is still commonly
known although the name was changed to Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway almost
five years ago.

Common sights in the area are burglar bars on businesses and signs in
nightclubs that warn "positively no drugs or weapons allowed."

Praise And Criticism

Freeman's years as an officer generated both praise and criticism from
superiors and the public.

"He's a hardworking, energetic officer, and month in and month out he
always made a lot of arrests, misdemeanors and felonies --- robberies, auto
theft, drugs, everything," Freeman's watch commander, Lt. Robert Sullivan,
said in an interview.

"If a squad like robbery or homicide was looking for a suspect in Bankhead
Court or Maynard Homes, for instance, Freeman knew the area and was
invaluable in finding them," Sullivan said.

Two weeks before his indictment, Freeman was honored as 2002 Officer of the
Year for his shift in Zone 1.

In 2001 he was awarded a meritorious service certificate for making 400
traffic arrests, including 66 for speeding, and 110 felony arrests the
previous year.

Sgt. Vernon Sands wrote to a superior in December 2000: "Officer Freeman
has shown great love and dedication to the Zone and he has the [arrest]
numbers to prove it. Most of his success comes from his familiarity with
suspects and having grown up in this area."

But officials have also questioned the officer's actions.

Freeman's file includes a 1995 written reprimand issued after two
Douglasville teenagers said the officer uttered an obscenity at them when
they were robbed at gunpoint in an area on Simpson Road known for drug
trafficking. He also was reprimanded for not filing a police report on the
robbery.

The teens, 16 and 17 years old at the time, said they became lost while
looking for a music club and stopped at an apartment complex to ask
directions. They said they were held up and pistol-whipped by two men.

They said Freeman, whom they found at a nearby convenience store, dismissed
their complaint and told them to "get your white [expletive] home."

According to the internal affairs report, Freeman denied insulting the pair
and said he did not file a report because "I was already on a call, and . .
. there were discrepancies in both complainants' stories."

During the 1997 Atlanta city elections, Freeman was accused of aggravated
assault on City Councilman Jared Samples' campaign manager, Edward Traylor Jr.

Freeman, a close friend and Georgia State fraternity brother of Samples',
was accused by Traylor of beating and pistol-whipping him during an
argument at Samples' home over Traylor's work in the election. Freeman was
campaign treasurer in Samples' failed re-election bid.

Freeman was cleared when a Fulton County grand jury declined to indict him
on the assault charges.

According to the investigative file on the incident by the Atlanta police
Office of Professional Standards, Freeman said that Traylor had pushed him,
causing him to fall over a coffee table, and that he fought back only with
his fists.

Probe Takes Two Years

Federal authorities, led by ATF, began investigating Freeman's alleged ties
to the Diablos gang two years ago.

Authorities have refused to say what specifically prompted them to target
Freeman, but they began the investigation following an investigation of
crimes allegedly committed by the Diablos.

Freeman is named along with 15 others in the federal Racketeer Influenced
and Corrupt Organization Act indictment, which alleges that he is among six
men who made up the Diablos' leadership.

The 26-page federal indictment alleges that Freeman, based on his knowledge
and actions as a police officer, alerted the Diablos to police
investigations, search warrants and impending arrests; recommended that
individuals he knew to be drug dealers be robbed of their narcotics by the
Diablos, with the drugs being sold for profit; and supplied the gang with
drugs he seized from dealers he had detained.

In a case three years ago, the indictment says, Freeman gave cocaine he had
seized from a suspect to gang leader Billy Durante "Billy Diablo" Ladson, 26.

The indictment says Freeman urged Ladson to kill alleged informant Michael
Goss for providing police with information about the beating, robbery and
attempted murder of a rival drug dealer. Freeman allegedly showed Ladson a
police report naming Goss as a witness, the indictment says.

Goss, 26, known as "Mike Mike," was killed by multiple gunshots as he drove
along Ezra Church Drive the night of June 11, 2002. The indictment says
Ladson ordered Goss' slaying.

Ladson also is in federal custody awaiting trial, charged in the same
indictment as Freeman.

The Arrest Is Made

Freeman's defense lawyers counter that the Diablos are merely a rap music
group and that Freeman occasionally worked off duty as a security guard at
their performances.

"I know they did a performance at the Bounce on Bankhead Highway," said
Freeman's attorney, Ricardo Mosby. "I don't know what else they were doing,
but our contention is that Officer Freeman was not involved."

On the day of Freeman's arrest, he was led from morning roll call by
federal officers, frisked, handcuffed, placed in a government car, and
driven away in federal custody.

"I was shocked. I had a lot of faith in his work ability, and that's all I
can talk about," said Maj. George Turner, the Zone 1 commander.

Police Chief Richard Pennington said after the arrest that he would not
tolerate corruption. He declined to comment specifically about the Freeman
case, but Pennington said officers who are convicted of crimes sometimes
are "among the most aggressive and tenacious, the ones who make a lot of
arrests."

Juanita Freeman learned of her son's arrest on the noon news the day of his
arrest. Until then, she said, she had no idea anything was wrong. "I just
kind of lost it for a while," she said somberly.

Last month, after hearing a defense attorney read from the lengthy
indictment detailing specific charges against her son, Juanita Freeman
asked herself, "What does David have to do with any of this?"

Later she told a reporter, "It was like they were talking about a different
person."

Former Chief Bell said: "There've been a number of officers over the years,
some of them highly qualified, that I ended up putting in jail. There are
changes in individuals when they put on the shield; the power and authority
that a person gets often changes one to being something other than who they
were when they were employed.

"In David's case, perhaps the behavior he had to deal with on a daily basis
may have rubbed off on him. But we don't know that."

Freeman's trial isn't expected until spring.

Juanita Freeman says she bears the ordeal with prayer.

"I think it will all turn out just great," she insisted. "I know he didn't
do it. He's my son."