WITNESS SAYS SHE ASSISTED OFFICER

Schenectady -- Ex-informant plans to testify against police lieutenant in
latest trial related to FBI corruption probe

She was a young woman whose cocaine habit had spiraled out of control. He
was a decorated police officer known for making more arrests than almost
anyone on the force.

They needed each other.

Lt. Michael Hamilton shielded her from the law, she said. In return, the
woman identified people he could bust, making him one of the department's
most productive and highly paid officers. He gave her carte blanche,
allowing her to roam the streets without fear. She knew that as long as she
could be of use to the cops, she was protected.

"I was on top of the world," she said in a recent interview. "I thought I
was untouchable." The woman asked that her name be kept confidential.

Dealing with informants is a routine part of police work. But the
relationship can be a delicate one. Informants typically belong to the
underworld they are reporting on and may have hidden motives for helping
law enforcement officials, like seeking revenge on enemies or getting
themselves out of a jam. Police, therefore, are required to follow strict
rules on how they deal with informants. Officers can't pay their informants
with drugs, for instance, or turn a blind eye if they break the law.

An ongoing investigation into corruption in the Schenectady Police
Department has uncovered allegations that a group of rogue officers
maintained an informal network of informants in Hamilton Hill and Mont
Pleasant. A handful of officers allegedly paid these informants with money
and drugs. The officers kept the addicts in line by threatening them with
arrest.

The addicts, in turn, gave the cops leads on criminal activity. With their
help, the officers not only turned around arrests quickly; they seized
money and drugs from their suspects to keep the scheme going, according to
sources. The drug runners and low-level dealers they preyed upon were not
in a position to complain.

Hamilton is the third and highest-ranking officer to face criminal charges
in connection with the FBI investigation. The 23-year-old woman interviewed
for this story is expected to be a key witness at Hamilton's trial,
according to sources close to the investigation. The woman recently
described how officers she worked with regularly crossed the line.

Each department has its own rules for using confidential informants. In
general, however, officers are forbidden from engaging in criminal
activities or overlooking crimes that their informants may have committed.
Schenectady police officials did not return calls Friday seeking the
department's informant policy.

Hamilton's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, has acknowledged that the woman gave
Hamilton information. "Real cops who arrest people have informants,"
Tacopina said. "That's no secret." He denies, however, that Hamilton did
anything illegal.

The relationship started several years ago, when she started flirting with
the lieutenant and some of the patrol officers under his command, she said.

It developed into a mutually beneficial relationship. "They'd say, 'I need
a felony,' " the woman said. She would comply by setting up people she knew
to have drugs on them whom she didn't like, she said. She'd call Hamilton back.

"I'd say, 'Come over in 20 minutes. I'll leave the door unlocked.' "

"(Hamilton) would come and arrest him," she said. To keep the ruse going,
she would feign surprise when the cops kicked her door down, she said. "I'd
say, 'What the hell are you guys doing there?' I played it off."

Over the years, the woman said she set up a "a lot of people." A woman who
used to associate with her corroborated the account in a separate interview.

"I'd see her set people up all the time," the associate said. "She'd have
them come to the house and the next thing you knew, Mike Hamilton would be
there with the guys, patting people down."

Hamilton's informant lorded her powerful connections over her friends, the
associate said. "If someone stole her lighter she'd call Hamilton."

The relationship worked to her advantage. A review of court records shows
that though the woman spent some time in jail, she served only short clips,
on misdemeanor charges such as disorderly conduct and operating a car while
under the influence of drugs. She credits the protection the cops gave her
for the reason she never served lengthy jail time.

In exchange for feeding the cops arrests, the woman said, they would give
her a share of the drugs they found on their suspects.

"They'd give me something and go," she said. "A couple of twenties." A
single piece of crack, roughly the size of an aspirin, fetches $20 on the
street in Schenectady.

The cops also delivered drugs to her, she said. While two officers under
Hamilton's supervision, Richard Barnett and Michael Siler, have been
charged with giving drugs to users, Hamilton is not facing any charges
related to drug distribution.

Barnett has pleaded guilty to drug distribution and extortion charges and
is expected to testify against Siler for a reduced sentence. He has been
fired from the force.

The woman said Siler gave her drugs. "I used to go to his house," she said.
"He had a big drawer full of crack. He'd give it to me for free." The woman
is expected to testify against Siler at his trial in Utica later this month.

Siler has been indicted on a federal racketeering charge and several
felonies, which include a charge that he took crack cocaine out of his
police locker and gave it to a woman addicted to crack to lure her to a
bachelor party for a fellow officer. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The woman's relationship with the cops came to an abrupt end last spring.

In March 2000, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and a team of
Schenectady investigators launched an undercover operation to shut down two
notorious crack houses in Mont Pleasant.

Between March 1 and 9, investigators sent a confidential informant to both
houses to buy small quantities of crack cocaine, said Assistant U.S.
Attorney William Pericak.

The woman interviewed for this story, as well as her close friend, Roger
Little, were caught on the informant's wire selling the crack, according to
court records. Both individuals were charged with managing a crack house on
First Avenue.

Police kept the house under surveillance while the operation continued. On
March 8, Hamilton pulled up in his marked patrol car, at a time when he was
supposed to be at the police training academy at Hudson Valley Community
College, according to sources.

Hamilton glanced at the unmarked van where the DEA and Schenectady Police
were monitoring the operation, and drove away. Hamilton then allegedly
called his informant using his cellphone, according to her account and
court records.

"Come down," he told her. She walked down the stairs of her apartment, she
said, and got into his patrol car a block away. "He rode me around," she
said, "and he said, 'See that van over there?' (shaking his head) Police!'
" She said she remembers feeling scared but couldn't remember what happened
next.

According to sources, she returned to the apartment and told her friends
and the informant who was in the house that the police were outside. Parts
of the conversation were recorded on the informant's wire, sources said.

Minutes later, three men ran down a back staircase that opens onto an
alley. The woman left by the front of the building, walking by the van
where two investigators were watching.

More than a year later, Hamilton was charged with three federal felonies.
He is accused of trying to hinder a federal investigation by warning the
woman interviewed for this story that her apartment was being watched by
police. He faces up to 20 years in prison on the top count. He has pleaded
not guilty to all charges.

After her arrest on July 5, 2000, the woman agreed to cooperate with
federal authorities on the Schenectady police probe, sources say. She faced
up to two years in prison after pleading guilty, but received five years
probation. She spent approximately eight months in jail pending the outcome
of her case. She returned to jail last week, after police picked her up in
Hamilton Hill for violating federal probation. A judge is expected to rule
in coming weeks on whether she should be kept in jail while undergoing
further treatment.

The woman is expected to testify at Hamilton's trial, sources say.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Katko, who is prosecuting the cases against
the Schenectady police officers, refused to confirm or deny that the woman
is cooperating with his office or that she will testify. The terms of her
cooperation agreement have been sealed by the court.

Nearly a year after her relationship with Hamilton ended, the woman
interviewed for this story can still recite his pager number. When reached
at the number the woman provided, Hamilton returned a call but said he had
no comment.

Tacopina, Hamilton's lawyer, attacked the credibility of the woman
interviewed for this story, saying that she had changed her account several
times. "For months on end, she claimed Mike Hamilton never did anything
wrong, never gave her anything," he said.

"If the federal government can't control their own witness," he said,
referring to the fact that she had recently relapsed and returned to the
street to use drugs, "I don't think they're going to be able to control her
on the witness stand."

Hamilton has won more than a dozen awards over his 11-year career and
earned a reputation as one of the department's most hard-charging officers,
making more than 100 drug arrests a year.

All those arrests paid off. If Hamilton made an arrest by the end of his
shift, he would automatically earn four hours of overtime by appearing in
court the following morning, off-duty. He would get the four hours of time
even if the court appearance took only 20 minutes, thanks to the terms of
the city's contract with the Police Benevolent Association, the union that
represents the city's police officers. The overtime made him one of the
city's highest paid workers.

Between 1997 and 2000, Hamilton nearly doubled his $55,000-a-year salary
with overtime and was the city's top-paid employee, earning more than the
mayor or the police chief. Last year, he was the second-highest paid, at
$109,600.

Hamilton, the son of retired Schenectady Lt. Michael Hamilton, comes from a
family of police officers. His younger brother, Robert, is a fellow
Schenectady officer and past president of the PBA. His twin brother, James,
was named police chief in Rotterdam last week. In a public show of
solidarity, James Hamilton picked his brother to pin the chief's badge to
his uniform at a Town Board meeting.

Reactions from the community have been mixed. Some see Hamilton as a man
who started out with good intentions but lost his way as money and prestige
beckoned. Others view him as a hero -- a man unfairly targeted by a large
federal agency. The FBI probe, nearing the two-year mark, has weighed
heavily on this city of 62,000, a one-company town still trying to recover
from the wave of layoffs at General Electric.

"He locked up a lot of drug dealers," said PBA President Tony Brown. "He
was a very, very, aggressive officer. When you're aggressive, you're going
to get a lot of complaints."

"He's one of the best cops I've ever worked with."

The praise was echoed by other officials. "Mike, over the years, has just
seemed to have more knowledge than the other officers," said Niskayuna
Detective Sgt. Thomas Constantine.