1981 ARRESTS OF OFFICERS BEGAN DARK PERIOD FOR SAPD

It's been 20 years since detectives showed up at a San Antonio police
roll call to arrest brother officers in uniform on drug trafficking
charges.

A handful of veteran officers hadn't forgotten that day as they
listened to details of the indictments returned this week against
eight police officers, two other law officers and two civilians
accused of providing armed protection to cocaine dealers.

Police Chief Al Philippus still was a young patrol officer when six
officers, a former officer and a civilian were arrested in early
1981, and so was San Antonio Police Officers' Association President
Ronnie Welch.

But both remembered that day as they answered questions about the FBI
undercover investigation that concluded this week.

Just like that day in 1981, four officers were in uniform Thursday
morning when they were arrested at a roll call. Another three were
arrested at their homes. And the eighth was stopped in a car.

The eight officers were among 12 suspects indicted by a federal grand
jury on cocaine trafficking charges.

According to the FBI, the officers had used their guns and badges to
provide protection to undercover agents they believed were drug
dealers.

Welch, who attended the news conference Thursday where the
announcement was made, remembered 1981 when officers now long gone
from the department were taken away in handcuffs, still in their
police blues.

"I was at that roll call when they were arrested," Welch said.

Back then, reports that police officers had been arrested in uniform
and charged with drug offenses were stunning news that shook the
department.

The department's 1,100 officers had no way of knowing then that those
drug arrests would launch the department into a bleak period. For the
next five years, the department would reel from revelation after
revelation, including the arrest on drug trafficking charges of a
popular detective sergeant who was vindicated, as well as the
shooting death of rogue officer Stephen Smith, who was suspected of
conducting a vigilante campaign against crime suspects.

Looking back to the 1981 drug arrests, Philippus said charges against
officers then weren't as serious as the accusations contained in the
indictments returned this week.

"Those cases in 1981 involved marijuana, and these were cocaine,"
Philippus said, and the half-dozen officers arrested in that old case
weren't accused of selling protection to drug dealers, either.

U.S. Attorney Bill Blagg, himself a federal prosecutor 20 years ago,
summed up the current charges by claiming the officers "were renting
their badges and guns."

Police themselves conducted the 1981 investigation, using one of
their officers as an undercover operator to snare his fellow officers.

The indictments announced Thursday resulted from an FBI undercover
investigation that had been known only to Philippus and a handful of
his top officers, apparently without alerting any of the officers in
a department whose numbers have swelled to almost 1,900.