COPS IN DRUG BUST

Federal Prosecutors Say They Transported Cocaine, Heroin

Willie Parson was a highly decorated detective in the elite Manhattan North
Homicide Task Force, which handles most of the big murder cases in the
borough. He earned the Combat Cross for bravery under fire, and he had his
brother locked up for cocaine possession.

But federal prosecutors say that beginning sometime in 1998, Parson
embarked on a double life. For three years, they said yesterday, Parson
drove bricks of cocaine and heroin from a Manhattan-based drug network to
customers in Detroit and Baltimore, making tens of thousands of dollars.

Parson, 43, Det. Steven Fuller, 43, and Phillip Moog, 56, a retired
detective and former police union delegate, were among 13 people arrested
yesterday on charges of conspiring to distribute heroin and cocaine as part
of a multistate drug distribution network affiliated with a Queens-based
Colombian drug ring.

Federal prosecutors charged that Fuller, a detective assigned to the
Manhattan Warrants Squad, was a heroin chauffeur for the same group, which
operated out of a clothing store at 158th Street and Broadway. The ring
allegedly employed Moog, a private investigator working in Pennsylvania.

According to a federal indictment filed yesterday at U.S. District Court in
Brooklyn, Parson, Fuller and Moog were undone by one of their own handlers,
clothing store owner Miladys Tineo, who turned against them after her
arrest. Tineo agreed to allow federal agents to secretly record her phone
conversations and wire her apartment for sound and video.

"Once again, we have seen how the corrupt and the greedy fall prey to the
allure of drug trafficking and the myth of its easy money," said U.S.
Attorney Loretta Lynch.

According to the indictment, the officers were paid $3,000 per kilogram of
heroin and $700 per kilogram of cocaine for delivery. Assistant U.S.
Attorney Stuart Altman said the officers used private cars but that records
showed they employed their Police Department beepers to communicate with
the drug dealers, that they carried their badges and that they they made
and took calls in the precinct offices.

"The benefit of using police officers was in if they ever got stopped,"
Altman said.

Parson attended the Police Academy with Fuller and grew up with one of the
people involved in the drug ring, a law enforcement official said.

The allegation that police officers were working for the drug ring surfaced
when Tineo complained to an informant that one of the police officers
working for her had "ripped her off for $200,000." Tineo was arrested last
month and began to cooperate with the FBI.

Parson won the Combat Cross, one of the department's highest honors, for
foiling a supermarket robbery in 1994 in Harlem.

At their arraignment last night, Parson and Fuller pleaded not guilty. A
bail hearing was scheduled for tomorrow.

Parson's lawyer, John Jacobs, called the indictment a "single witness case"
against a "highly decorated detective." He added that Parson's fiancee is a
police sergeant.

"I see no tape recordings, no seizures, I don't see representations as to
tape recordings," said Jacobs. "It seems like a bald allegation. I want to
see additional evidence."

Fuller's lawyer, Paul Madden, declined to comment before the bail hearing.

Altman said the officers face up to 15 years in federal prison if convicted.

In a 1994 New York Newsday article about the supermarket case, law
enforcement sources said Parson went to the market to buy a soda and
happened on a security guard being robbed. He traded gunfire with the
robbers and was wounded; the security guard died in the shoot-out. A week
later, three suspects were arrested.

In the article, it was reported that Parson, who grew up in Harlem, had his
brother arrested when he became addicted to cocaine. The brother later
became a successful salesman.