OPERATION TARNISHED BADGE: INQUIRY ALLEGES MORE ABUSES

MAXTON -- The men moved quietly through the evening, guns drawn, down
a darkened path toward the rear of Alex Locklear's home.

As they positioned themselves, an unmarked Robeson County patrol car
sped into the driveway, blue lights flashing.

State and federal prosecutors say this was no authorized drug raid.
They say former Deputy Vincent Sinclair and four other men went to
Locklear's home on the evening of March 14, 2004, with a single
purpose -- to rob the place and terrorize its occupants.

The robbery was just one incident in what has become a host of
allegations against Robeson County law enforcement officers in an
investigation known as Operation Tarnished Badge. But the allegations
against Sinclair stand out for their brazenness and violence.

Locklear, who farms about 400 acres, said he was out of town when
Sinclair and four other men raided his home. But Locklear said the
men knew he had cashed a check to pay his farm laborers before he
left for a motorcycle rally in Myrtle Beach.

His son was home. Nicholas Locklear, who is paralyzed and uses a
wheelchair, said the men ordered everybody outside to hit the ground,
including a pregnant woman.

They burst onto the back porch, he said, and ordered a man and a
woman sitting on a swing to the ground.

"They told him they were going to blow his brains out," Nicholas Locklear said.

He said the men searched him and ransacked the house.

"They just wanted to know if we had any drugs or any large amounts of
money," he said.

Alex Locklear said the robbers took about $200 from his bedroom.

His daughter, Michelle Jacobs, said she arrived at the home just as
the patrol car was leaving and her friends were getting off the
grass. She said the woman on the porch broke her arm when she ran and
tripped in a ditch.

Alex Locklear said he reported the robbery to a sheriff's deputy and
mentioned that the patrol car used would be missing a front hubcap
lost during the raid.

Locklear said the Sheriff's Office never conducted an investigation.

But someone paid attention later, and a state grand jury indicted
Sinclair in September 2005 on charges stemming from the robbery of
Locklear and several other crimes.

Sinclair is among nine former sheriff's deputies and two former
Lumberton police officers to be charged through Operation Tarnished Badge.

Since June, the state and federal investigation has led to four
deputies pleading guilty in federal court in exchange for their
cooperation. Prosecutors say more arrests are possible.

The widening investigation has revealed deputies stealing hundreds
of- thousands of dollars from drug stops on Interstate 95, beating
and robbing people in their homes, swindling money from county
coffers and working with drug dealers to steal money and drugs from
other dealers.

Some deputies are accused of kidnapping drug dealers and holding them
for ransom. One is accused of giving someone two trash bags full of
marijuana to burn a pawnshop to settle a personal vendetta. The home
of a man who was set to testify against that deputy was firebombed
shortly before trial.

Sinclair is accused of trying to extort money from a man he suspected
of selling drugs by pouring lighter fluid on the man's arm and
setting him on fire. Prosecutors say Sinclair had gone to the wrong
house and terrorized the wrong man. Court records say the man was
seriously injured.

Widespread Problems

A federal indictment says corruption among deputies has been
widespread at least since 1995, the year after Glenn Maynor became sheriff.

Maynor resigned abruptly in December 2004, citing health concerns.
His resignation came shortly after he became eligible for a full pension.

Maynor has kept a low profile since his retirement. He is rarely seen
in public anymore, and he refuses to return reporters' repeated
telephone calls.

His successor, Kenneth Sealey, declined to comment on the
investigation. "You need to talk to the SBI or the U.S. Attorney's
Office," Sealey said. "I have already made my comments on that. We'll
talk one day." Sealey faces election in November.

Maynor left the Sheriff's Office in shambles and some of his top
deputies in disgrace.

C.T. Strickland, chief of the Drug Enforcement Division, was forced
to resign in 2003 because he falsified a search warrant. A federal
grand jury has since indicted him on charges that include burning
down a drug dealer's home and stealing drug money.

The same year Strickland resigned, Roger Taylor, commander of the
Communications Division, was charged with allowing a convicted felon
to carry a gun during a sting operation and impeding an SBI
investigation. Taylor has also been indicted on federal charges,
including paying off informants with drugs.

Seven of the nine deputies charged through Operation Tarnished Badge
worked in the Drug Enforcement Division. The division's office was
next to Maynor's, and its deputies reported directly to him.

Prosecutors won't say publicly whether Maynor is a subject of the
investigation, causing the question to persist: How could the sheriff
not know what was going on?

Prosecutors say some of the deputies charged had spent money
lavishly. They bought new homes, boats and cars for their children
and themselves. One bought a timeshare at the beach. Another paid for
an expensive driveway repaving and spent $16,000 on a pontoon boat.

Bold Plot

The prosecutors say Sinclair and former Deputy Patrick Ferguson
became so brazen that they kidnapped two men in Virginia in 2004.
They acted even though, by then, Operation Tarnished Badge had
already resulted in charges against five lawmen.

Ferguson pleaded guilty last month.

Prosecutors say Sinclair and Ferguson learned that two Virginia men
were about to buy $450,000 worth of drugs.

Court records say some of the same men who robbed Alex Locklear
accompanied Ferguson and Sinclair to Norfolk on Feb. 27, 2004. Here
is what happened that day, according to police and court records.

Badges dangling from their necks, six armed men jumped from a red
sedan, screamed "Police!" and chased down the two Virginia men at a
gas station.

Ferguson, Sinclair and the others believed that Ronald Lamont Wilson
and Elton Williams had concealed the $450,000 in their black Chevrolet van.

At the gas station in Norfolk, Ferguson's group forced Wilson and
Williams into the back of the van, where they were handcuffed and
someone put duct tape over their wrists and eyes.

When Wilson and Williams refused to reveal where the money was
stashed, Ferguson's group decided to drive the van to Robeson County,
where it could be dismantled.

Somewhere between Norfolk and Selma, one of the men shot Williams in
either the foot or the leg.

The van and the red car that had been trailing it stopped for gas at
a Han-Dee Hugo's Exxon in Selma. There, Wilson and Williams managed to escape.

Ferguson, Sinclair and their men fled in the red sedan. Near one of
the gas pumps, Selma police found a badge reading, "Security Officer."

Police also found Williams behind the store. He was taken by
ambulance to Johnston Memorial Hospital. The van was placed in storage.

Police Maj. Jimmy Norris, who processed the crime scene, said police
searched the van, found some hidden compartments but no money, and
returned the van to its owner about two days later. Norris said
police had no idea what was really happening the day of the kidnapping.

It took another crime two months later to begin to put the pieces together.

Another federal indictment says Robeson County residents Micheal
Oxendine, Carl Patrick Locklear and David "Buck" Troy, along with
other men, went to Georgetown, S.C., to rob Clifton Blackstock on
April 7, 2004.

A Georgetown sheriff's report from that day says Blackstock told
deputies that a car with a flashing blue light pulled up behind him
on Dunbar Road. Blackstock told the deputies that two men approached
the car, and he was shot as they ordered him to put his hands where
they could see them.

Oxendine, Troy and Locklear were arrested a short time later, along
with Malik Nelson and Deleon Holmes. Prosecutors say Oxendine, who
pleaded guilty this month to the Blackstock robbery, turned against
Sinclair and Ferguson. Investigators soon learned about the incident in Selma.

Sinclair, who had worked for the Sheriff's Office for 10 years, was
charged in May 2005 with kidnapping the drug dealers.

But the inquiry didn't stop there. The more investigators dug, the
more they found. Two months before the Norfolk kidnapping, court
records say, Sinclair, Ferguson and others kidnapped Darius Bain of
St. Pauls and held him until a $150,000 ransom was paid.

Prosecutors will not say how many robberies they believe Ferguson and
Sinclair committed. Ferguson's lawyer, Robert Nunley of Raleigh,
called Ferguson's involvement minimal.

"He's involved in some, but the number you can count on one hand," Nunley said.

Financial Problems

Nunley said Ferguson, who earned less than $30,000 a year as a
deputy, started breaking laws after experiencing financial problems
in 2002. Nunley described Ferguson as being "very sorry, remorseful," today.

Nunley declined to comment on how Ferguson robbed people. But
generally, he said, deputies learned from drug dealers that people
were taking a large amount of drugs or money to the dealers' homes.
The deputies stopped the people before they got to the homes and took
their money or drugs, then gave it to the dealers in exchange for
payment, Nunley said.

Other times, he said, the deputies cut out the middle man.

"You have got guys who straight out just stopped cars and took the
money," he said.

Robeson is a poor, multiracial county plagued by high unemployment.
It has one of the highest rates of school dropouts and violent crimes
in North Carolina. Of the state's 100 counties, only Mecklenburg had
a higher violent crime rate than Robeson last year. Between 1996 and
2005, when law enforcement corruption was at its height, reported
crimes in Robeson County increased by 78 percent.

Dr. Mario Paparozzi, chairman of the Department of Sociology and
Criminal Justice at UNC-Pembroke, said the actions of corrupt lawmen
probably did not cause a significant spike in the county's crime rate.

"It absolutely accounts for something, but if you wave the wand and
clean that up tomorrow, I seriously doubt you will see an overriding
decrease because there are other problems in Robeson County," Paparozzi said.

But, he said, the corruption does have serious ramifications. The
biggest deterrent to crime is people, not police, he said. Lawmen
need to have a good relationship with the people they are sworn to protect.

"The biggest problem I see, when stories get out, people are inclined
to become cynical," Paparozzi said. "If they are cynical and
suspicious, they are not going to play, they are not going to go to
the police."