ROAMING MEMPHIS POLICE PAY FOR GASOLINE, RENT CARS WITH DRUG
FUNDS

It would appear from gasoline purchases that the Memphis Police
Department patrols the New Jersey Turnpike.

But this gasoline fueled rental cars, not squad cars, as department
employees were drawn from approved destinations - trainingsessions in
Washington and Philadelphia - to metropolitan New York City.

Twice in 1997, and once last year, department employees enrolled in
crime-fighting conferences strayed across Maryland, Delaware and New
Jersey to at least the outskirts of the Big Apple.

These detours, financed with cash seized by MPD from suspected drug
dealers, as well as a similar side trek on the West Coast, will be
investigated, said Police Director Bill Oldham.

But this promised self-examination will not occur until investigations
of the police department by two outside law enforcement agencies, the
FBI and TBI, are concluded, Oldham said. Federal and state agents and
auditors have for weeks pored over records in at least two divisions,
including the Organized Crime Unit, which controls the collection and
expenditure of drug funds.

"When the investigation and audits are done, there will be an
administrative investigation, and we will go from there,'' Oldham said
through a spokesman.

He declined to speak to a reporter, however.

Flush with cash from drug seizures, the department has in recent years
dispatched employees everywhere from Miami to Sun Valley to attend
anti-crime seminars and annual meetings of national police
associations.

These expenditures are permissible as long as they can be justified as
having a law enforcement purpose. But department records, particularly
charge receipts for gasoline and rental cars as well as cellular
telephone bills, suggest some employees have roamed from their
sanctioned destinations.

There are numerous instances in which employees charged off rental
cars that were driven hundreds of miles although the drug fund paid
for rooms in hotels where the training sessions and conferences were
held.

Often, however, there are too few records available to determine if
those miles were logged when the employees were supposed to have been
attending the educational sessions. But there are exceptions.

An Oct. 13, 1998, purchase of gasoline at a Woodbridge, N.J., Sunoco,
for example, suggests at least one MPD employee enrolled in a
Washington crime prevention seminar wandered more than 200 miles
across three states. Records do not reflect who made that purchase or
rented a car for which the drug fund was billed $443.

But on the same day of the gasoline purchase, an MPD cell phone issued
to Deputy Chief Brenda Jones, one of those enrolled in the conference,
was logging long distance calls, most of them back to Memphis, first
from Philadelphia, then New York City.

The 10 calls were placed over a 13-hour period, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
during midweek of a conference sponsored by the National Crime
Prevention Council. Jones, who at the time commanded OCU, declined
comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

It was the fourth trip in two years to either Washington or
Philadelphia for the deputy chief, who often traveled with the same
group. Among her frequent flier companions: sex crimes commander

Maj. Coria Williams and Lt. Charles Newell, an OCU subordinate,
neither of whom would comment Friday.

And on least three of those trips, records show, someone from the
Memphis contingent wound up in metropolitan New York City.

Jones attended the same DC crime prevention conference the previous
October. The drug fund was charged for a gasoline purchase in East
Brunswick, N.J., nearly 200 miles away, on the first day of that
conference. Nearly 600 miles were logged in five days on a car rented
in Jones's name and paid for with an OCU credit card.

In August 1997, Jones signed for a gasoline purchase in Woodbridge, at
the same Sunoco station. At the time, Jones was enrolled in a
conference 70 miles away in Philadelphia.

These detours were not limited to the East Coast. The Commercial
Appeal reported last month that during a December 1997 conference in
Las Vegas, at least one MPD employee showed up 275 miles away in Los
Angeles.

Newell made the trip in a rental car paid for with drug funds and
using gasoline charged to his department credit card, records show.

Newell told the newspaper he left the session during a lull, made the
four-hour drive to LA for a brief meeting with noted criminal lawyer
Johnnie Cochran, an acquaintance, then returned to Nevada. He would
not comment if other members of the department accompanied him on the
trek across Southern California.

But cell phone records show 20 long distance calls were placed on
Jones's phone from the Los Angeles area that same day. Both were
enrolled in a seminar targeting youth gang activity.

Although representatives of the FBI do not routinely comment on the
agency's investigations, its investigation initially centered on use
of federal grant proceeds. But the probe spread to OCU's operations
after The Commercial Appeal reported a series of abuses involving the
drug seizure funds.

The newspaper reported that OCU credit cards, issued in the names of
fictitious companies and intended for use by undercover officers, were
available to numerous other employees to charge travel, meals and the
routine purchase of supplies.

Similarly, the newspaper also found that large sums of cash stored at
OCU headquarters and intended for use by undercover officers as
"flash" money was being distributed widely to finance travel.