CITY COP SCANDALS DASH DRUG TRIALS

A year after seven Austin District police officers were charged with
robbing and extorting payoffs from drug dealers, prosecutors have dropped
120 narcotics cases because at least one of the indicted officers played a
role in the arrests, officials said Wednesday.

And another Chicago police scandal, involving three Gresham District
officers who were found guilty Monday of robbing undercover agents posing
as drug dealers, has prompted prosecutors to drop four other narcotics
cases they felt were tainted.

``When you go to court, your burden is to prove your case,'' said Bob
Benjamin, a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office.
``Given the circumstances, we felt we couldn't meet that burden. We let
these cases go.''

Officials said they did not expect to drop any more narcotics cases because
of involvement by the Austin 7, indicted in December 1996, but could not
rule out that possibility.

``I think we're pretty much done with this situation,'' Benjamin said,
noting that virtually all of the cases were dropped by the end of the
summer. ``You might get a random one floating through, but it's highly
unlikely. It's been too much time.''

In reviewing the cases, prosecutors were aware that lawyers for the
indicted officers almost certainly would not allow their clients to testify
in any criminal court proceeding, for their clients' own legal protection.
In any event, the indicted officers likely would carry little, if any,
credibility with either a judge or jury.

The Austin scandal, officials said, is believed to have prompted more
dropped narcotics cases than any other probe of police corruption in Cook
County.

``There hasn't been a situation quite like this one,'' Benjamin said.
``This was on a large scale.''

The seven Austin District tactical unit officers were accused of taking
$65,000 from suspected drug dealers, who actually were undercover federal
agents. The government said it has videotapes of some of the shakedowns.

One of the Austin officers, Lennon Shields, has pleaded guilty to robbing
an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer. The other six officers all
have pleaded innocent. Trials are scheduled to begin in March.

Along with Shields, the seven Austin District officers are Edward Lee
``Pacman'' Jackson Jr., Gregory S. Crittleton, M.L. Moore, Alex D. Ramos,
Cornelius ``Peanut'' Trip and James P. Young.

Most of the cases dropped by the state's attorney's office involved arrests
made in the year before the Austin officers were indicted, officials said.
Some cases went back as far as three years before the indictments, they said.

Although prosecutors did not keep count of the number of cases they
reviewed, Benjamin said, they did not drop narcotics charges against a
defendant just because one of the Austin 7 somehow was involved in the
investigation or arrest.

``There were some cases where their names came up and we went ahead with
the cases because there was other evidence,'' Benjamin said.

The Cook County state's attorney's office handles about 34,000 felony
narcotics cases a year, he said.

The dropped cases also did not mean that the defendants necessarily were
freed. Though statistics were not available, officials said that many of
the defendants had been convicted in other narcotics cases not involving
the indicted officers.

In the Gresham District trial, a federal jury returned guilty verdicts
against three police officersGerald Meachum, 35; Tyrone Francies, 39; and
Baxter Streets, 41. They are to be sentenced on March 23. A federal judge
could give them each up to 30 years in prison.

The three officers worked with Robert Meeks, 29, a civilian who would
locate and identify people he believed to be drug dealers so that the cops
could then rob them of money and drugs. Meeks also was found guilty Monday.

© 1997 Chicago Tribune