DRUG COPS UNDER THE GUN

Largest Scandal In Toronto Police History ... Or Just A 'Witch Hunt'? We'll
Know In Six Weeks

The clock is ticking on a massive RCMP-led internal affairs probe that
threatens to produce the biggest scandal in Toronto Police history.

A full 18 months have passed since Chief Julian Fantino brought RCMP
Chief-Supt. John Neily to Toronto to lead a 25-member task force probe into
sensational allegations that drug squad officers stole cash and drugs from
dealers.

Fantino, who has previously refused to talk about the drug squad issue to
avoid any notion of interference, broke from previous practice recently
when he told The Sunday Sun he hopes the probe ends soon.

"I am anxious to put closure to all of this. It has been around too long,"
Fantino said.

And Toronto Police Association president Craig Bromell is upset at the
duration of what he has called a "witch-hunt."

"I'm very upset with how long it's taken. We haven't heard anything ... it
has almost reached the ridiculous point," Bromell said this week. "These
guys (the suspect drug officers) are just sitting, stewing ... and that's
not right."

Neily refused to comment on what he says is still an "active investigation."

But a legal deadline might force Neily's hand.

In a surprise move last Feb. 13, prosecutors citing an "ongoing criminal
investigation" stayed theft, fraud and forgery charges against eight drug
squad officers. The charges, laid by internal affairs officers prior to the
creation of Neily's task force, involved alleged "fink fund" irregularities.

Stayed charges must be reactivated within one year or else they lapse. So
prosecutors have only six weeks to act.

"We anticipate, with that year coming up, that something will happen, but
we don't know what," Bromell said.

"From my point of view, if something was there, they would have been
charged a long time ago."

The Neily probe, shrouded in secrecy from the outset, is a mystery not only
to the police association but also to senior and high-profile detectives
who are usually in the know.

One cop, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggests the drug squad probe
could end up like the "fink fund" case, which started off with 200 or so
charges against five cops and ended with a full slate of withdrawals and
acquittals.

"It is a giant bag of hot air," the officer said, lamenting that it is
hurting front-line coppers who are forced to break the rules to achieve
management's budget and policy ends.

But another police source says there is "every indication" the Neily task
force may have uncovered a "huge mess" that could have far-reaching
ramifications for not only the Toronto Police Service, but also for the
Canadian court system and Toronto taxpayers, who may be on the hook for
millions.

At the centre of the storm here in Toronto are several officers of the
now-defunct Central Field Command whom Toronto lawyer Edward Sapiano named
in an April 1999 letter sent to Toronto Police internal affairs.

In the late 1990s, four drug squad crews worked the central area, while
others worked the west and east parts of the city under separate field
commands. All the squads were independent. Former drug cops say some
officers worked in drugs for years, a practice some deemed unhealthy.

Calling the allegations "the most serious ... of ongoing misconduct ever
made" against Toronto Police, Sapiano alleged in the internal affairs
letter that clients had told lawyers that Toronto drug cops were "routinely
stealing money and sometimes jewelry ... confident in the knowledge that
the victims will either not report the stolen property or will have zero
credibility. The drug squad is then splitting the money up amongst themselves.

"The frequency of these reports from our clients is just too much to write
off as lies. These people do not know each other and in many cases do not
even wish to raise the matter publicly. So what would be their motivation
to lie?"

In the past three or four years, several Toronto residents have filed civil
court lawsuits against certain crew members.

The Toronto Police Services Board recently paid undisclosed, no-admission
settlements in two suits.

In one, a Vietnamese couple sought $700,000 damages on allegations drug
cops stole cash and valuables from their restaurant. In another, a
Vietnamese man sought $2.7 million in damages on allegations that because
of two officers he was wrongfully forced into a guilty plea and did 18
months of a 45-month sentence behind bars.

In October, a Toronto man sued several crew officers for $650,000 damages
on allegations that they beat him unconscious and tortured him and then
stole $31,000.

Members from another crew are named in a $1.35-million lawsuit in which a
Toronto pizza store owner claimed that drug cops stole $350,000 from him in
a drug probe.

In September, drug trafficking charges against accused drug kingpin Roman
Paryniuk were stayed due to trial delays as Paryniuk sought either a stay
or access to Neily's probe materials on allegations that drug squad
officers stole $300,000 from a safety deposit box.

The case of Paryniuk, who still faces charges over a $153-million hash
shipment seized in Halifax in 1995, is the most notable of 150 drug squad
cases that have been either stayed or withdrawn.

None of these allegations against the drug cops has been proven in court
and Toronto Police officers denied any wrongdoing in all of the cases.

With all of the conflicting information, it is hard to predict, or even
guess, where the chips may fall.

In some circles, comparisons are being drawn between Toronto and other drug
squad scandals in American cities, particularly Los Angeles.

The Sunday Sun reported last March that retired judge George Ferguson --
picked by Fantino at the outset of the drug scandal to examine the
integrity of Toronto Police disclosure policies -- may compare Toronto's
polices with Los Angeles and New York.

And The Sunday Sun has since learned that Neily was in Los Angeles earlier
this year and met LAPD brass.

A Sunday Sun Internet search found LAPD Rampart Division is perhaps the
most notorious corruption case in U.S. police history. More than a dozen
LAPD cops have been jailed, about 100 criminal cases overturned, hundreds
more are allegedly tainted and 30 LAPD officers have either quit, retired
or been fired. City of Los Angeles lawyers say Rampart will surpass $200
million in legal costs and settlements.

But is anything really comparable to the Naked City?

Media searches across Canada failed to find anything resembling the
allegations here in Toronto, while a further search of American cities
found drug-related scandals in Chicago, Cleveland, New Orleans and Detroit.

In Chicago, three former Austin district street cops were convicted of
racketeering and sentenced to life in prison for extorting drug dealers and
taking their cash and cocaine. Ringleader Edward Lee "Pacman" Jackson, 31,
is serving a 115-year sentence.

A two-year FBI sting nabbed 53 Cleveland cops, jail guards and security
guards who were recruited by undercover agents to protect a bogus cocaine
shipment.

Ten New Orleans cops agreed to guard an FBI-run cocaine warehouse.
Ringleader of the corrupt cops, Len Davis, faces a death sentence for
ordering the 1995 murder of mother-of-three Kim Groves, 32, after she filed
a brutality complaint against him for pistol-whipping her teen son's friend.

Detroit Sgt. James Harris was busted in 1991 after being recruited by
undercover FBI agents to hire four cops at $2,000 US each to transfer a
drug shipment from a plane to a car.

In Los Angeles, the Rampart Division scandal centred on the elite Community
Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) anti-gang unit, an undercover
squad created in 1989 to smash Rampart's gang and drug problem. Given
autonomy and wide discretion, CRASH monitored gangs and got to know the
players, their friends and families.

CRASH was deemed a huge success: Gang crimes were halved in a decade. This
was a heady distraction for LAPD brass following the fatal riots which
followed the acquittal of white officers in the Rodney King beating case
and the travesty of O.J. Simpson's murder trial acquittal.

But the fantasy came crashing down in 1998, when, in saving his own skin
for stealing drugs put into evidence, 10-year veteran officer Rafael Perez,
32, admitted to hundreds of perjuries, fabrication of evidence and stealing
drugs, guns and cash.

Perez said the entire CRASH squad was on the take.

As a prosecution witness, Perez later testified how he and his partner,
Nino Durden, took 18th Street Gang member Francisco Ovando, 19, into a
vacant apartment, shot him four times and planted a Tec-22 semi-automatic
pistol on him. Paralyzed from the waist down, Ovando did more than two
years of a 23-year prison sentence for assaulting a police officer until he
was freed by Perez's confession that there had been no assault. Ovando
received a $15-million US settlement.

Perez also testified that CRASH officers planted a gun in the wheel well of
a reputed gang member's car. Sgt. Brian Liddy, Sgt. Edward Ortiz and
Michael Buchanan were convicted.

It was also revealed that CRASH officers who killed an unarmed man planted
a gun on him and concocted a tale that they shot in self-defence.

These were the extreme cases.

But Perez testified that CRASH members routinely stole drugs and cash,
planted guns and dope and did illegal searches and arrests.

And yet Perez has felt no remorse for his actions.

"These guys don't have to play by the rules," Perez said. "They're out
there committing murders, and then they intimidate the witnesses so the
witnesses don't show up in court. So they're getting away with murder every
day ... when I planted a case on someone, did I feel bad? Not once. I felt
good. I felt, you know, I'm taking this guy off the streets."

Perez was paroled less than three years into a five-year prison sentence.
Some ask if prosecutors put too many eggs in one basket with Perez and made
"a deal with the devil."

In a 1998 report to Harlem congressman Charles Rangel, former chairman of
the U.S. Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, a special
commission reported that drug cop corruption cases in Atlanta, Chicago,
Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York and
Philadelphia had many common threads.

While most cops are honest, the Rangel report stated, drug enforcement
"often exposes police officers to large amounts of cash and drugs held by
individuals who are not likely to complain about illegal police behaviour."

Typical drug squad corruption involves unconstitutional searches and
seizures, selling stolen drugs, protecting drug turf, giving false
testimony and submitting false crime reports, said the Rangel report.

Quoting the 1972 Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption in the NYPD,
the Rangel commission said corrupt police are separated into two distinct
categories: "Grass-eaters" and "meat-eaters." Grass-eaters described
typical street cops who pocket $10 or $20 from contractors and tow-truck
drivers and gamblers. Meat-eaters aggressively exploit situations for
financial gain, especially gambling and drugs, where yields can be
"thousands of dollars."

Citing a report on New York City police corruption by Judge Milton Mollen
in 1994, Rangel said corruption mainly involves "small groups" of cops.
Crews "akin to street gangs" worked in NYPD's 73rd precinct, while cops at
30th precinct "moved in and out of groups." The crews were "small, loyal,
flexible, fast-moving and often hard-hitting."

While profit was the main motive in the NYPD scandal, Mollen noted, corrupt
cops also got a thrill from power and control and believed "vigilante
justice" was acceptable.

The Rangel report concluded drug squad corruption thrives because of a
"police culture ... characterized by a code of silence, unquestioning
loyalty to other officers and cynicism about the criminal justice system."

And it cited ineffective headquarters and field supervision, the failure of
brass to promote integrity, and the weakness of an internal affairs unit's
structure and practices.

Internal affairs units typically lacked respect, resources, skilled
investigators and autonomy, said the Rangel report. The report said
corruption is often minimized or concealed.

Prevention needs "commitment to integrity from the top to the bottom," the
Rangel report said, with a need to foster loyalty to integrity, rather than
loyalty to corrupt colleagues.

The Rangel commission noted that NYPD now does random integrity tests and
FBI-style stings. Any NYPD officer who either refuses a drug-screening
test, tests positive for drugs or is found with illegal drugs is dismissed.