PARKER GUILTY IN POLICE DRUG TRIAL

Rodriguez Is Exonerated; Two Other Detectives Convicted

It took the FBI nearly 10 years to nail a dirty cop, but a U.S. District
Court jury found Buffalo Police Detective Darnyl Parker guilty on all
counts left lodged against him Friday.

However, the government was not so fortunate with Parker's co-defendants.

Detective David Rodriguez, tears flowing freely, walked out of the
courtroom a free man, almost smothered by jubilant friends and relatives
celebrating his acquittal on all counts.

"He's a good lawyer," Rodriguez said of defense attorney Rodney O.
Personious. "I thank God it's all over."

Robert Hill, now retired from the Buffalo Police Department, and Detective
John Ferby were convicted of exactly what their lawyers admitted they did:
possessing marked money stolen from an FBI undercover agent.

Hill and Ferby were acquitted of all other charges.

"It was a fair verdict," Hill said as he left the courthouse. "I said all
along I took the money."

Parker, jailed since December after his bail was revoked for allegedly
threatening witnesses, never reacted as guilty verdict after guilty verdict
was announced on charges ranging from theft and conspiracy to money
laundering and obstructing commerce by extorting a drug dealer.

His mother, Mary Blue, and daughter, Jada, let out anguished cries as they
rushed from the courtroom after the verdicts.

"It ain't right, it ain't right," Parker's identical twin, Darryl, yelled
later outside the courthouse. "It's an FBI conspiracy. Now the FBI can go
home and drink to this one."

The jury that convicted Parker found him guilty of three conspiracy counts
while acquitting his co-defendants on the same charges. Parker lawyer Mark
J. Mahoney said he would ask the court to throw out those convictions as
inconsistent, questioning how Parker could conspire with someone found not
guilty.

The other defense lawyers, for the most part, were elated at the verdicts.
They said the government alleged a grand conspiracy that jurors concluded
never existed.

Ferby's attorney, Anne E. Adams, criticized prosecutors for rejecting his
offer to plead guilty right after his arrest. A lot of time and money, she
said, could have been saved.

"I know my client was willing to plead guilty two years ago to exactly what
he was convicted of today," Adams said. Ferby left by a side door to avoid
reporters and go home to his family, she said.

The FBI, obviously disappointed by the jury forewoman's repetition of "not
guilty" so often, still took comfort from the convictions that were obtained.

"I think the verdict today sends a strong message to the public that we do
not take lightly any allegations of corruption," said Peter Ahearn, agent
in charge of the Buffalo FBI office. "I think today shows without a doubt
cops cannot be robbers."

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert C. Moscati and Paul J. Campana, who tried
the case, declined to comment.

U.S. Attorney Michael A. Battle, only recently sworn in, put the best face
on a prosecution started long before he took office.

"I have complete trust . . . in the jury system," Battle said after the
verdict. "The jury came up with a just decision based on a nine-week trial."

Buffalo Police Commissioner Rocco J. Diina, who excoriated the four
detectives when they were arrested two years ago but has kept his silence
throughout the trial, was not so diplomatic.

"They were not acting as police officers," Diina said. "They were acting as
criminals."

Diina made no exception for Rodriguez, acquittal or not.

He said he would do everything in his power to see that Rodriguez never
again carries a Buffalo Police Department badge.

Rodriguez, a Diina aide later said, remains suspended and will face
departmental charges that Diina hopes will bring his dismissal.

Parker, Ferby and Hill are headed to prison for varying lengths of time
when they are sentenced in June. Diina said they would be fired immediately.

Ferby and Hill, who could have faced sentences of at least 17 years, now
could be sentenced to as little as two years.

Parker could be sentenced to as much as eight years in prison, but Mahoney
said the jury rejected the most serious of the counts against him before
ever having to render a verdict on that count.

The jury, he said, viewed the theft of money from undercover FBI agent
Kevin White - who was posing as a drug dealer - as taking drug money, and
not a robbery using "force, violence or fear."

Because of that, Mahoney said, the jury never had to consider whether
Parker's police firearm was used in a crime of violence, a count that
automatically would have added five years to any sentence.

"I take some gratification in the fact the jury rejected it as a robbery,"
Mahoney said. He said it took the jury to pare down the inflated charges of
the government.

Friday's verdicts came at 2:30 p.m., on the third day of the jury's
deliberations.

Within minutes of the call that a verdict had been reached, the sixth-floor
hallway outside Judge Richard J. Arcara's courtroom was crammed with
friends and relatives of the defendants. A number of Buffalo police
officers, some in uniform, also showed up for the verdict.

It has been just over two years since the FBI stunned the department by
announcing the arrests of Parker, now 42; Ferby, 40; Rodriguez, 40; and
Hill, 44.

All four were accused of taking $36,000 from White, an FBI agent posing as
a drug dealer. Everyone but Hill was accused of burglarizing a drug house
the FBI had set up with video cameras.

But Parker was obviously the main target. The FBI used Theodore Calhoun, a
convicted drug dealer and Parker's boyhood friend, as an informant against
Parker.

Parker was accused of passing on inside information to Calhoun and
investing money with him on drug deals. He was even charged with getting
Calhoun to get drugs for his son, William Parker, and setting him up in the
drug-dealing business.

The arrests of the four detectives on March 2, 2000, came after years of
allegations by defense lawyers and drug dealers that Buffalo police
officers took drugs and money from drug suspects but never reported it.

Parker himself had been marked by the FBI as a dirty cop in 1993 and
transferred off a federal narcotics task force because of allegations that
he was passing on inside information to dealers and supplying his identical
twin brother with narcotics.

The police union got him his job back because the FBI would never provide
the proof, claiming it came from confidential sources.

In this case, evidence against the four detectives at first seemed formidable.

Calhoun recorded months of conversations with Parker using a recorder FBI
agents hid in his truck and another he hid in the toe of his sneaker.

There were audio and video tapes, the government said, that showed the
break-in at the FBI stash house, and the robbery of White, the FBI
undercover agent.

But defense lawyers picked at the FBI's tapes. The videotapes of the
robbery were too blurry, they told the jury. White, the FBI agent, decided
for safety reasons against wearing a hidden recorder, so there were no
audio recordings of the robbery.

Adams complained about the cost of the trial but said the government saved
some money.

"They obviously did not spend a lot of money on the tapes," she said.

In the end, the jury convicted the three detectives who were found to have
the marked bills taken from White, the undercover agent.

Michael M. Blotnik, Hill's attorney, told the jury Hill was guilty of
taking $7,000 in marked money. Ferby's lawyer, Adams, said her client had
$2,000.

Rodriguez's attorney, Personious, said jurors showed they knew what the
case was about.

"They accepted that this case was all about Darnyl Parker," he said.

Despite the fact that FBI agents investigated Buffalo police officers and
the U.S. attorney prosecuted them, the FBI's Ahearn, U.S. Attorney Battle
and Police Commissioner Diina called a joint news conference in Battle's
office after the verdict.

All three said they remain convinced the vast majority of Buffalo police
officers are hard-working and honest.

However, an alternate juror in the case said the most surprising thing
about the two-month trial was the lack of supervision in the Buffalo Police
Narcotics Squad.

"I would hope that, as a result of this trial, the Buffalo police will take
a long, hard look at themselves - their procedures and how they supervise
people," said the alternate, an Amherst businessman in his 50s who spoke on
condition that his name not be published.

The alternate sat with other jurors for the entire trial, but did not take
part in the deliberations or vote on the verdicts. Some of the most
disturbing testimony came from Buffalo police officials who said Parker and
his co-defendants had almost no supervision for several months in 1999, the
alternate said.

"It was very telling when Judge Arcara asked a lieutenant who was
supervising these guys, and he answered, "Nobody was,' " the alternate
said. "They better take a look at themselves, or this kind of thing is
going to happen again."

The FBI and Buffalo police have a close working relationship, and that
won't change, Ahearn said during the joint news conference.

"This will in no way do any harm to the integrity of the continuing
relationship" among the various law enforcement offices, Battle said.

"We don't let something like this stop us from doing our job," Ahearn said.

Battle and Ahearn defended the decision to take the case to trial, despite
the offers of guilty pleas from some of the defendants.

"Money is no object when you're dealing with a corruption case," the FBI
chief said. "We weren't going to just take a plea and walk away. We thought
there were serious charges here. Say what you want. Justice was served, and
former police officers are now going to go to jail."