Gangsters in Blue

This afternoon, Virginia Circuit Court Judge Marjorie A.T. Arrington denied Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert’s odd request to have Ryan Frederick’s trial moved out of the Chesapeake area.

I’ve never heard of a change of venue being granted to prosecutors over the objections of the defense.  None of the defense attorneys I’ve asked about the case could, either.

That Ebert even tried I think shows that he knows his case against Frederick is coming apart at the seams.

Cheye Calvo, you’ll remember, is the Berwyn Heights, Maryland mayor whose home was mistakenly raided by Prince George’s County, Maryland police.  Calvo’s two black labs were shot and killed, and he and his mother-in-law were bound at gunpoint for hours, even after it was clear that the police had made a mistake.  The raid came after police intercepted a package of marijuana sent to Calvo’s address through a delivery service.  Police conducted no additional investigation before sweeping in with the SWAT team.

When asked about Calvo’s case in an interview a local newspaper last month, Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson offered up a truly bewildering response:

Johnson said he didn’t think an apology was necessary and said he has not spoken with Calvo about the incident.

“Well, I think in America that is the apology, when we’re cleared,” he said. “The authorities have to be able to follow evidence. Sometimes we realize that people are victimized. … At the end of the day, the investigation showed he was not involved. And that’s, you know, a pat on the back for everybody involved, I think.”

He expressed condolences for Calvo’s pets but said he understood the actions of law enforcement.

“I try putting myself in the situation of the sheriff who entered the house,” he said. “They had one set of information at the time. … The thing we have to do is make sure those incidents don’t happen again.”

I’m having a hard time comprehending what sort of mindset you’d need to have to come to the conclusion that Calvo’s innocence equates to “a pat on the back for everybody involved.”  As for making sure incidents like what happened to Calvo “don’t happen again,” the utter cluelessness of politicians like Jack Johnson is precisely why they do keep happening.  Over and over.  It also likely factors into why Johnson presides over the county with one of the worst police misconduct records in the country.

I last wrote about Calvo’s case in response to a Milwaukee police detective who had defended the raid in a letter to the editor of National Review.

Except this time, the intruders were criminals:

When armed intruders burst into her Southeast Portland home and ordered her husband and her roommate to the floor at gunpoint, Emily Morden knew it had to be a terrible mistake.

One of the men yelled: “Where’s Tim?” and barked orders. The intruders began to bind their hands with duct tape. They accused Morden’s 23-year-old roommate of being a drug dealer. The roommate, an old friend, lay on the floor in pajamas and fuzzy duck slippers.

Morden started to protest.

“Tim is not a drug dealer! He works at Fred Meyer!” she said, kneeling before the gunman but refusing to lie down out of fear of what would happen next.

“Are you sure you have the right house?”

Turns out, they didn’t.

The “Tim” they were looking for was the medical marijuana grower who lived next door.

There’s the usual argument here about how this kind of thing puts people in an even more precarious position when trying to determine if the people breaking into their homes are cops or criminals posing as cops.

But reader Brian Courts, who sent me the article, had another observation I hadn’t considered: The people who got raided by these criminals were actually treated better than most of the people wrongly raided by the police.

Consider:

1) No one was shot or killed. And no dead dogs.

2) The intruders actually apologized when they realized they had the wrong house.

3) Now that they’ve been caught, the intruders will actually be punished for terrorizing a home full of innocent people.

A few items on the Ryan Frederick case:

• Two weeks ago, I emailed Virginian-Pilot columnist Kerry Dougherty and public editor Joyce Hoffman asking for a correction for the errors and Dougherty’s last column about the Ryan Frederick case (explained in this post). So far, no correction. And it wasn’t a subtle error. Doughtery misstated some substantial facts about the informant scandal related to the case.

• A few people, like commenter FreedomFan, expressed concern about this comment from Frederick’s attorney James Broccoletti about the informants who broke into Frederick’s home:

In reality, the informer did not ‘observe’ marijuana plants, he stole them.

Is Broccoletti admitting Frederick was growing marijuana, here? I called Broccoletti’s office and spoke with another attorney working on the case. He said that comment was taken from the defense brief asking the judge to quash the warrant. The line was in response to the prosecution’s proffer, in the context of assuming that the plants were marijuana. He said the defense at this point is absolutely not conceding that whatever plants Turnbull and Steven may have taken from Frederick’s garage were marijuana. He wouldn’t comment on the Japanese maple theory.

My own feeling at this point is that there’s a good chance Frederick was growing a small amount of marijuana for personal use. Even assuming the worst, though, that doesn’t excuse the police breaking the law to obtain probable cause for a search warrant. The (lack of) investigation and paramilitary tactics were still wholly inappropriate, and of course Frederick shouldn’t punished for defending his home.

• A few people have also asked why we should believe Turnbull about the police misconduct, but not believe the portion of his statements to a Virginian-Pilot reporter where he says Frederick explicitly threatened the police. It’s a fair point–and the prosecution wants you to believe the latter, but not the former.

I guess the reason I’m inclined to believe one but not the other is because the police misconduct and intimidation of Turnbull fit the facts we already know about the case. Turnbull’s story about he and Steven working as informants, breaking into Frederick’s garage, and their ensuing arrests is backed by court records and the search warrant and affidavits. His story about Frederick calling his cell phone and threatening the cops, on the other hand, doesn’t fit what I’ve been told about Frederick by his friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers.

It also doesn’t make much sense. The prosecution’s theory is that after the burglary, Frederick got Turnbull’s number off his caller ID (Turnbull and Steven stupidly called Frederick before breaking in to his home to see if he was around). He then called Turnbull, said he knew the police were coming, and said he had “a plan for them, too.” Prosecutors say Frederick then got rid of the remaining marijuana plants, and waited for the police to come, so he could kill one of them.

Nothing about that passes the smell test. I don’t doubt that Frederick called Turnbull. He probably even threatened Turnbull, thinking it was Steven of an acquaintance of Steven’s (remember, Frederick and Steven knew one another–Steven once dated the sister of Frederick’s fiance). If Frederick planned to kill the cops, why would he go to the trouble of disposing of his marijuana plants? Why would he dispose of the plants, but leave the incriminating magazines, grow equipment, and keep around some marijuana for personal use? Why would he knowingly take on a team of raiding cops with a cheap handgun? Why would he give up seconds after killing just one of them? Why would he wait until his door had been busted in to start shooting?

As I wrote in my last reason piece on this case, it’s time for a federal investigation. We aren’t going to know what actually happened in this case until Turnbull and Steven are given immunity, and can speak freely without fear of Chesapeake authorities coming down on them for what they say.

I have a piece up at reason that lays out the latest developments in the Ryan Frederick case.

What a strange column by Virginian-Pilot columnist Kerry Dougherty this morning.

Dougherty, you might remember, wrote a column last February in which she excoriated bloggers, activists, and other journalists for daring to question the police in the Frederick case, then floated the idea (later adopted by the prosecution) that the state somehow deserves a change of venue because as they learn more about the case, the Chesapeake jury pool seems to be showing less and less deference toward the police.

This morning, Dougherty basically turns her column over to Chesapeake Police Chief Kelvin Wright, so he can refute what Renaldo Turnbull, Jr. said in interviews with me and with Virginian-Pilot reporter John Hopkins.

Doughtery begins with a non sequitur, invoking a prior case where a convicted murderer protested his innocence to the media, and was later proven to have lied. I guess her point is that criminals sometimes lie. It’s a bizarre way to begin a column defending the police, given that much of the state’s case against Ryan Frederick right now rests on the word of two men that the prosecutors acknowledge are criminals.

But it gets worse. In her rush to defend the honor of Chesapeake PD, Dougherty then botches the details of what Turnbull actually told her own paper’s reporter.

First, Dougherty writes:

In a front-page story in The Pilot last week, Turnbull not only claimed to be one of the confidential informants Chesapeake police relied upon to get a search warrant for the address of suspected drug dealer Ryan Frederick earlier this year, but he said the cops knew in advance that he and another thief were going to burglarize Frederick’s property.

The first part of this sentence simply isn’t true. Turnbull didn’t tell me or Hopkins that he was the informant in the Frederick case. He was rather clear that the other man, “Steven,” was the informant. Steven was picked up on charges of credit card theft and fraud, then cut a deal with the cops. According to Turnbull, Steven then contacted him to assist in the break-in, because the two had worked together with the police on other cases for several months. The two of them then broke into Frederick’s home. But it was Steven who worked directly with the cops on the Frederick case, and Steven is the one police refer to in the warrant as the informant. Turnbull explicitly told me he had no dealing with the police on Frederick’s case.

It was Steven who told Turnbull that the police had okayed the burglary ahead of time.  But that obviously jibed with Turnbull’ss own dealings with the police on prior occasions, where the police similarly either encouraged or gave tacit approval to burglaries for the purpose of gathering evidence.

Dougherty is flat wrong on the facts, here.

Dougherty makes a similar mistake later in the column:

The chief dismissed Turnbull’s claims that he had a private phone conversation with Shivers in which the detective gave him permission to burglarize Frederick’s garage.

It was Shivers’ partner who was the lead investigator on the Frederick case, Wright said, not Shivers himself. Besides that, Chesapeake officers communicate with informants only when another officer is present.

Wright said that when the inmate claimed he had an incriminating conversation with Shivers, he cast aspersions on the only officer in the city “who cannot defend himself.”

Again, that isn’t what Turnbull said. Here’s the passage from Hopkins’ article that Dougherty is referring to:

Turnbull said he met with Shivers once and talked with him on the phone on other occasions. During a meeting at a 7-Eleven store near the intersection of Battlefield Boulevard and Cedar Road in Chesapeake, Shivers introduced himself.

“He told me what to look for. He said, if you know of any burglaries or anything, let Steven know… He said no evidence, no pay… He said if you know where it is, go get it.”

Nowhere in that passage does it say that the 7-11 meeting between Shivers and Turnbull or any of the phone conversations between the two were in any way related to the Frederick case. That’s because they weren’t. Turnbull was recounting his experiences with Shivers in other cases. Remember, Turnbull said he and Steven had been working with the police for several months. Remember also that in the search warrant for the Frederick raid, the officer explained that he had been working with this particular informant for several months. These continuing consistencies between Turnbull’s statements and verifiable facts from other parts of the case–some of which weren’t public at the time Turnbull first spoke with Hopkins last February–are what make this portion of Turnbull’s story so credible.

The big problem Chief Wright doesn’t address, of course, is why the police didn’t disclose on the warrant that their probable cause had been obtained via an illegal burglary. The fact that the burglary wasn’t disclosed, again, lends credence to Turnbull’s statement that these burglaries were common practice. If you’re an honest, by-the-book narcotics cop who serendipitously happened upon a marijuana grow thanks to information you gleaned from someone you arrested on an unrelated burglary charge, you don’t neglect to mention the burglary in your search warrant affidavit, and then accidentally refer to the burglar as a trusted informant with whom you’ve been working for several months.

Also of note: It has since been revised, but in Hopkins’ original article yesterday, he noted that Chief Wright wouldn’t answer any of Hopkins’ questions about Turnbull.  Wright told Hopkins both that he didn’t have time, and that he wouldn’t comment on police informants (no one at Chesapeake PD returned my calls, either). The article is now edited to appear as if Wright’s denials went straight to Hopkins. They didn’t. Wright’s comments in Hopkins’ article are just a rehashing of what he said to Dougherty. You might note that Dougherty is now listed as a contributor at the bottom of Hopkins’ article.

Strange, isn’t it?, that Chief Wright wouldn’t have the time to speak with Hopkins, but would have time to speak with Dougherty, an opinion columnist and pro-police partisan. Hopkins has a better grasp on the details of the case (obviously), was the person who spoke directly with Turnbull, and would have been able to ask pointed follow-up questions of Chief Wright.

Okay.  So come to think of it, maybe Chief Wright’s inability to find time to talk with Hopkins isn’t so strange after all.

Finally, Chief Wright denied to Dougherty that Turnbull was ever a police informant, and also denied that he was one of the burglars prosecutors referenced at the hearing earlier this month. If that’s true, Turnbull’s a pretty gifted bullshit artist. Because he gave Hopkins details about the raid and about Frederick’s home that weren’t public at the time. He also seems to know quite a bit about being an informant. At the hearing, prosecutors also very clearly mentioned “burglars,” in the plural. If Turnbull wasn’t one of them, it’ll be interesting to see who they do end up trotting out as Steven’s accomplice.

Oh yeah, one more question: At the hearing, prosecutors acknowledged that the two “burglars” on whose word much of their case rests did in fact illegally break into Ryan Frederick’s home–their choice of the word “burglar” sorta’ implies as much. It’s been eight months since that burglary. Why haven’t the two men been charged for it?

Let me add a little color commentary for Agitator readers to the post below:

I think special prosecutor Paul Ebert really shot himself in the foot on this.

I don’t know how he thought he could admit evidence from these two “burglars” without having to explain who they were, how the police came to know them, or without anyone noticing the obvious similarities between the “burglars’” stories and the information in the police affidavit for the search warrant. I was speculating that the informant was also the burglar within a week of the raid.

When I first reported all of this back in June, no one seemed all that interested (which I guess is a rather humbling account of my influence!). Not Ebert’s office, not Chesapeake PD, not the U.S. attorneys office. The Virginian-Pilot knew about these accusations (I can now say that their reporter is the one who initially tipped me off), but their editors decided to sit on the story unless and until they could get more confirmation for Renaldo Turnbull’s story.

I even sent my article to Frederick attorney James Broccoletti, who replied through his secretary that he had “heard some rumors” but didn’t put much validity in them. (I’d add here that I don’t know Broccoletti’s strategy–he may have simply been playing me off because he didn’t want to tip his hand, or didn’t want to consort with a reporter. What’s clear is that he wasn’t actively pursuing the informants-as-burglars angle at that time.)

In any case, if Paul Ebert had tried to make his case simply on the fact that Frederick had a small amount of pot in his house and shot and killed a cop, he could have avoided all of this. It certainly worked for the prosecutors in Cory Maye’s case.

Instead, Ebert wanted to tack on the felony drug charges. And the only way he could do that was to introduce the evidence the informants claim to have found when they burglarized Frederick’s home. The kicker was the phone call from Frederick to one of the informants police found in Frederick’s cell phone records (the burlgars rather stupidly called Frederick ahead of time to see if he was home–another pretty good indication that they were working for the police). That call opened the door for the unlikley threat Turnbull is now saying Frederick made against the police, which I’m sure had Ebert salivating.

Unfortunately for Ebert, his admission of the existence of these “burglars” was enough to persuade editors at the Virginian-Pilot to run their own reporter’s interview with Turnbull from last February, in which Turnbull was quite a bit more candid than he was with me (by the time I got to him, the cops had already added new charges to his rap sheet, in what he says was clear retaliation for his talking to the other reporter). When that article ran, Broccoletti got interested, as did much of the rest of the community in Chesapeake.

My upcoming piece for reason will call for a federal investigation into all of this. Ebert is a longtime Commonwealth’s Attorney, so anything coming from the Virginia Attorney General’s Office won’t do.

These two “burglars” aren’t going to tell the truth unless they have immunity and no longer fear Ebert and local authorities. What they know is not only critical to ensuring a fair trial for Ryan Frederick, it will also likely impact a great many more narcotics cases in Chesapeake.

Ryan Frederick is the 29-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man who shot and killed Chesapeake Det. Jarrod Shivers during a drug raid on Frederick’s home last January.  Police say an informant told them Frederick had an extensive marijuana-growing operation in his garage.  They found only a few joints—enough for a misdemeanor.

I’ll have a more detailed look at the incredible recent developments in the case in a bit, but the short version is that the prosecution’s case against Frederick is unraveling.

Last June, I reported the possible existence of a second informant in the case, and in an interview, this informant told me that he and the other informant had broken into Frederick’s home three days prior to the raid.  Such a burglary would have been illegal, and the police would have been required to note in their search warrant affidavits that the probable cause for the warrant had been obtained illegally (they didn’t).

Worse, last February this man told a reporter for the Virginian-Pilot (who then told me) that the police both knew about and encouraged the break-in, and in fact had encouraged informants to break into private homes in other cases for the purpose of collecting probable cause.

At a pre-trial hearing earlier this month, prosecutors in the case announced that they had testimony from two "burglars" who say they had stolen marijuana plants from Frederick and that, more dubiously, Frederick had then called them and made an explicit threat about killing a police officer.  The prosecutors did not say if these "burglars" were also the informants, or if they had been working with the police before the burglary.

That surprising revelation from prosecutors persuaded editors at the Virginian-Pilot last week to publish the details of reporter John Hopkins’ interview in February with the same guy I interviewed, essentially confirming what I reported in June.  The details of Hopkins’ interview leave little doubt that the "burglars" who broke into Frederick’s home were also the police informants.

Today, Ryan Frederick’s lawyers filed a brief asking the judge to quash all evidence seized from Frederick’s home after the raid:

Police showed a “reckless disregard for the truth’’ and misled a magistrate to get a search warrant for the home of Ryan Frederick, the man accused of killing a detective during a drug raid on his house, according to his attorney.

Police failed to tell the magistrate that their confidential informant had burglarized Frederick’s property to get evidence to support a search warrant, asserts attorney James Broccoletti. The drug raid that followed on the night of Jan. 17 was a violation of Frederick’s Fourth Amendment right; therefore, all evidence collected should be thrown out, he said in a motion filed in Circuit Court.

This could become another major drug informant scandal.  More to come.

Yesterday, I mentioned the case of Darryl P. Ross, a man shot and killed during a drug raid on his home. Curiously, there’s been no mention of what, if any, illicit drugs police found in Ross’s home. His family is calling his death a murder, and trying to raise money for a private investigation.

That may now prove difficult. A judge has ordered all police documents in the case–including the search warrant, police affidavit, and evidence return sheet–sealed. The given justification was to protect the identity of the confidential informant in the case.

Tomorrow morning, it looks like the Virginian-Pilot will confirm what I first reported back in June: Two men broke into Ryan Frederick’s house three nights before the police raided his home, and one of them was likely the informant mentioned in the police warrant. It also means that the probable cause for the warrant was obtained illegally, a fact police neglected to mention in the warrant.

I guess I can now also reveal that the informant mentioned in the article, Renaldo Turnbull, Jr., was also the man I spoke with in the Chesapeake Jail last June–I referred to him in the post as “Reggie.”

Turnbull has also said some other pretty damning things about how the Chesapeake narcotics police conduct their drug investigations, including that they knew ahead of time and approved of the break-in to Frederick’s home. He has also said the police routinely asked he and Steven (the other informant) asked them to break into homes to collect evidence.

Of course, Turnbull isn’t likely to say any of these things anymore, now.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions. I’ll have more tomorrow.

UPDATE: The full story is now live.