Pubdate: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 Source: Naples Daily News (FL) Copyright: 2001 Naples Daily News. Contact: http://www.naplesnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/284 Author: Catherine Wilson, Associated Press TWO CURRENT, RETIRED HIALEAH OFFICERS CHARGED IN ROBBERY SPREE MIAMI - Two current and former Hialeah police officers were charged Friday with setting up three robberies, serving as lookouts and providing a police badge, handcuffs and pepper spray to help pull them off. The retired officer also offered his services to protect cocaine in Hialeah and suggested deliveries be wrapped as gifts so whoever was holding the drugs could deny knowing what was inside, an investigator said. The investigation, nicknamed "Bad Apple," was organized by a task force of federal and state agents targeting corrupt officers. The Hialeah department cooperated with the investigation. Former Officer Orestes DeSoto and Officer Cecilio Nunez were arrested Friday and face court appearances next week on federal robbery, narcotics and gun charges. The robberies were committed in a little more than a month early last year. In the most extreme case, a restaurant manager was abducted, beaten and threatened with a gun by DeSoto, who thought the man doubled as a cocaine dealer, according to a court affidavit filed by an investigator. The victim was stopped by Nunez in a marked car and handcuffed before a hood was placed over his head, according to Thomas Chittum, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The man was taken to a warehouse, where DeSoto punched and kicked him and put a gun in his mouth to get him to say where he kept cocaine, Chittum wrote in the report supporting the charges. The owner denied having any drugs, was robbed of his cash and jewelry and was dropped off near a hospital, still blindfolded and cuffed, Chittum said. In other robberies, DeSoto set up a 7-Eleven store manager to be robbed of $10,100 and provided the pepper spray needed to overpower the man, Chittum's affidavit said. A store videotape showed DeSoto in the convenience store just before the robbery, and he allegedly made a cell phone call to accomplices to alert them that it was time to move in. In the third holdup, both DeSoto and Nunez served as lookouts when a bakery owner was robbed of $2,000 while getting out of her car when she arrived home from work. The investigation was based on the word of two informants who participated in the robberies and were not identified in Chittum's report. In another police corruption case in the Miami suburb, seven-year patrolman Peter Davila was charged in June with laundering money for a cocaine dealer through a security business he operated on the side. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens