Pubdate: Sun, 15 Jan 2006
Source: Greensboro News & Record (NC)
Copyright: 2006 Greensboro News & Record, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.news-record.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/173
Source: Greensboro News & Record (NC)
Author: Lorraine Ahearn
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

UNDERCOVER: A POLICE FORCE FULL OF SECRETS

GREENSBORO - On a warm Friday night last June, Lt. James Hinson pulled
his unmarked cruiser away from The Grande cinema after stopping to chat
with a friend, and once again noticed the tan Dodge van behind him.

Pulling over his Crown Victoria until the van passed, Hinson later
recounted to his lawyer, he called in the van's tag number: WVW 7205.

The tag was "not on file" -- indicating it was part of an undercover
operation. But Hinson had already guessed that. He'd recognized the
van's driver.

It was Randy Gerringer, a private investigator he knew had been
rehired by the Greensboro Police Department to work in the Special
Intelligence Division (SID). The increasingly hush-hush unit had been
moved out of the chain of command to report directly to the deputy
chief. It had also gained a nickname among the ranks: the "secret police."

Hinson, now on his guard, would quickly return to The Grande parking
lot. Moments later, he was to find a tracking device planted inside
his bumper. The scandal had begun.

Seven months later, an ensuing cover-up that cost two top commanders
their jobs and forced Chief David Wray to resign last week now leaves
city leaders with another worry:

What Else Had the "Secret" Police Been Doing?

As the FBI confirmed Friday that it will launch an inquiry into
possible civil rights violations against a host of officers, there had
been no details released yet from the second report on a city-ordered
probe.

But in the meantime, a series of interviews since the story broke in
June gives a glimpse into the activities of the SID -- and a tangled
back story of strippers, drug smugglers and police officers the covert
unit sought to weave together.

Why the Black Book?

A photo lineup book of 114 black men, including at least 19 city
officers became the latest smoking gun in the story when city
officials confirmed last week that it not only existed, but had been
hidden in former Deputy Chief Randall Brady's car trunk, allegedly on
Wray's orders.

Wray countered in a written statement that the black three-ring binder
had only been compiled and used to identify a suspect in a single
case: A prostitute's complaint that a police officer groped and
sexually assaulted her during a strip search last January.

But City Manager Mitchell Johnson said investigators concluded
otherwise -- that there were numerous instances of the book being
shown to criminal defendants in an attempt to target black officers
among the 19 pictured in the book. Defendants were told, in Johnson's
words, "If you ID an officer, we might help you out."

For instance, a topless dancer who was a co-defendant in a federal
drug case was shown the photos sometime in 2004, a lawyer for one
officer claimed last week.

Walt Jones represents a veteran of the force who was caught in the
dragnet and suspended for 10 months, but in the end disciplined only
for a minor paperwork omission. The officer has not agreed to be named
in the newspaper.

Later, it was that same officer that the Greensboro dancer, now in
federal prison in Kentucky, recognized while she was in custody and
shown the book compiled by the SID, the officer's lawyer said.

Jones said Bridgett Holman Ekwensi, who in court records listed her
job as a part-time dancer at Twiggy's Lounge on Davie Street, refused
to cooperate with the SID. Had she offered "substantial assistance,"
Jones noted, she could have received time off her 30-month sentence
for being a money courier in a $10 million cocaine ring based in Greensboro.

But as an attorney for Hinson also affirmed last week, Ekwensi, 33,
instead wrote a letter to the police officer's family saying she
refused the deal.

"She said, 'They showed me this black book, but I was not going to
stoop so low as to make up a story on somebody,' " Jones said. "And
evidently, she didn't. She's still in prison."

The warden at the federal prison where Ekwensi is housed has twice
turned down News & Record requests to interview her. A spokeswoman
cited "security concerns."

A bar manager at Twiggy's confirmed that Ekwensi had worked at the
club. And according to court documents and public record databases, so
did two other women the police unit tried to link to targeted officers
including Hinson, whose photo did not appear in the black book.

During the same time frame, Johnson said Friday, Wray had privately
convinced the city manager that Hinson might be involved in a web of
illegal activities including a major drug ring "and a missing person."

Wray was referring to Sonja Kingston, a stripper known as "Roxy" at
both Twiggy's and Sugar Bares. She was arrested by Guilford County
sheriff's deputies in a roadblock on Bryan Boulevard in 2001. Sgt.
S.G. Parr said Kingston was headed toward the airport area and had
cocaine, cash and a chrome pistol with the serial number filed off.

According to an Internal Revenue Service affidavit, Kingston, who was
a friend of Ekwensi's, told an informer that the drugs seized by the
deputies belonged to cocaine ringleader Elton Turnbull. A city probe
would later reveal that Turnbull was the drug dealer whom the SID and
a city vice officer would repeatedly pressure to implicate Hinson.

At the time, the IRS agent wrote that Turnbull arranged for $6,000 in
cash to bail Kingston out, and according to the sheriff's department,
Kingston later vanished and is listed as a missing person.

Meanwhile, a third woman who worked at Twiggy's, Laverne Mahdinec, was
allegedly instructed by the SID to try to lure Hinson into a
compromising situation, said Hinson's ex-wife, Beverly Hinson, after
the investigation came to light last summer. Neither James Hinson nor
his lawyer would comment on that incident.

Why the suspicion?

It's unclear when the unit first set its sights on Hinson, a
high-profile member of the force, a former Police Officer of the Year
and City Employee of the Year who advanced quickly under the
administration of his friend former police Chief Robert White.

NAACP Reaction

The Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the state
NAACP, said he is pleased the FBI is beginning a preliminary inquiry
into the controversy surrounding the Greensboro Police Department over
evidence of civil rights violations. But he said groups such as the
NAACP are critical in making the government aware that such inquiries
are necessary.

"I would say that one of the reasons is that there are these groups
that have pointed out the issues," Barber said. "They (federal
officials) know that we are a state watchdog. They say, 'We need to
take a look at that.' "

"Anytime you have a movement that says we can't stand for this, it's
not just a black-white issue, it's a right and wrong issue."

Taft Wireback

In a grievance filed last January, Hinson complained
about being followed, and being the possible target of an
investigation by the "secret police."

As to the "why" of the focus on Hinson, Wray held a news conference
June 17, the same day he suspended Hinson with pay, and spoke
cryptically of a joint drug case involving the Greensboro Police
Department and other agencies.

Wray said the "ongoing" case yielded "highly sensitive" evidence that
he had up to that time been unable to act upon, but now had the
go-ahead. Those statements, the city manager claims, were false.

In fact, the joint investigation to which Wray alluded was the 2002
case against Turnbull, in which a city vice officer assisted in the
surveillance and arrest of the drug lord as he transferred a suitcase
of money in the parking lot of a McDonald's on West Market Street,
according to an affidavit.

But it was a more innocent transaction, Hinson said last summer, that
first brought the lieutenant under suspicion. In forfeiture pleadings
as the IRS prepared to seize Turnbull's extensive holdings, the
signatures of Hinson and his ex-wife turned up on the deed of a rental
house that they sold to Turnbull in 1999.

Hinson argued that he thought Turnbull had a landscaping business,
which Drug Enforcement Administration affidavits confirm Turnbull did
use as a front. Those records also show Turnbull owned a property
management firm, a Florida stable, four racehorses, six houses, seven
SUVs, a time-share in the Bahamas and a private plane agents testified
he used to fly cocaine out of a red-clay airstrip in Venezuela.

But if Turnbull ever provided the SID with information on Hinson, it
bore no fruit. The city manager said a criminal investigation of the
matter cleared Hinson in 2003, as did an Internal Affairs review in
2004.

Moreover, Johnson claimed, former Guilford County District Attorney
Stuart Albright's office told Wray that it would have no part in
prosecuting Hinson, and that the department should take the case
elsewhere. Albright, since appointed to a judgeship, has declined to
comment, and Wray last week turned down interview requests on the
advice of his lawyer.

WHO Can Be Trusted?

While reading the first of two reports from a city-ordered probe into
Wray's department, Johnson said he felt "sick" at two points in
particular in the 500-plus page file: first, when he read that the
"black book" Wray professed no knowledge of turned out to be hidden in
a car trunk; and second, that Hinson had been cleared by two thorough
investigations in a year before Wray called the news conference and
spoke of the "extremely complicated and ongoing investigation."

At that same news conference, Wray also told the media that there was
no credence to a complaint of continuing surveillance of Beverly
Hinson. In the days after the botched surveillance incident at The
Grande, she called police about a suspicious van parked two spaces
from her front door in a brand-new town house development.

The van's driver was Art League, a retired police officer and private
detective. Though he happened to employ Gerringer, the driver of the
van the night at The Grande, League insisted he was outside the Hinson
home on a completely unrelated investigation.

At Wray's news conference, the chief said he had thoroughly
investigated Beverly Hinson's allegation, and that it was "classified
as unfounded."

But last week, Johnson said his investigators cast doubt on the
veracity of Wray's finding, saying it was "irregular" and that Wray
had ordered it wrapped up in time for his news conference.

Contacted last week, Beverly Hinson expressed no surprise.

"There was something fishy about it," she said. "I wasn't born
yesterday. You live with a cop long enough, you start to think like a
cop."

It was that lingering distrust, Mitchell Johnson said late Friday,
that worries him most about the still unfolding story.

"I've seen what happens when people in a city lose trust in their
police," Johnson said. "I know what happened in Cincinnati. I know
what happened in Los Angeles."

On the other hand, Johnson reminded reporters of who brought the
"secret police" scandal to light in the first place, for both the
media and City Hall.

It was officers outside the scandal, of different ranks and races, who
saw an abuse of power in the name of the law. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake