Police State / Police Abuse

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Posted on Mon, Mar. 30, 2009

Video sharpens focus on raid

Store owner's hidden back-up shows cops snipping security-camera wires

By WENDY RUDERMAN & BARBARA LAKER
Philadelphia Daily News

rudermw@phillynews.com 215-854-2860

THE NARCOTICS officers knew they were being watched on video surveillance moments after they entered the bodega.

Officer Jeffrey Cujdik told store owner Jose Duran that police were in search of tiny ziplock bags often used to package drugs. But, during the September 2007 raid, Cujdik and fellow squad members seemed much more interested in finding every video camera in the West Oak Lane store.

"I got like seven or eight eyes," shouted Officer Thomas Tolstoy, referring to the cameras, as the officers glanced up. "There's one outside. There is one, two, three, four in the aisles, and there's one right here somewhere."

For the next several minutes, Tolstoy and other Narcotics Field Unit officers systematically cut wires to cameras until those "eyes" could no longer see.

Then, after the officers arrested Duran and took him to jail, nearly $10,000 in cash and cartons of Marlboros and Newports were missing from the locked, unattended store, Duran alleges. The officers guzzled sodas and scarfed down fresh turkey hoagies, Little Debbie fudge brownies and Cheez-Its, he said.

What the officers didn't count on was that Duran's high-tech video system had a hidden backup hard-drive. The backup downloaded the footage to his private Web site before the wires were cut.

Although Duran has no video of the alleged looting, he has a 10-minute video that shows the officers using a bread knife, pliers, milk crates and their hands to disable the surveillance system.

The officers didn't "touch the money with the system looking," said Duran, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic 15 years ago and has no prior criminal record in Philadelphia.

They touched "the money after they destroy all the system," he said.

Duran, 28, of South Jersey, a technology buff, said that he was upset that the officers had wrecked his $15,000 surveillance system.

"That was his main complaint - that they destroyed his surveillance system," Duran's attorney, Sonte Anthony Reavis, said last week. "I believed him."

Duran's video bolsters allegations by eight other Philadelphia store owners who said that Cujdik and other officers destroyed or cut wires to surveillance cameras. Those store owners also said that after the wires were cut, cigarettes, batteries, cell phones, food and drinks were taken. The Daily News reported the allegations March 20.

The officers also confiscated cash from the stores - a routine practice in drug raids - but didn't record the full amount on police property receipts, the shop owners allege.

Six more store owners or workers, including Duran, contacted the Daily News after the March 20 article. All six described similar ordeals involving destroyed cameras and missing money and merchandise.

The officers arrested the stores' owners for selling tiny bags, which police consider drug paraphernalia. Under state law, it's illegal to sell containers if the store owner "knows or should reasonably know" that the buyer intends to use them to package drugs.

Duran alleged that the officers seized nearly $10,000 in the raid on his store, on 20th Street near 73rd Avenue. He said that the money included a week's worth of profits and cash to pay his three employees.

The property receipt filed by the officers said that they had confiscated only $785.

Told of the new allegations, George Bochetto, an attorney representing Cujdik, said that he stood by his earlier response:

"Now that the Daily News has created a mass hysteria concerning the Philadelphia Narcotics Unit, it comes as no surprise that every defendant ever arrested will now proclaim their innocence and bark about being mistreated.

"Suffice it to say, there is a not a scintilla of truth to such convenient protestations."


Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said that he's disturbed by the store owners' allegations.

"It's pretty serious and I want to get to the bottom of it," Ramsey said last week.

Cujdik is at the center of an expanding federal and local probe into allegations that he lied on search warrants to gain access to suspected drug homes and became too close with his informants.

Ramsey said that Duran's video now "needs to be made part of this larger investigation."

The video also calls into question the validity of the search warrant that enabled the officers to raid Duran's store.

In a search-warrant application, Officer Richard Cujdik - Jeffrey Cujdik's brother - wrote that he "observed" a confidential informant enter Duran's store to buy tiny ziplock bags at about 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2007.

The informant left the store two minutes later and handed two bags to Richard Cujdik, according to the search-warrant application.

Two-and-a-half hours later, at about 7 p.m., the Cujdik brothers and four other officers, including Tolstoy, Thomas Kuhn, Anthony Parrotti and squad supervisor Sgt. Joseph Bologna raided the store.

The Daily News watched the time-stamped Sept. 11 surveillance footage between 4 and 5 p.m.: Not a single customer asked for or bought a ziplock bag.

"At the time, I had no reason to question the validity of the warrant," said Reavis, Duran's attorney.

When told by the Daily News that no bags were sold during that time frame, Reavis expressed shock.

"That's manufacturing evidence," Reavis said. "If the basis for the search warrant is a lie, that's perjury. It's illegal. It's criminal on the officer's part."

Richard Cujdik also wrote in the search-warrant application that the same informant had bought ziplock bags from Duran twice before - on Sept. 5 and 6, 2007. Duran said he was unable to locate the footage from those days.

The Daily News attempted to contact each of the officers who took part in the raid. Except for Bochetto's response on behalf of Jeffrey Cujdik, none returned messages seeking comment.


The footage from the day of the raid is crystal-clear:

Duran is chatting on his cell phone in front of the cash register when the officers enter the store. With gun drawn, Tolstoy is in the lead. Most of the officers are wearing vests or shirts with the word "Police."

Tolstoy handcuffs Duran. The officers ask routine questions: Does Duran have a gun? Does anyone live on the second floor? Are there dogs in the basement?

Then Sgt. Bologna looks up and waves his finger toward the ceiling: "Whaddya got, cameras over there? . . . Where are they hooked up to?"

In fact, every officer seems fixated on the surveillance system.

"Where's the video cameras? The cassette for it?" Richard Cujdik asks.

"Does it record?" Jeffrey Cujdik quickly adds.

Officer Kuhn then steps up on a milk crate that he had placed underneath a ceiling camera and struggles to reach it. "I need to be f---ing taller," Kuhn mumbles as another officer laughs.

"You got a ladder in here, Cuz?" Kuhn asks Duran.

"Yo," Tolstoy calls out from behind the register. "Does this camera go home? Can you view this on your computer, too?"

"I can see [at], yeah, home, yeah," Duran replies.

"So your wife knows we're here, then?" Tolstoy asks.

"My wife? No. She not looking the computer right now," Duran says.

"Hey, Sarge . . . Come 'ere," Tolstoy shouts out.

Bologna ambles over to the front counter.

Jeffrey Cujdik leans in and whispers, "There's one in the back corner right there."


"It can be viewed at home," Tolstoy says.

As the others talk, Officer Parrotti reaches up to another camera in front of the register. He pulls the wire down and slices it with a bread knife taken from the store's deli.

"OK. We'll disconnect it," Bologna assures Tolstoy. "That's cool."

Meanwhile, Parrotti's hand covers the camera lens and he appears to yank the camera from the ceiling.

The screen goes black.

"They could watch what's happening at the store at your house?" Bologna asks.

The audio cuts out.

There is footage of Kuhn looking for a camera outside the store and of Richard Cujdik searching Duran's white van. In the audio portion of the video, Richard Cujdik asks Duran, "Is that your - whose white van is that?"

Then Richard Cujdik simply asks for the keys and heads outside. The search warrant for the store makes no mention of a van. The Daily News could not find a search warrant for the van in court records.

The officers arrested Duran on misdemeanor charges of possessing and selling drug paraphernalia, specifically tiny ziplock bags.



The next day, while Duran was in jail, his brother-in-law Anthony Garcia entered the store, which had been locked after the officers left.

The place was trashed, Garcia said. Goods had been knocked off shelves onto the floor. The oven and deep fryer were left on and the refrigerator door was left open, spoiling the food inside.

"It looked like they were having a party in there," he said. "There was a lot of money missing."

Garcia said that Duran's van was left unlocked with the keys in the center console.

The initial police report says that the officers "also recovered in the store . . . eight (8) overhead cameras." The officers, however, do not list the cameras on any property receipt or state why they took them, according to police documents.

During the raid, Jeffrey Cujdik told Duran that he was seizing the cameras and computer monitor "as evidence because you're selling drug paraphernalia. So we gotta get rid of it. . . . You got yourself on video selling drug paraphernalia."

Duran's cameras, however, were digital and contained no tape and, therefore, no evidence.

Commissioner Ramsey said that he couldn't think of any official reason for police officers to cut camera wires.

He said that the officers could confiscate surveillance equipment, including the cameras, if they believed that the footage provided evidence connected to the drug-paraphernalia case. But, Ramsey added, the officers must include the equipment on a property receipt and explain why they had confiscated the cameras.

"You wouldn't just cut it and take it, because that's somebody's private property," Ramsey said.

During the raid, Richard Cujdik told Duran that the ziplock bags were illegal. Duran tried to explain that he bought the store fully stocked and the bags were already inside.

"OK, it don't matter," Richard Cujdik told him. "You should know your business."

In February 2008, Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon sentenced Duran to nine months' probation after he pleaded "no contest" to the charges. He paid $5,000 in attorney's fees.

And Duran, who was renting the first floor that housed the store, lost his lease. The building owner said that Duran had to leave to prevent the city from taking the building in forfeiture, Duran said.

He now operates a grocery in Camden County, but remains angry about the raid.

"That's not fair, what they did to me," Duran said. "That's no way to treat me when they don't know me.

"You work 18 hours [a day] and they come in and do that?"

*




http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20090330_Video_sharpens_focus_on_raid.html

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And another....

Posted on Mon, Mar. 30, 2009


Accused by police, he credits police tape
By Jan Hefler

Inquirer Staff Writer

Terence Jones is still distraught three months after his acquittal in a case that is now under scrutiny by the New Jersey State Conference of the NAACP and its Gloucester County chapter.

In his first interview since he was vindicated, Jones says he remains "bothered and upset" that he was prosecuted for filing a false police report when he complained he was racially profiled in a 2007 traffic stop in Woolwich Township.

Jones, who is African American, had faced up to 18 months in prison; his restless nights dragged on longer than a year until his trial in December.

Visibly angered, Superior Court Judge M. Christine Allen-Jackson had called the case "chilling" when she found him not guilty. It was over, and Jones sobbed in relief.

Now, the former Philadelphia police officer is fighting back. He filed a civil rights lawsuit against the police, the prosecutor, and others. He wants unspecified damages and changes to end racial profiling.

"They wanted to silence me," said Jones, 45, who lives in rural South Harrison with his family. "My civil rights were violated, and they could do that to someone else."

Jones has touched a nerve in the black community. He said his pastor recently invited him to speak at his church, Mount Calvary Baptist, about his ordeal and the problems of "driving while black," a reference to the practice in which minorities are disproportionately stopped and searched.

"A lot of people came up to me afterward and said they, too, had been stopped for driving while black and that it was something they've grown accustomed to," Jones said. "They felt nothing would be done if they complained, and they didn't want to become a target."

Phillip Warner, the Gloucester County NAACP president, said a committee of state and local members was conducting an independent assessment of the case.

They also are examining the prosecutor's handling of hate crimes against former South Harrison Mayor Charles Tyson, who received death threats around the same time as Jones' traffic stop Feb. 4, 2007. Tyson, who is African American, recently gave up the mayor's job, citing ongoing racial tensions. The prosecutor has made no arrests.

"The whole atmosphere down there has been toxic," Warner said. South Harrison borders Woolwich.

Tawfiq Barqawi, another committee member, said: "When we find people who are willing to fight discrimination, we have to stand with them. It's an example for other people to fight back, especially to show they can win, and to show law enforcement they need to be careful and stop attacking black people for no reason."

Prosecutor Sean Dalton initially cooperated with the NAACP, but he stopped when the organization informed the media of its investigation two weeks ago, Warner said.

Dalton has said that his office "thoroughly investigated" the Jones and Tyson matters and that his office "will continue to investigate and present matters fairly under the law." He also touted his record of hiring minorities.

"The matter of interest to the NAACP is subject to civil litigation in U.S. District Court," Bernie Weisenfeld, Dalton's spokesman, wrote in an e-mail. "It is inappropriate to comment about it while that case is pending. Any cooperation with a separate NAACP investigation must wait until completion of the lawsuit."

In July 2007, a grand jury indicted Jones for filing a false police report and lying under oath after County Investigator Lt. John Porter testified that "nothing" in Jones' written complaint was true.

A videotape of the stop, recorded by a camera in the police car, was never played for the grand jurors. It shows Patrolman Michael Schaeffer, who is white, pulling Jones over on a blustery night and asking why Jones was exiting an industrial park. Jones noted this in his letter of complaint to the chief.

Schaeffer is then heard repeatedly asking Jones if he has been drinking and if Jones will allow a vehicle search. When Jones says he never drinks and won't permit a search, Schaeffer orders Jones out of his Lincoln Navigator, frisks him, and then leans into the vehicle through the open windows and looks around.

Schaeffer also does a sobriety test, after confiding to his backup that he did not smell alcohol on Jones' breath. He is heard on the tape blaming the lack of a scent on the strong winds and he tells the officer that he feels Jones is "just shady."

"I didn't do anything wrong," Jones said, "and what bothered me was he didn't believe anything I said. He asked if I had anything illegal in my vehicle, insinuating I was a drug dealer or was involved in some type of illegal activity because I'm black and was driving an expensive vehicle."

Jones was not ticketed, but he was shaken. "It was the feeling of racism that frightened me," he said.

Jones and his family had moved to a posh cul-de-sac in South Harrison two years earlier. After 11 years on the Philadelphia police force, where he was a plainclothes officer with the Anti-Crime Unit, he is on disability from an on-the-job injury and does consulting on public-safety issues.

Jones wrestled with his feelings before deciding eight days later to send a letter to Woolwich Police Chief Russell Marino. "I wondered whether it would be taken seriously and whether it was worth the fight," he said. When about a week went by and Jones got no response, Jones called.

At the trial, Marino testified that he never received the letter and that he told Jones he would pick up a copy at Jones' home and investigate.

The chief decided to give the prosecutor the complaint and did not question or discipline Schaeffer.

Porter said he, too, did not question Schaeffer because the officer invoked his right to remain silent.

Schaeffer's recollection was that he had discussed the traffic stop with Porter for about 15 minutes and that he did not refuse questions.

Schaeffer testified that it was his job to investigate suspicious activity and that he had observed someone leaving an industrial park around midnight. He said he had a right to pat down Jones before doing a sobriety test. He needs to protect citizens from drunken drivers, he said.

Jones is now pushing for video cameras to be installed in all police cars in Gloucester County. "The cameras capture the behavior of a police officer and his condescending attitude when he pulls someone over for driving while black," he said. Jones said he was just making a U-turn and had explained that to the officer.

A decade ago, the state police agreed to put video cameras in all patrol vehicles to avoid a federal civil rights lawsuit after investigators looked at racial profiling on the New Jersey Turnpike. Local police departments are not required to have cameras, though many do.

Although Jones was comforted to learn there was a tape of the Woolwich stop, Porter believed the recording implicated Jones. Porter found 14 discrepancies when he matched Jones' account to what was on tape.

Porter said Jones had fabricated a story to implicate the officer. William Buckman, Jones' attorney, scoffed at the discrepancies and said they were "slight inconsistencies" comparable to variations often found in eyewitness accounts.

The judge found some inaccuracies, but she called them immaterial. She criticized the prosecutor for building a questionable case and said Schaeffer should have been disciplined.

One of the discrepancies was that Jones got the sequence of the patrolman's remarks wrong.

"I gave an account to the best of my recollection," Jones said. "I'm human."

Another was that Jones said his vehicle was searched, though Schaeffer never entered and looked under seats. The judge, however, said that when Schaeffer leaned into the vehicle, that constituted a search.

The prosecutor's spokesman says the last sentence of Jones' complaint is significant. Jones says Schaeffer told him: "You can leave now. I'll get you the next time."

"As the patrol car video shows, this is an allegation about a threat that did not occur," the spokesman said.

Three months after the stop, Jones reported the license number of another Woolwich patrol car that he said followed him several miles. The chief found the car was not assigned to patrols that day and the prosecutor charged Jones with filing another false report.

The judge acquitted Jones of this count, too, saying the prosecutor did little to verify the cruiser had not been used that day.

Judge Allen-Jackson also said the prosecutor should have evaluated the videotape and realized it depicted an improper stop and search.

"There's no evidence [Jones] was drinking or improperly operating a vehicle," she said. "There's no reason to give him a sobriety test. It's minus-9 degrees. It's cold. He exercised a constitutionally protected right to say no to a search."

Jones believes the tape saved him.

"It would have been my word against the police officer's," he said. "I might have been doing 18 months in jail."


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http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20090405_Pattern_emerges_in_raids_on_bodegas.html?posted=y&viewAll=y#comments

Pattern emerges in raids on bodegas
The majority of owners are immigrants with no police records.

By Andrew Maykuth, Michael Matza, Barbara Boyer, and Robert Moran

Inquirer Staff Writers

In 1995, Payer Ahamed, who emigrated from Bangladesh, opened a store he called Mohamed's Oasis on Germantown Avenue in Tioga.

The store inventory includes small items of clothing, knickknacks, and a large assortment of fragrant oils and perfumes with bins containing hundreds of small, empty glass vials, ostensibly for the fragrances when they are decanted.

In nearly two decades in America, Ahamed, 49, never had any brushes with the law.

Until May 22, 2007.

Little did he know, but Ahamed had been targeted by a team of Narcotics Field Unit officers who increasingly turned their focus in 2007 on merchants who supplied the small zippered packets used to contain drugs. Selling them is illegal if they are intended for the drug trade.

But a disturbing pattern is emerging among many of the merchants the narcotics officers targeted. Most are immigrants with no criminal records. Many say the police helped themselves to cash and merchandise while conducting their searches - after first disabling store security cameras.

In some cases, the merchants allege that officers destroyed merchandise seemingly out of spite - crushing cartons of cigarettes or leaving freezers open to thaw while the store owners were in custody.

At Mohamed's Oasis, Officer Jeffrey Cujdik led a five-man undercover team of Philadelphia narcotics investigators into the store. They confiscated drug paraphernalia - small plastic bags used by dealers to package drugs for individual sale.

Ahamed and his wife, Rahana Ahamed, 35, were arrested and charged with possession of paraphernalia and conspiracy.

The Inquirer has identified 21 merchants who were charged in the last two years on the basis of search warrants sworn out by Jeffrey Cujdik or his brother Richard Cujdik, both members of the elite Narcotics Field Unit.

Several cases were dismissed or thrown out of court. Of those defendants who were convicted, most got less than a year of probation. None received prison sentences.

Two merchants who appealed their convictions - including Ahamed - were promptly raided again by undercover officers.

"I think it was partly retaliatory - they may have been seen as an easy target," said lawyer Todd Edward Henry, who represented Samir Almagatha, 53, whose Snyder Avenue shop in South Philadelphia was raided in 2007 and again last year after he appealed.

That and other charges are being investigated by the federal-local task force formed after allegations from a former informant. Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey says he will take action to correct any problems once the investigation is completed.

Complaints are also being filed with the department's Internal Affairs unit, spurred in part by the city's 385-member Dominican Business Association, which launched a media campaign yesterday to get bodega owners to come forward.

"This isn't just a Dominican problem . . . it's a much bigger problem," said Danilo Burgos, president of the association.

Speaking on Spanish-language radio, Burgos also asked for a meeting with Mayor Nutter and Ramsey and urged Maria D. Quiñones-Sánchez, Seventh District Council member, to call for a hearing. "I'm sure she will step up to the plate and take these allegations seriously and ask for an investigation to take place," Quetcy Lozada, director of Quiñones-Sánchez's office, said later.

"We want the truth to be explained and to make the people who broke the law to pay for it," Burgos told The Inquirer. "Our business owners need to feel comfortable when approached by the police."

The narcotics officers' alleged misconduct came to light after federal and local investigators began examining dozens of cases brought by Jeffrey Cujdik when his longtime informant alleged that the officer had falsified evidence in several cases to obtain search warrants. The Philadelphia Defenders Association moved Friday to throw out 24 convictions it said were based on allegedly false affidavits.

The raids against the neighborhood merchants, first reported in the Philadelphia Daily News, raise questions about the Police Department's tactic of sending in undercover officers when the job might be done with less expense - and less ill will in the community - by local uniformed officers.

"You'd think the first line of attack would be to send somebody in from the local district to tell the merchants to stop selling the paraphernalia," said Henry, Almagatha's attorney.

But Ramsey says police often target merchants in response to community complaints about drug activity in or around stores. Enforcing anti-paraphernalia laws is a legitimate response, he said, as long as police do not misbehave.

"It's a quality-of-life issue, and it's one we take very seriously," Ramsey said. "But it's not an excuse for officers to go in and overstep their authority. Certainly, if you're going into a store and drink a bottle of Pepsi or a bottle of water and a bag of chips, that's unacceptable. That's totally inappropriate, if that in fact is what's going on."

A law enforcement source familiar with Jeffrey Cujdik's squad said those officers had a reputation for helping themselves to food and drinks during raids. The source said a supervisor in another squad instructed his officers not to mimic that behavior, advising that it was illegal.

Ramsey and Deputy Commissioner William C. Blackburn said some merchants who sell paraphernalia also sell drugs. But in only three of the 21 cases examined were the defendants also charged with drug possession.

John J. McNesby, president of Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, who spent 10 years as a narcotics officer, said the store owners would not change their behavior if uniformed officers encouraged them to stop selling paraphernalia.

"It doesn't work like that," he said. "They're not going to stop selling it, because there's a lot of money in it."

The police union claims the merchants are lying because they didn't file complaints with police Internal Affairs. Some merchants have told The Inquirer that they were too frightened to complain to police but that they immediately told their attorneys.

Ahamed, the Bangladeshi merchant, said the police were rough and "cursed a lot" during the 2007 raid. Charges were dismissed against his wife. He appealed his conviction in September 2007, and his store was raided again three weeks later.

His appeal succeeded - the charges were not prosecuted - and a judge dismissed charges in the second arrest for "lack of prosecution."

Some merchants said they did not report alleged misconduct because their attorneys advised them it was not worth the effort to complain because judges tend to favor police testimony.

"I want to fight the case," said Jose Duran, 28, who said police pillaged his West Oak Lane shop on Sept. 11, 2007. But Duran said his attorney had arranged for him to get nine months of probation, and he did not pursue his fight.

"They did helluva damage," said Duran, a native of the Dominican Republic, who alleged the officers took about $10,000 from the store, along with cartons of cigarettes and snacks.

The officers dismantled his video-surveillance system before conducting their search, but not before a backup system captured images of the officers cutting wires to the cameras. The video is posted on Philly.com.

Some merchants said they were terrified when police raided their stores.

Du Hyon and Yun Kyung Nam, who go by David and Eunice Nam, said police smashed through the door of their tobacco shop in the 6000 block of North Fifth Street in Olney in July 2007.

They were confused by the guns at first until they realized the armed men were police.

David Nam, 62, said the officers quickly dismantled the security cameras. Then the officers ordered the Nams - immigrants from South Korea - to put their personal belongings, including keys and wallets, on a countertop.

"I was so scared," said Eunice Nam, 56, her hand clutching her chest. The two were handcuffed and spent the night in jail.

According to the search-warrant application Jeffrey Cujdik filed, a confidential informant had spent $40 to buy "rock bags" a few days before the raid. He said David Nam showed him a chart with different sizes and colors, and the informant selected one.

When the Nams returned to the store, they said merchandise, including cigars and cigarettes, was missing. Other boxes of cigarettes had been thrown to the floor and crushed, they said.

About $4,000 was also missing, but they said police documented only about $2,500.

According to court records, a municipal judge last year found the Nams guilty of possession of drug paraphernalia and criminal conspiracy. They appealed the verdict and lost last Monday.

Jenkintown lawyer Jon Fox said authorities were planning to seize the Nams' store through forfeiture. The Nams agreed not to pursue further appeals and authorities agreed not to pursue forfeiture. The Nams were put on six months of probation.

"They're good people. They did the right thing. They came to America, worked hard, and were recognized for their contributions to the community," Fox said, referring to their support of the Police Athletic League and other youth programs. "This is insanity.

"These people are as straight-shooting, law-abiding citizens as you can find," Fox said. "They didn't know what these bags were used for."



http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20090406_Tough_cops_______or_too_tough_thugs___2_are_named_in_numerous_complaints__Was_handcuffing_the_state_rep__the_last_straw_.html?viewAll=y


Posted on Mon, Apr. 6, 2009


Tough cops . . . or too tough 'thugs'? 2 are named in numerous complaints. Was handcuffing the state rep. the last straw?
By WENDY RUDERMAN

Philadelphia Daily News

rudermw@phillynews.com 215-854-2860

STATE REP. Jewell Williams lay prone on the back seat of a police cruiser. The metal handcuffs bit into his wrists; his fingers began to swell as a fiery pain spread through his body.

It was about 6 p.m. on March 28, a windy Saturday evening.

Moments earlier, Williams, an ex-cop, stopped his car because a police cruiser was blocking the street in his North Philadelphia neighborhood.

Officer Thomas Schaffling had stopped a 2009 steel-gray Volvo, which looked like a car involved in a drug buy a few blocks away, police said.

Williams said that he watched as Schaffling frisked the driver, an older man, then placed his money on the Volvo's hood, where it began to blow away. When the man tried to grab his money, Schaffling handcuffed him.

Williams said that the Volvo's driver seemed frail. When the legislator heard the word "hospital" and the thinly built man seemed distressed, Williams exited his car and asked another officer, Timothy Devlin, who was nearby, if everything was OK.

He identified himself as a state legislator. Devlin said, "Get the f--- back in your car before I give you a bunch of tickets," according to Williams and two independent witnesses. Williams said that he asked to speak to a supervisor.

Next thing Williams knew, Devlin had him in handcuffs, crammed in the back of a squad car. Williams was forced to lie sideways because his size 12 1/2 shoes didn't fit behind the cruiser's front seat.

"I was thinking, 'What are they going to do with me?' because I didn't do anything wrong," said Williams, D-Phila. "I came to the aid of a constituent who I didn't even know, and then I get rousted up."

The Volvo's driver was John Cornish, a Nicetown resident and longtime truck driver for the city's Streets Department.

His car matched a description of a vehicle involved in a drug buy a few blocks from where officers stopped Cornish on York Street, between Smedley and Bancroft, near 16th. Schaffling searched Cornish and the Volvo and found no drugs, according to police.

Williams was not charged with any crime. Cornish, who has no criminal record, and his passenger also were released.

Last week, the police Internal Affairs Bureau launched an investigation into the March 28 incident, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said.

Schaffling and Devlin, who did not return calls seeking comment, are no strangers to Internal Affairs investigators.

Or to Ramsey.

Ramsey had placed both officers on desk duty in August after similar allegations made headlines:

* On Aug. 9, Schaffling and Devlin clashed with guests at an outdoor baby shower in North Philadelphia.

The guests claimed that Schaffling and Devlin were at the center of a police attack that injured at least six people, including children who were maced, struck with batons and pushed to the ground, witnesses told the Daily News in an Aug. 13 article.

In January, the alleged victims filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the Police Department.

* On Aug. 24, Schaffling and Devlin pulled over two men, who said they were headed to church, in West Philadelphia. The driver told NBC 10 that Schaffling aimed his gun at him and shouted, "I'm going to blow your f---ing head off." Devlin got nervous and also drew his weapon, the driver said.

The driver filed a citizen's complaint, and the city's Police Advisory Commission wrote a letter to Ramsey asking him to take Schaffling off the street.

Schaffling had also been linked to a May 5 police beating of three shooting suspects. That incident was captured by a Fox 29 news helicopter and broadcast around the world.

In the Fox video, Schaffling is seen pulling driver Brian Hall out of a car. He acknowledged afterward that he had "utilized foot strikes," or kicks, on Hall in an attempt to subdue him, police documents show.

Schaffling, 25, an officer since 2003, was cleared of wrongdoing. He wasn't among the eight officers disciplined by Ramsey. Devlin, who joined the force in 2002, was not involved in the May 5 incident. Ramsey said last week that he returned Schaffling and Devlin to the street a few months ago, but ordered supervisors to closely monitor them and to split them up. The officers are part of Strike Force South, an elite crime-fighting unit run by Capt. James J. Kelly III.

"We need [officers], as many as possible, out working," Ramsey said about his decision. "They were put on desk duty. They had been on desk duty for several months and there was no evidence that surfaced that would justify [keeping them off street patrol]."

Ramsey said that he "split them up . . . just to make sure that we don't have a problem with either one of them and to give them a chance to work with other people."

Schaffling and Devlin were not working together on the night that Williams, a member of the state House since 2001, was detained.

Schaffling was partnered with Officer Donna Stewart, while Devlin was paired with a supervisor, Sgt. Kevin Bernard, police said.

Schaffling and Stewart stopped Cornish.

Cornish, a Vietnam veteran and self-described "old head" who did not want his age in the newspaper, said that he and his childhood friend, Carl Cutler, 63, had just come from a VFW post in South Philadelphia where they picked up raffle tickets for an Easter event.

When Cornish saw the police lights behind him, he pulled over, thinking the cruiser needed to get by, he said.

Schaffling rushed up to the Volvo and yelled, "Get out of the car! Get out of the car!" The officer seemed "enraged," Cornish said.

Schaffling rifled through Cornish's pockets and placed about $900 on the hood of the Volvo. A heavy wind blew the cash off the hood. When Cornish tried to grab his money, Schaffling shoved him up against the Volvo and clamped the handcuffs tight on his bony wrists, according to Cornish and two witnesses.

"That money was blowing all the way down the street," Cornish said. "I worked for that money. That's no criminal money."

Both Cornish and Cutler described Officer Stewart, who handcuffed Cutler, as polite and professional. In fact, Stewart ran after the money for Cornish, who said he had recently cashed a winning lottery ticket, his income-tax return, and city paycheck. He only got about $200 back; the rest blew away, Cornish said.

Cornish said that when he complained that the cuffs were too tight, Schaffling said something like, "Shut the f--- up or I'll f--- you up and take you to the hospital."

That's when Williams, who was stopped about three-car lengths back, emerged from his state-leased Chrysler.

Williams said that he caught the word "hospital" and heard Cornish tell Schaffling, "Son, why are you treating me like this?"

According to Cornish and Williams, Schaffling barked, "I'm not your f---ing son. You address me as 'officer.' "

"He wasn't acting like an officer; he was acting like a thug," Cornish said.

By then, Officer Devlin and Sgt. Bernard had arrived on the scene.

Cutler, Cornish's friend, said he heard Williams twice identify himself to Devlin as a state legislator.

"It sounded like [Devlin] said, 'I don't give a f--- who you are,' " said Cutler, a retired shirt-presser at a dry cleaning establishment.

After finding no drugs on Cutler or Cornish, police released them and sent them on their way.

Williams said that he asked to speak to a supervisor and Devlin slapped cuffs on him.

"He said, 'F--- that, you're locked up and here's my supervisor,' " Williams said.

After briefly conferring with the other officers on the scene, Bernard told Williams that he "supports his men" and was locking him up on a disorderly conduct charge for interfering with a police investigation," according to Williams.

"How could I interfere if I'm at least 100 feet away?" Williams said.

While on their way to the Police Detention Unit, at 8th and Race streets, Devlin began to lecture Williams, asserting that politicians don't really support police or seem to care about the recent rash of officers killed in the line of duty, Williams said.

Williams said that he answered back, "'Do you think black people like to see police officers killed? . . . We don't want murderers in our neighborhood. . . . When a police officer is killed in the black community, we grieve, too.'"

When they arrived at the detention unit, Bernard got out of the police car and made a call on his cell phone, Williams said. Bernard hung up the phone and apparently had a change of heart. He took the handcuffs off Williams and said that he wanted to work things out.

The officers then drove Williams to the 23rd District police station, at 17th Street and Montgomery Avenue, where his family picked him up, Williams said.

Bernard declined comment, citing police policy. Officer Donna Stewart could not be reached for comment last night.

Williams said that John McNesby, president of Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, called him to apologize on behalf of the officers. McNesby did not return a phone call from the Daily News.

Williams, 51, who sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which controls government money given to towns and cities across the state, is widely viewed as "pro-police."

Prior to joining the Legislature, Williams served as chief of criminal operations for the sheriff's office and worked as a Temple University police officer.

Williams also is a member of the state's Municipal Police Officers' Education & Training Commission. Williams said that he now plans to recommend additional "sensitivity training" for officers.

"Obviously if they're getting it, it's not working," Williams said about Devlin and Schaffling.

Cornish and Cutler said that they intend to file a formal citizen's complaint against the officers. Their allegations are the third against Schaffling since he returned from desk duty earlier this year:

On Jan. 22, Reginald Butler claimed that Schaffling struck him twice in the back of the head with what felt like the butt of his service weapon and threw him face-first down the steps at his West Philly home.

Butler's sister Charlana Butler said that she filed a complaint with the Police Advisory Commission on her brother's behalf. Police found 10 grams of crack cocaine on Butler. Butler, 28, who has a prior criminal record, is facing drug charges, court records show.

On Feb. 26, Schaffling arrested John James, a 43-year-old patron at a West Philly bar, for disorderly conduct. At the time, Schaffling and fellow officers were assisting the Liquor Control Board on a routine check at the Franchize Sport Bar, at 50th and Thompson streets, Parkside.

James said that Schaffling handcuffed him after he complained that the officers had no right to search the pockets of bar patrons. Schaffling took James outside and slammed his head into the back window of the police cruiser, James alleged.

According to the police report, James was agitated and "proceeded to bang his head on the glass."

Also in February, Schaffling gave a deposition in a civil-rights lawsuit filed against him by West Oak Lane resident Garron Wheeler. Wheeler, 23, a salesman for Canada Dry who has no prior criminal record, said that on July 19, 2006, Schaffling, who was looking for drug suspects, handcuffed him, threw him against a gate and began to choke him. Schaffling also scraped Wheeler's face and shoulders on the pavement, Wheeler alleged. Wheeler had no drugs on him, and Schaffling let him go.

Cornish said he wants an apology from Schaffling.

"I didn't get to be this age only to be roughed up by a young kid," Cornish said. "It was very traumatic. I ain't never seen nobody act like that. This guy, what was he so angry about?" *

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http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20090424_Daily_News_review__Narc_supervisors_repeatedly_ignored_procedures_for_issuing_search_warrants.html?viewAll=y


Posted on Fri, Apr. 24, 2009


Daily News review: Narc supervisors repeatedly ignored procedures for issuing search warrants
By WENDY RUDERMAN & BARBARA LAKER

Philadelphia Daily News

rudermw@phillynews.com 215-854-2860

RED FLAGS were everywhere. Something wasn't right.

Search-warrant applications read like form letters. A confidential informant made drug buys across the city, sometimes just minutes apart, defying the laws of physics. And narcotics officers worked alone with their informants, violating a Police Department rule.

Yet police brass apparently failed to notice.

Again and again, supervisors in the Philadelphia Police Narcotics Field Unit signed off on cookie-cutter applications for search warrants, which are now the subject of an expanding FBI and police Internal Affairs Bureau investigation.

"I think supervisors dropped the ball," said David Rudovsky, a prominent civil-rights attorney who specializes in police misconduct cases.

The scandal erupted in February when the Daily News detailed allegations that narcotics Officer Jeffrey Cujdik lied on search-warrant applications to gain access to suspected drug homes.

The Feb. 9 article launched a Daily News series, "Tainted Justice," that also delved into allegations that Cujdik and other officers disabled surveillance cameras during raids of stores that sold little ziplock bags, which police consider drug paraphernalia. After the officers cut or yanked camera wires, thousands of dollars in cash and merchandise went missing after the store owners were arrested, the merchants contend.

"These cops robbed us with a badge," said Anh Ngo, 25, whose family grocery store in the Lower Northeast was raided in September 2008.

She blames the supervisors. "They were the leaders of the pack," Ngo said.

After the officers left her store, she said, about $12,000 in cash disappeared.

Narcotics enforcement is ripe for corruption because officers handle large amounts of cash and drugs, legal experts say.

So the Police Department has procedural safeguards: A supervisor must review and approve all applications for warrants, officers must never meet an informant without another officer present, and at least two officers should conduct drug surveillances.

Yet supervisors and officers often disregarded those rules, a Daily News review of hundreds of search warrants found.

In several cases, officers worked alone with informants and were the only ones to watch drug buys. Yet supervisors approved those search-warrant applications.

"You can have the best rules in the world, but if you don't enforce them and apply them and supervise, they [the rules] won't mean very much," said Rudovsky, who teaches constitutional criminal procedure at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Cpl. Mark Palma, a narcotics-squad supervisor, was apparently not bothered when Officer Richard Cujdik, Jeffrey's brother, worked alone on a three-day surveillance job in September 2007.

Palma approved a search-warrant application for Jose Duran's West Oak Lane grocery store, based on Richard Cujdik's assertion that he watched a confidential informant - CI #142 - enter the store to buy ziplock bags three times.

The validity of that search warrant is now in question.

For the last buy, Richard Cujdik wrote that he "observed" CI #142 enter Duran's store at about 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2007. Yet the Daily News watched the time-stamped Sept. 11 surveillance footage of the store between 4 and 5 p.m., and no one asked for or bought a ziplock bag.

Sgt. Joseph Bologna supervised the ensuing raid, part of which was captured on video. The Daily News obtained the video and posted it on its Web site, philly.com.

The video shows Bologna directing officers to "disconnect" camera wires. They do so with pliers and a bread knife. Bologna makes no effort to stop Richard Cujdik when the officer searches Duran's van, allegedly without a warrant.

Duran alleges that officers seized nearly $10,000 in the raid but documented taking only $785.

As part of the joint federal and local probe, Richard Cujdik was put on desk duty earlier this month. His brother, Jeffrey, the initial focus of the probe, remains on desk duty and was forced to give up his police powers and service weapon. His attorney has said that Jeffrey Cujdik had done nothing wrong. No officers have been charged in the investigation.

Meanwhile, Bologna has since been promoted to lieutenant. Now a supervisor at the 1st Police District in South Philadelphia, Bologna declined comment.

Four months after the September 2007 raid on Duran's store, CI #142 - one of the busiest informants in the city - would become the subject of an FBI investigation.

In early 2008, nearly a year before the Daily News began its "Tainted Justice" series, Assistant Public Defender Bradley S. Bridge contacted the FBI and sounded an alarm, according to a hearing transcript obtained through the courts.

Bridge questioned whether CI #142 was a real person. He didn't understand how this informant could make drug buys in different parts of the city on the same day within a short time span, and in two instances, at the exact same time, court records show. Bridge declined comment.

The FBI launched a six-month investigation into the narcotics officers who worked with CI #142.

Four FBI agents reviewed more than 300 cases involving CI #142. They also examined phone records of the officers and the informant, and conducted surveillance.

"We established that 142 did exist," FBI Special Agent Thomas Scanzano told Bridge in a closed Aug. 14, 2008, hearing before Common Pleas Judge Ellen Green-Ceisler.

Scanzano told Green-Ceisler that the FBI found no evidence of corruption. He attributed the simultaneous drug buys by the same informant to this: "People's watches could be off a minute or two." Scanzano added that the buys appeared to occur within blocks of each other.

When Green-Ceisler asked him if officers used #142 in an unethical way, Scanzano replied: "It didn't amount to criminal charges. I don't know. I don't want to comment on the ethics of the police officers, whether they're doing the right thing or not. In the end, it didn't raise a red flag."

Even so, the questions raised by Bridge at the time should have made police brass more vigilant, said Rudovsky, the attorney.

"It just appears to me . . . that the department internally did not continue to do the kind of oversight that they should have been doing," he said.

Now the FBI is once again looking at #142 as well as at least five other informants.

One of them is Ventura Martinez, known as CI #103, who worked with Jeffrey Cujdik for seven years.

Martinez has alleged that in at least two dozen cases, Cujdik instructed him to buy drugs elsewhere after he was unable to buy from the targeted house, Martinez told the Daily News.

Then, Cujdik allegedly lied in the subsequent search-warrant applications, saying that Martinez had bought drugs from the targeted house.

Cujdik had rented a home to Martinez and his common-law wife. Martinez alleged that Cujdik sometimes, when the rent was due, slapped his informant number on surveillance jobs that he didn't do. The Police Department pays informants for making drug buys and for information leading to drug and gun arrests.

Many of Jeffrey Cujdik's search warrants read alike, often using stock phrases to describe jobs with Martinez, a Daily News review found.

In at least five cases in which Martinez now says that he didn't make the drug buy, Cujdik wrote that he observed the drug suspect "looking from the front door" or "looking from the front porch" as CI #103 left the house.

Last fall, Cujdik's relationship with Martinez unraveled after an alleged drug dealer, Raul Nieves, discovered Martinez's identity and learned that he lived in Cujdik's house.

Stephen Patrizio, Nieves' attorney, decided to examine Cujdik's search warrants and found them troubling.

"When I started to read two or three of these [search warrants], I thought, 'This is crazy,' " Patrizio said.

"It was so apparent," he said. "I have 20 search warrants and they all read the same. The superiors don't even read them. If they did, they'd think, 'Holy mackerel!' . . . It's absolutely cookie-cutter."

A copy of every search warrant goes to the captain of the narcotics unit for review. Christopher M. Werner, captain of the Narcotics Field Unit from 2002 to May 2008, declined comment, citing the open probe.

The department has a history of scandal surrounding narcotics enforcement.

In the mid-1990s, six officers went to jail for faking search warrants, robbing and wrongly arresting dozens of drug suspects.

That dark police chapter, known as the 39th District scandal, led to a legal settlement between civil-rights groups and the city. The agreement, which lapsed in 2004, required narcotics supervisors to do random interviews with informants and with people whose properties were searched.

It's unclear whether this was ever done.

William Blackburn, who oversaw the Narcotics Bureau as chief inspector from 2002 to May 2008, did not return phone calls from the Daily News.

In July 2002, about four months after Blackburn became head of narcotics, Ellen Green-Ceisler, then director of the Police Integrity and Accountability Office, found glaring problems in the narcotics unit.

Green-Ceisler wrote in a scathing 59-page report that the Police Department had failed to implement adequate controls against corruption.

She expressed concern about "boilerplate" search-warrant applications, saying that their fill-in-the-blank nature made it "virtually impossible" for her to determine if the officers had followed police policy.

"Weak supervisory oversight [is] a key ingredient in corruption scandals," noted Green-Ceisler.

She recommended rotating supervisors to prevent them from becoming too chummy with subordinates.

Jeremy Ibrahim, an attorney representing a Kensington woman who claims she was sexually assaulted by a male officer during a raid on Dec. 14, 2007, said that supervisors are supposed to be team leaders. Instead, they often act like team members.

"The role of a supervisor is lost," he said. "Oversight is blurred or nonexistent. It's like the fox is guarding the henhouse."

Last month, Ibrahim's client, Lady Gonzalez, filed a civil lawsuit that blames supervisors for failing to prevent a male officer from fondling her breasts during the raid.

Cpl. Palma supervised the raid. He did not return phone messages from the Daily News.

Seven months after their Lower Northeast store was raided, Anh Ngo and her family are still trying to find out what happened to about $12,000 that disappeared from their store.

They said that they never received a property receipt. The officers left behind only a copy of the search warrant, which notes that they seized cash but doesn't list the amount.

Palma was the supervisor who signed the warrant as a witness to the cash seized.

The raid, on Sept. 16, 2008, began when Richard Cujdik, with his hand on his gun, banged on the door that led to an enclosed space near the cash register, Anh Ngo said.

"Open up, mama-san," Cujdik yelled, using the derogatory term for a female supervisor in Southeast Asia, typically related to sex work, Ngo said. "Do you guys sell bags here?"

Ngo's mother, Jenny Lu, who manages the family store, was behind the cash register.

After the officers shattered the cameras with sledgehammers, they climbed upstairs to the apartment where Ngo and her mother often stayed, Ngo said.

"That's where they found most of our money," Ngo said. "They flipped over our mattresses."

Her mom had squirrelled away more than $10,000 under the bed, mostly in small bills. "She's like a hamster when it comes to money," Ngo said.

"A lot of Asian people, they don't like to put money in the bank," added Anh's brother, Kong, 24. "They like to keep it in their pillows."

The 5-foot-1, 110-pound Lu, who had no criminal record, was hauled off to jail for selling little ziplock bags. When Kong opened the store after the officers left, the floor was littered with candy wrappers, sunflower seeds and cigarette butts, he said.

The Ngos said that the store was in shambles, despite a police directive that says: "Unnecessary damage or destruction of personal property by police during a search is strictly prohibited and WILL result in severe disciplinary action."

Lu, 52, was entered into a special program for first-time offenders and her record is expected to be expunged. The city is attempting to seize the store property, but the forfeiture case remains in limbo because of the FBI investigation.

"What they did to the store wasn't right," said Lu, using Anh as an interpreter. "It was so wrong. The most heartbreaking thing was that when they raided my store, they took my money.

"I sit here and I cry every night because of what they did." *

To see other stories in the Tainted Justice series, visit http://go.philly.com/tainted

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http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20091222_Ridley_Twp__officer_in_alleged_Wawa_assault_fired.html

Ridley Twp. officer in alleged Wawa assault fired
By Mari A. Schaefer

Inquirer Staff Writer

A Ridley Township police officer has been fired and a warrant issued for his arrest after he allegedly hit a Wawa manager who requested proof of age when he bought a tobacco product, authorities announced yesterday.

Brian Decker, 33, of Swarthmore, was off-duty when the incident allegedly occurred. He has been charged with harassment, simple assault, and making terroristic threats, said Michael Mattson, spokesman for the Delaware County District Attorney's Office.

The termination was unanimously approved at a township commissioners meeting last evening, said Commissioners President Robert J. Willert. Decker had been on the Ridley force since 2002, and Ridley Township Police Capt. Charles Howley said there were no previous problems with him.

"We do not condone this type of behavior," Howley said. He said the victim "was right" when she asked Decker for identification.

Mattson said his office has learned that Decker has checked himself into a medical facility and will turn himself in after he is released.

Last Tuesday, according to court documents, Decker struck an assistant manager at the Wawa on Morton Avenue in Folsom several times in the face and head. He also allegedly said, "You better watch your back." When the victim asked if he were threatening her, Decker said, "Take it any way you want. You will be out of here soon. You and your family better watch your back," according to the documents.

The victim was treated at Riddle Memorial Hospital for "a black eye, a contusion of the orbit of the eye, and a deep bruise contusion of the soft tissue," court records show.

She told investigators of two other incidents, according to court documents. In those cases, Decker yelled at her when she requested identification. In one case, the documents say, he "threw the money on the counter, took the tobacco product, and told her to call a cop."