Cops get prison time in drug dealer shakedowns

Occasionally a few get caught

A crooked Chicago cop wasn't taking no for an answer when he pushed a fellow officer into joining the robbery of a drug dealer. "So, uh, get the fear out ya'll heart and be ready," Broderick Jones told a fellow officer who was on the fence on the robbery, according to a transcript of the conversation the feds secretly recorded. "I don't need no bull----," Jones said in the November 2004 chat.

Jones, 36, led a ring of rogue cops who robbed drug dealers of their cash and cocaine, then funneled the drugs back to the street. For the treachery to his badge, Jones, a Desert Storm veteran, got 25 years in prison Thursday. He had faced life.

"You and your merry band have essentially raped and plundered entire neighborhoods," U.S. District Judge Ronald A. Guzman told Jones, one of three ex-cops sentenced Thursday.

His police colleague Eural Black, 44, got 40 years after going to trial, and former officer Darek Haynes, 38, received 19 years. A drug dealer who helped set up robberies for the cops, Brent Terry, 36, got just over 20 years. He committed his crimes while out on bond on an attempted murder charge.

The three former officers presented themselves as good family men and threw themselves on the court's mercy. "I'm not a bad guy," Jones told the judge. But the judge wasn't buying it, saying the men "savaged" the trust between the cops and the community. Federal prosecutor John Lausch called the crimes a "punch in the face" to honest cops and said the prison sentences send a message to cops who are ever tempted.

Jones' attorney, Rick Halprin, disagreed: "Western Union is for sending messages, not courts."

Report here



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