City Desk » David Simon

Was Leon Swain Jr. Too Good At Playing The Criminal?

Jason Cherkis — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:18:45 +0000

In the past few weeks, City Desk and everyone else praised Taxicab Commission Chairperson Leon Swain Jr. for his starring role as a police informant. The audio evidence is pretty clear that Swain is one talented actor. David Simon needs to put Swain in his next series.

Swain performed on hours and hours of F.B.I- produced tapes for roughly two years. But is there a case to be made that maybe Swain overacted, that he was too good in the role?

We interviewed a few of the defendants accused of trying to illegally obtain taxicab licenses. They are among the more than 30 who've been charged with conspiracy to commit bribery. What did they do?

In DVDs handed out by prosecutors to defense attorneys in the past few weeks, the cabbie wannabes are shown meeting in a townhouse where Swain gives them a talk, has them fingerprinted in "his" kitchen, and then photographed. The defendants were told that this is how you obtain a license.

At the end of the process, Swain asks each man: "Do you have something for me?" or "Do you have an envelope for me?"

These envelopes contained cash. The defendants we interviewed claimed they did not know what they were handing over to Swain; they say they had been given these envelopes—marked with a D.C. Taxicab Commission stamp on the front—by alleged bribery mastermind Yitbarek Syume.

On the videos, Swain jokes with the guys, makes small talk, and generally plays the perfect host. The men just look on in confusion. I wondered how much they actually understood. In some case, they see Swain opening up the envelopes and fanning out the cash. The men look freaked out by this.

In a video recorded a few days prior to these fingerprint sessions, Swain warns Syume and a co-conspirator to keep their dealings secret. He tells them: “Get everybody situated. And then we’ll have them come down here.…Probably about 10 at a time....We don’t need this to go no further than the three of us.”

What does that mean? What does this say about what the 30 defendants knew about the bribery conspiracy?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

“By a Baltimore Sun Staff Writer”

Jule Banville — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:58:59 +0000

Nice story today in the Baltimore Sun about the U of Maryland's plan to put a parking lot and maintenance sheds where there are now 15 acres of woods. Don't bother calling up the writer to give a compliment. They're on a byline strike today. The one-day protest is against Sun owners the Tribune Co., which recently laid off about one-third of their newsroom, mostly editors and bureau chiefs. Tribune's filed for Chapter 11 protection. Union rep Brent Jones tells the Washington Biz Journal injury's insulted because “[t]hese decisions were made without any discussions on alternative cost-saving methods.”

Wire creator, former Sun staffer, and the most reliable of Tribune's management's critics, David Simon, fired off some choice thoughts on the cutbacks on Facebook:

[I am] revulsed at what has happened at the Baltimore Sun this week. i really don’t know who Monty Cook is or what he stands for as the editor in chief, but before I asked the likes of Ann LoLordo or Eileen Canzian to leave the building — people who given their working lives to that institution — I would scratch together enough integrity to refuse and be fired my ownself.

It’s almost unfathomable. The Baltimore newspaper’s only plan is slow suicide, with Chicago leeching the last nickels and dimes even to the moment when they shutter the doors. Never has an industry so willingly butchered itself or shown its own product such contempt. (Via Baltimore Brew)

D.C. Council Introduces Bill To Expand Office Of Police Complaints Oversight

Jason Cherkis — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:39:06 +0000

Earlier this month, three D.C. Councilmembers—Mendelson, Cheh, and Bowser— introduced legislation that would significantly beef up the oversight powers of the Office of Police Complaints. The bill would expand the authority of the Police Complaints Board to monitor complaints filed with D.C. Police and Housing Authority cops. The bill would remedy the on-going problem of the D.C. cops investigating their own without much if any kind of outside oversight. The OPC was so elated with this bill, the agency wrote a press release.

This is big news. The D.C. Police have always shielded its investigations into misconduct from FOIA laws, claiming these investigations as work product. I addressed the issue years ago in a piece about four Sixth District cops with a stack of citizen complaints. This bill may finally shine some daylight on police-led investigations of excessive force.

The bill states that the board "shall have unfettered access to all information and supporting documentation of the covered law enforcement agencies..."

Seems like the bill has teeth. Expect a huge fight over the unfettered access line.

OPC Executive Director Philip Eure sees the bill as necessary. "The upshot is we are trying to update the authority of our agency to be able to provide even more effective oversight of police complaints," he says. "We want to promote greater police accountability....We need to know how MPD deals with citizen complaints."

Eure's sentiments are shared by Wire-creator and former Sun Journalist David Simon. In the piece I wrote in 2000 on those Sixth District cops, then-Executive Assistant Chief Terrance Gainer agreed that these citizen complaints should be made public. Here's what I wrote back then:

"Gainer says he believes police misconduct investigations should be open to public scrutiny, but claims that the department is bound by union contracts to keep the information private. MPD officers claim that the PD-99s, as the complaints are called, are exempt from disclosure even though they represent the citizens' only avenue for redress for police misconduct.

'While I respect the contractual and legal right of the officers to have those shielded [from] the press, I believe there ought to be a little more daylight shed on how we all behave,' Gainer says. 'Given that we are public servants, the public has a fundamental right to know what I'm doing and how I'm doing....If we're talking about administrative matters for which I'm being disciplined, it strikes me as being in the public domain. If I had it within my power, I would share that information.'"

Police union chief Kristopher Baumann agrees in principal to more openness but would like this openness to include high-ranking officials and not just the rank and file. But he says the OPC is a failed model. "What I think we should have here is a body, a board that reviews any complaint about the police," he says.

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Simon Says Name The Cops Involved In Shootings. We Agree.

Jason Cherkis — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:23:48 +0000

On Sunday, David Simon published an op-ed in the Post railing against the Baltimore Police Department's recent refusal to release the names of cops involved in shootings. (He also pissed on the press—MSM and "citizen bloggers"—for not challenging the department on its no-names policy.

Simon writes:

"In January, a new Baltimore police spokesman — a refugee from the Bush administration — came to the incredible conclusion that the city department could decide not to identify those police officers who shot or even killed someone. (Similar policies have been established by several other police departments in the United States as well as by the FBI.)

Anthony Guglielmi, the department's director of public affairs, informed Baltimoreans that, henceforth, Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld would decide unilaterally whether citizens would know the names of those who had used their weapons on civilians. If they did something illegal or unwarranted — in the commissioner's judgment — they would be named. Otherwise, the Baltimore department would no longer regard the decision to shoot someone as the sort of responsibility for which officers might be required to stand before the public./blockquote>

I sympathize with Simon on this one. The D.C. police department not only refuses to release the names of officers involved in shootings, its spokesperson doesn't quite understand the need for such openness.

I was able to get the names of the cops in the David Kerstetter shooting only by talking to friendly officers and digging up the officers' phone numbers. [The Post never bothered to even name Kerstetter in its short account of the shooting]. The department still wouldn't confirm the names even after I interviewed the cops. A few months later, an officer shot and killed Osman Abdullahi, and an off-duty cop shot another mentally ill man the next day.

The D.C. police investigation into the DeOnte Rawlings shooting has yet to be made public. The head of the police union, Kristopher Baumann says the Rawlings case should be made public. He blames Mayor Adrian M. Fenty for keeping the investigation under wraps.

"This is a decision the mayor is making," Baumann says. "If they did start making those investigations public, I would be fascinated to see how that would go." He's open to the idea but with one important caveat: make all cases public.

"You can't have one standard for police officers and one for high-ranking officials," he says. "That would be one of the issues....If you do it for the Rawlings case, it has to be done for all cases and all situations. It has to be one standard. That standard has to be across the board.”

But Baumann is against naming names. I will have more posts on this issue later today.

Photo of David Kerstetter provided by the Kerstetter family

David Simon Is Making a Miniseries About the Lincoln Assassination

Mark Athitakis — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:21:29 +0000

In it, we'll learn that John Wilkes Booth was concocted by a Baltimore Sun reporter angling for a Pulitzer.

In all seriousness, it does sound pretty awesome. I'm hoping this gets used for the promotional poster.