Convicted

by Jameel Zookie McGee

  When the testimony was over and the judge gave his instructions to the jury, he told them they could find me guilty of the original charges or they could find me guilty of aiding and abetting Williams in his drug deal. Collins’s testimony was all about the dealing charge while Lange’s backed up the second charge. No one on the jury seemed to notice the two contradicted one another.

  The prosecution rested. My lawyer didn’t bring any witnesses for me. A lot of people had volunteered to testify about my character. Chris, my partner from the car wash, wanted to come, along with other people who knew me well. We told them all thanks, but I needed witnesses at the store, not character references. Unfortunately, no one was at the store the day I was arrested except Collins and Will and a few other uniformed officers. The cops weren’t going to contradict Collins, and Will had already sold me out to save himself. The store security tape could have cleared me, but it was long gone.

  Even without producing any witnesses, John thought we had a chance because the prosecution hadn’t produced any evidence that connected me to the bag of dope. They didn’t have any tape recordings of my voice setting up the drug deal. They didn’t have any fingerprints on the bag of dope. They didn’t have any video or photographs from the crime scene showing me in the car or making any kind of gestures toward the console. My lawyer asked the prosecution to produce each of these things, but they could not. The prosecution produced photos of the place where the drug deal went down, but they were all taken a few days before the trial.

  There was even a lot of doubt about who Collins thought he was arresting that day, me or my cousin. All the prosecution had as evidence against me was my phone’s one call to the confidential informant and the testimony of Andrew Collins. John thought that left room for reasonable doubt.

  The jury didn’t.

  John prepared me for that. During one of the breaks, I could tell the whole thing was getting under his skin. Every one of his objections had been overruled, and the judge seemed annoyed that the trial was even happening. John looked at me and said, “It’s rough, man. The way things are going, they’re probably going to lock you up today.”

  “No man,” I said, “that’s crazy. We still have more days of this trial, don’t we?”

  “The judge wants to wrap it up quickly,” he said. He let out a sigh. “I don’t know,” he said.

  The judge had a last break before the closing arguments. I went over to talk to my aunt. “Well, I ain’t leaving here today,” I said and gave her everything in my pockets.

  “What do you mean?” she said and started to cry. “You have to go to work tonight.”

  “My lawyer already told me it doesn’t look good, and with all the stuff they’re doing here…they ain’t fixing to let me leave this place.”

  Before we went back in the courtroom, John came to me and said the prosecutor’s 5K1 deal was still on the table. By this point I was ticked off and didn’t have time for that BS. “I ain’t got nothing to say to him,” I said.

  We went back into the courtroom for closing statements. John went first and made it clear the prosecution didn’t have any real evidence against me. He said this was a case of mistaken identity and I had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The prosecutor then repeated what he had said in his opening statement.

  After both finished, Judge Bell gave the jury long instructions on how they should make up their minds on this case. Basically, his instructions came down to one question: Do you believe Officer Collins or not? That’s what this whole case came down to: Andrew Collins’s claim that I had set up a drug deal and that he had caught me red handed.

  The jury took no time at all to reach a verdict. They basically walked out, turned around and walked back in, and said, “Guilty as charged.”

  Andrew

  I was assigned to the narcotics unit on November 14, 2005, three months before I arrested Jameel. Three days after I arrested Jameel, I planted drugs in a case to make sure the suspects were strip-searched when they went to the county lockup. They were, and heroin was found hidden under the testicles of one of the guys I arrested.

  That arrest made an impression on me. The main dealer I busted said to me, “Hey, Collins, I know you have a kid on the way. Tell you what, you leave me and my little brother and the rest of my family alone, and I’ll pay you $1,200 a month. Cops don’t make much. You need to take care of that baby.”

  I still find it very creepy that the guy knew so much about me. I turned down his offer. Two of the three people I busted in that stop went to federal prison. Two weeks later my little girl was born.

  This dealer wasn’t the only one who wanted me to leave him alone. By the summer of 2006, I started bragging to my friends that when drug dealers tried to get their kids to go to bed at night, they warned them, “You don’t want Collins coming for you, do you?” A local radio station even talked about me and my antics on a daily basis. People used to call in to the show complaining about my tactics. I always laughed because I didn’t do most of the things they accused me of doing, but I was glad they thought I did. To me, it confirmed that I was one tough cop who had crawled under the skin of the scum I was trying to get off the streets. It also confirmed my conviction that the city of Benton Harbor was lucky to have me on its side.

  Complaints weren’t just aired on the radio. People called in to the police department claiming I was too aggressive and abusive. Some charged me with being racist. I didn’t feel I was, but my bosses thought I needed an older, more experienced partner who happened to be black. The way they saw it, he would keep me in line and help with public relations at the same time. When the department put B* and me together as partners, we already knew each other. He had interviewed me when I first applied to join the department. Back then he was a huge man, coming in at more than 400 pounds. Three years later he’d slimmed down to around 260. He was also very involved with the youth of Benton Harbor and had a good reputation in town. Our bosses hoped the goodwill many had for him might rub off on me.

  B and I got along great from the start. I was a little worried, though, about how he might feel about some of my questionable tactics. I was also afraid my money skimming might come to an end. My fears were laid to rest not long after we started working together.

  One afternoon I spotted a car about which I had received a tip earlier in the day. We followed the car in our unmarked vehicle until it stopped on the south side of town. Once the car stopped, I advised dispatch we were going to make contact with the two subjects inside. I claimed neither of them were wearing seat belts as my probable cause. B and I walked up to the driver who had already exited the vehicle. “Police officer,” I said. “You need to get back in your vehicle. I have a few questions for you.”

  When the man spun around to get back in his car, he dropped what appeared to be a baggie of pot. That was my opening to search the vehicle. B and I also confirmed we both smelled the strong odor of burnt marijuana coming from the car. To top it off, the passenger was one of the usual suspects in town, the brother of one of the biggest dealers.

  B and I removed both men from the vehicle and conducted a search. I arrested the driver for possession. I also searched the passenger and found what appeared to be marijuana shake in his pocket, that is, crumbs of marijuana. It could have been lint, but I called it pot. I did not, however, remove it and bag it as evidence. Instead, I let it fall to the ground.

  When we searched the car, we found around $2,500 in the glove box, mostly in small denominations. All this went into our police report. What didn’t go into the report was a portable PlayStation that went to B’s house. I took it first, but when I realized I’d have to buy a charger for it, I lost interest. B took it off my hands.

  When I found the money in the glove box, I realized I’d made a mistake by not keeping the shake. If we found marijuana in the car, we could seize the money under the civil forfeiture statute. I fixed that little problem when I wrote up the incident. I removed a baggie of dope from my stash a
nd included it with the report. B went along with it. While typing up the report, I had an idea that I took to B. I told him, “If we say a snitch gave us information about this case, we can pay the snitch 10 percent of the money we seized. But since there is no snitch, we pocket that money. The two of us keep the $250 and split it down the middle.” B didn’t flinch. Now we were in this together.

  B and I became very close over the next several months. We went after bigger and bigger fish, taking out some big-time drug dealers. Our methods were effective but not exactly legal. For example, I’d worked out a pretty good system to get any search warrant I wanted. On the form I falsely claimed to have met a confidential informant who gave me the name of a bigger dealer. I then supposedly gave the informant marked money to make a buy, followed him to the dealer’s house, and watched him go inside. After he came out, I searched him and found drugs on him. The informant also told me he saw more drugs in the house. And guns. And cash. The lab tested the drugs and found them to be real. With all that information, the warrant was automatic, even though none of the story was true.

  Every once in a while there actually was an informant who did everything I just explained, but most of the time I made it all up. The informant’s name was real, but he had no idea I was using it. The drugs were also real, but I pulled them out of my Crown Royal bag that now had not only marijuana but also crack and heroin, whatever I needed to get a search warrant or more evidence to make an arrest stick. My partner and I split the money I supposedly paid my informant.

  The whole system was a win-win as far as I was concerned. We got what we needed to conduct a search and bust a bad guy while also making a little profit for ourselves. As B and I made bigger and bigger busts, we seized even larger amounts of money. With time it became harder for us to keep our hands off the cash. The two of us were in this together, which gave us a sense of brotherhood, but I also found myself battling trust issues. Some days I wondered if B might turn me in. I also wondered if he might be taking money he wasn’t sharing with me.

  Throughout the process I found myself changing in other ways. Going all the way back to college I indulged in binge drinking even though I saw the destructive power of alcohol from how it had hurt my mom until she finally got sober. I don’t know if it was what I saw on the streets as a cop or the crimes I committed myself or a combination of the two, but I started drinking more and more to numb myself. My marriage also started slipping. And there were days when I battled suicidal thoughts. At the same time I found myself becoming more and more calloused about the people and situations I encountered every day.

  I didn’t realize how far I had fallen until B and I responded to a reported shooting around ten o’clock one morning in mid-2007. In October 2004 I had attended a two-week course at a small college near Detroit and come away as a certified crime scene investigator. That’s why I was called to the crime scene on this particular day. Someone had been shot and I needed to get over there to investigate the scene right away. Frankly, I was annoyed that my boss pulled me off narcotics for something like this. The nerve of someone, getting shot on a day when I had so much planned for my real job.

  When I arrived on the scene, another officer led me around to the east side of the house where a kid who was maybe fifteen years old lay on his back with what appeared to be two bullet holes in his head. His body was maybe five feet away from a bedroom window that also had bullet holes in it. I looked at the boy’s body and felt nothing. “So what’s the story with this one?” I asked.

  “Local gang member and marijuana dealer,” another officer told me. “Apparently he went in to rob this house. The owner found out about it and was waiting for him. As soon as the kid got in the window, he popped him twice in the face.”

  “Looks like one less dirtbag for me to chase around,” I joked. “Of course, it’s too bad a dealer got killed. Guys like this are my job security.” The other officer laughed along with me. The dead boy might as well have been a dead dog—that’s how jaded I had become.

  As a crime scene investigator, I was supposed to videotape the body and the entire exterior of the house so we could review the tape after the house was released back to the owner. No matter how hard we try, we usually miss some things initially and find them only when we go back and review the tape. Believe it or not, the perpetrator of a crime often hangs around the crime scene, and sometimes we find him on the tape, standing there and admiring his work.

  On this day I got on with my job and made a very careful video catalog of everything. At one point I stood directly over the dead boy, zooming in on the bullet holes in his head, and an overwhelming sense of guilt came over me. I didn’t feel bad for the boy. No, I felt guilty that I could not force myself to feel sorry for him no matter how hard I tried.

  B was with me, and a short time later he let me know that a confidential informer had told him this house was owned by a big-time dealer. That meant there could be large amounts of drugs and money inside. B pulled me aside and said, “We need to get in that house before anyone else does.” He didn’t add, “so we can get the money,” but he didn’t need to. The look he gave me said it all. After all, this wasn’t our first rodeo.

  I quickly wrapped up my videotaping and switched from crime scene investigator to narcotics agent. I called the chief and told him B and I needed to get inside the house to search for drugs and evidence. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but eventually I convinced him to let us do it. Before we could enter the house, I had to put together a search warrant. That wasn’t a problem. I made up some facts and put them in a document, and we soon had our search warrant to look for evidence related to the shooting.

  B and I were the first two officers in the house. A Berrien County Narcotics Division drug dog handler went with us. We started our search in the basement, where we found a large number of individually packaged bags of marijuana. After securing the evidence we headed upstairs. On the way out of the basement, B bumped his head against a stand-alone lamp. The bulb broke and cut his head. Blood went everywhere. I told him to get his head looked at, and I continued the search alone.

  B ended up at the hospital, where he received a few stiches. I ended up in the upstairs master bedroom. From experience I knew this was the most likely place to find drugs or guns or money, since most dealers keep those things out of the places where their kids might find them. Even dealers have some common sense about parenting, I guess.

  As I searched the master bedroom, I found two handguns, one of which turned out to be the weapon used to shoot the kid lying dead on the ground outside. Another officer joined me in the bedroom to help with the search. I thanked him and told him how much I appreciated his help, but inside I was cursing. He was looking for evidence; I was looking for cash. It didn’t take long for me to find it. On the top shelf of the main closet I found a purse that contained around $1,500, mostly in small bills. The other officer watched as I opened the purse, which meant there was no way I could skim any for myself.

  After securing the purse and cataloging the cash, I went back to searching the room. I went toward the dresser on the far side of the room while the other officer searched another closet. While his back was turned to me, I found a bulging sock in one of the dresser drawers. The bulge was a wad of cash with a rubber band around it. Casually, I slipped the wad into my pocket and continued my search.

  I spent a few more hours at the house before everything was wrapped up and we could all head home. I briefed the chief on what I’d found, not mentioning the wad of bills I discovered in the sock. He commended me on a job well done. After all, we’d found pot packaged for distribution in the basement. It wasn’t quite the haul I’d hoped to find, but along with the guns, it was a pretty good day.

  About the time I finished my report, B was released from the hospital. I dropped by his house and his wife scolded me for not immediately calling her when B was hurt. I apologized with a laugh and a smile. “Come on,” I told B, “I need you to help me finish up the repor
t.”

  “Sorry, honey, I gotta go,” he told his wife.

  B and I both knew I didn’t need any help with the report. The two of us needed to discuss what I’d found in the house. We always had this talk in our car. B was convinced the office we shared at the department was bugged. He even had suspicions about the squad car, which I thought was pretty funny. He didn’t. He’d been a cop a lot longer than me and knew you could never be too careful.

  We drove off in the general direction of the police station. I found an isolated spot and pulled over. “I found a little something I think you’ll like.” I pulled out the wad of cash, which I had already counted. There was $1,000 in all. I counted out $500 and handed it to him. “Here’s your half,” I said with a smile.

  B was ecstatic. “Oh man, you are a good partner,” he gushed.

  “That’s what partners do, bro. You’re my guy. You’d do the same for me,” I said and hoped it was true.

  “I’m telling you, Collins, I am really touched by this. You cut me in when I wasn’t even there. That…that means a lot to me.”

  B’s reaction made me feel as if I had done a good and noble thing. After all, how many people would be so truthful and honest with their partner and cut them in on a large haul of cash when they didn’t have to?

  After we split the cash I drove B back to his house. Once I dropped him off I started toward my own home. Along the way it hit me what had really gone down that day. A fifteen-year-old boy had been gunned down, and all I cared about was the blood money I stole from the house of the man who shot him. An overwhelming sense of grief came over me. I pulled over and sat there for a long while, weeping over what I had become. This wasn’t who I wanted to be when I dreamed of becoming a policeman. When I started with the department, I ended every day filled with joy and a sense of accomplishment. Back then I felt as though I was making a real, positive difference. Now I had become the very thing I hated.