By Nancy Dillon
New York Daily News
June 24, 2015
A retired Baltimore cop is blowing the whistle on police brutality and misconduct he allegedly witnessed during his decade on the force.
Former Sgt. Michael A. Wood Jr. listed his disturbing allegations in a Twitter firestorm Wednesday but stopped short of naming names or providing dates and locations.
"So here we go," the ex-detective and U.S. Marine, 35, wrote to his thousands of followers. "I'm going to start Tweeting the things I've seen & participated in, in policing that is corrupt, intentional or not."
The claims read like a blotter.
"A detective slapping a completely innocent female in the face for bumping into him, coming out of a corner chicken store," he said in his first example.
"Punting a handcuffed, face down, suspect in the face, after a foot chase. My handcuffs, not my boot or suspect," the officer who served from 2003 until an injury forced his retirement January 2014 said in his second.
A third tweet claimed fellow officers would turn video cameras away from any action as soon as a suspect was close to being caught.
"Pissing and sh---ing inside suspects homes during raids, on their beds and clothes," he claimed in one tweet that quickly racked up more than 880 re-tweets.
Wood claimed he also had knowledge of officers lying in court and "jacking up and illegally searching thousands of people with no legal justification."
He said he didn't remember "any particular person" who was searched illegally because it happened every day.
"I'm one person relying on a flawed memory system. This is an indictment on the culture of the profession, not a witch-hunt. Sorry," he tweeted.
A spokesman for Baltimore Police questioned the lack of "names and addresses" in Wood's tweets and asked why he waited so long to report the allegations.
"We'll look into this and his background. This is news I'm getting right now," Detective Shawn Strong said.
"What's really hard to convey is that some things are so common place, they didn't register until I was on the other side," Wood tweeted in response to similar challenges on Twitter.
Wood said he made the comments on Twitter in hopes that the police department makes changes to prevent brutality and corruption.
“I have no desire to verify the allegations. If anyone wants to look into them, fine. But I’m not looking for retribution. My purpose is to admit these things and help make policies and training materials to prevent them in the future," Wood told The News in a phone interview Wednesday.
Wood said he would testify if any of the civilians in the cases he mentioned stepped forward and asked for justice, but the incidents involving the slapping of the woman and the suspect who got kicked in the face were from 2004 or 2005.
He said the officer who allegedly kicked the suspect already was off the force.
“The kicking was the most egregious. Yeah I should have done something. Of course. But I was blinded. I was a complete rookie at the time. The truth is that I just said, ‘That’s your suspect. I’m out of here,’” he told The News.
"It wasn’t until I got out of the police department and saw things from a different perspective and got educated that I realized the things that happened were so wrong," he said.
Wood said he plans to keep posting similar examples at a rate of about 10 per day for the next few days.
“I remember one detective who staged a hit and run because he wrecked his car and didn’t want to get in trouble,” he said. “At the time, I was thinking, 'Who cares, he’s not hurting anyone.’ That was the sentiment.”
One former colleague said he had no reason to doubt Wood.
"Sgt Wood was probably one of the most intelligent guys I ever met in the department," former Baltimore Police Detective Joseph Crystal told The News.
Crystal, who resigned from the force in August after reporting a case of police brutality, said he worked directly under Wood in 2009 during his field training.
"He was great," Crystal said of Wood. "He was well versed in department policy and could articulate himself so well."
The son of two NYPD cops, Crystal said he had no direct knowledge of the instances described in Wood's tweets but assumed he was telling the truth.
"I don't know why he's coming forward now, but I'm happy if it will bring him peace," Crystal said. "I wish everyone spoke up when these things happened. If we speak up when we see abuse, we have a chance to fix it. But I understand why officers are reluctant."
In Crystal's case, the married detective says he left the force when fellow cops turned on him because he reported a 2011 beating of a drug suspect by a fellow officer.
They stopped providing backup and didn't want to ride with him in the field, he said.
"The first really horrible thing I saw, I came forward and reported it. My conscience is clear," he said Wednesday.
"I've seen a handcuffed suspect beaten. So can I believe it happened in front of Sgt. Wood too? Of course I can," he said.
2 comments:
Maybe, Maybe not...
What is a corner chicken store? Is it different than a middle-of-the-block chicken store? Perhaps the chickens it sells are different?
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