The case had now veered from an investigation into one officer’s potential collusion with a drug crew, to potential civil rights violations when they lied on their arrest report about the traffic stop and gun seizure, to what appeared to be officers robbing people.ĭeForge’s mother, Laura Slater, remembers her son’s girlfriend calling from the scene while the officers had them stopped. “You’re not going to believe what I think is going on here,” she told the prosecutor. Jensen was in constant contact with Leo Wise, the federal prosecutor who was now overseeing the investigation, and gave him the update.

Wayne Jenkins was the ring leader of the rogue squad. Plain clothes officers targeted people, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, lied about overtime and also conducted searches without warrants. When seven officers from the Gun Trace Task Force were arrested in 2017, the sprawling case was shocking. What they had described in the statement of probable cause for the arrest on the gun charge was a clean sequence of events that justified the officers’ actions.įor federal investigators, the encounter revealed not only that Gondo was working with drug dealers but that he and his squad were lying about their police work.

The officers said that they had conducted a traffic stop on DeForge for following another vehicle at an unsafe distance and that upon approaching DeForge’s car Hersl had “observed DeForge reaching from his right pants pocket, placing a small caliber firearm into a camouflage backpack.” As the wiretapped call showed, Hersl had made no such observation, as the officers had had great trouble locating the gun at all. It didn’t read anything like the encounter Jensen had listened to. She later pulled the statement of probable cause that accompanied the arrest. The conversation between Gondo and the informant had sounded strange to Jensen, particularly how long they had gone back and forth about officers not being able to find the gun. 22 caliber pistol - was eventually found in a backpack, and DeForge was arrested. “Well, search the car, look under the seat.” “It’s in that car, he never comes without it.”

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