Corruption trial opens / heroin dealing cops in Baltimore (updated with sentencing)

Corruption trial opens

2 city police officers accused in robbery, extortion of drug suspects
By Matthew Dolan
Sun reporter
Originally published March 15, 2006

Holding up badges and 9 mm Glock semiautomatic pistols, a federal prosecutor told jurors yesterday that two Baltimore police officers being tried on corruption charges used their positions "as a vehicle to rob, to rob people on the streets of drugs."

"They preyed upon the very people they were sworn to protect," Assistant U.S. Attorney A. David Copperthite said in his opening statement.

He called the actions by Officers Antonio L. Murray and William A. King a product of "insatiable greed."

Defense attorneys countered in their opening statements that their clients did not commit crimes, and if they bent departmental rules, the partners did so to protect their informants on the street and to focus their attention on large-scale drug dealers.

"It's not tea and crumpets," Ed Smith Jr., King's attorney, said of the detectives' work patrolling public housing communities on the city's west side. "It's hard business."

The defense lawyers said that Murray, 35, and King, 36, would take the witness stand and testify in their own defense. In a 33-count indictment, the officers are accused of conspiring to rob and extort cocaine, heroin and marijuana - as well as drug-related proceeds - from suspects they met on city streets. A third defendant, Antonio Mosby, was charged with serving as their lookout and informant in the drug world.

Mosby has pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors and is expected to testify against King and Murray. Other suspects-turned-victims also are expected to take the stand against the officers who once called them informants.

The indictment states that King and Murray, who were arrested in May last year, started their illegal activities as far back as the summer of 2004.

Copperthite said that the federal investigation started with a tip from an informant who accused King of shaking down drug addicts.

Using wiretaps on their cellular phones and microphones and global-positioning trackers planted in their department-issued Chevrolet Lumina, federal undercover agents tracked the pair as they were seemingly on the job when they allegedly rounded up suspects and held them in their car, according to the indictment. Then they used the threat of force, arrest and prosecution as their enforcement tools, the indictment says.



Two are detained
As late as April 15 last year, King and Murray detained a man and a woman for drug dealing and robbed them of their drugs and money without arresting them, according to the indictment.
Federal prosecutors said the three defendants split the proceeds from the robberies and sold the drugs they seized for mutual profit.

All of these activities took place in West Baltimore, which one police witness called "an extraordinarily blighted section of the city dominated by open-air drug dealing."

The west side, according to Police Department Col. Frederick H. Bealefeld, was responsible for about 25 percent to 30 percent of all of the city's homicides and shootings.

Prosecutors, dismissing the explanation from defense lawyers, told jurors that the case was not about good police officers who simply cut corners as a way of blending into the street drug scene.



First witness
To show that King and Murray allegedly violated department rules, prosecutors called Bealefeld as their first witness. The supervisor of detectives testified that the department's "general orders" formed the bedrock for officers' conduct and could not be compromised.
Calling on 25 years of experience, Bealefeld said there would be few reasons if any that a police officer could detain someone, seize drugs and money and then not immediately report the contraband to the department as evidence.

In the indictment, King, Murray and Mosby have been charged with conspiracy, illegal drug dealing and illegal gun possession.

King is charged with two additional counts of distributing cocaine and marijuana.

If convicted on the most serious charge of conspiracy to possess a firearm in the commission of a violent crime, each man could receive a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore is expected to last about three weeks. Judge J. Frederick Motz is presiding.

Copperthite said that the prosecution of King and Murray was limited to those officers and did not involve a wide investigation into the entire department.

But Baltimore police have recently been beset by another drug-related scandal when officers in the department's Southwestern District were accused of keeping drugs stashed in their desks.

Police commanders disbanded the so-called "flex" squad, suspended the officers and replaced each of its seven members.

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Informer says law enforcer warped into lawbreaker
Dealer who tipped FBI testifies that city officer shared drug profits

By Matthew Dolan
Sun Reporter
Originally published March 15, 2006, 9:30 PM EST


At 15, he started "slinging" heroin on the streets of West Baltimore. By 18, he was an underboss, second in command of his own drug-dealing crew. But when his new baby arrived and plans for college percolated in his head, Davon Mayer told a federal jury Wednesday, it was time to get "out of the game."
The decision, according to Mayer, meant he would call federal officials and turn in his most unusual partner in crime: Baltimore Police Detective William A. King.

Mayer's tip to the FBI in No vember 2004 sparked one of the most extensive surveillance operations of city police activities in recent Baltimore history. The FBI's seven-month wiretap probe led to the May 2005 arrests of King and his partner, Detective Antonio L. Murray.

In the 33-count indictment that followed, the officers are accused of conspiring to rob and extort cocaine, heroin and marijuana -- as well as drug-related proceeds -- from suspects they hunted down on city streets. Their trial in U.S. District Court started Tuesday.

As one of the prosecution's first witnesses, Mayer provided a vivid picture of the secret world of drug dealing, where a "pitcher," or dealer, could be arrested by police one day and become an informant for them the next.

"If I tell him about drugs and stuff, he'd let me keep some," Mayer told jurors about the alleged arrangement with King.

Mayer spoke matter-of-factly of once telling King about which houses held large caches of heroin. But Mayer expressed no regret when he talked about calling the FBI on King.

The detective and the drug dealer met when King arrested Mayer sometime in 2003, Mayer said. King allowed Mayer to go if he helped King in his police work, according to Mayer.

But the work soon devolved into sharing Mayer's illegal drug profits, according to Mayer. King also gave Mayer cash to invest in drug deals and then split the proceeds between them, Mayer told the federal jury.

"I really didn't want to be involved in it anymore," Mayer said Wednesday, adding that his collaboration with King required almost daily drug dealing. "Money is a small thing."

To get to King, the FBI set up an elaborate sting operation, according to court testimony Wednesday.

FBI Special Agent Richard J. Wolf told jurors he persuaded Mayer to set up King with a series of fake drug deals. The first involved Mayer asking King to pick up a McDonald's bag full of crack cocaine. Mayer was to tell King that he knew the crack was stashed in an alley in the 900 block of Bennett Place. In reality, the bag was planted by the FBI and the "crack" was macadamia nuts stuffed inside 137 vials, Wolf said.

After King dug the bag out from under a pile of leaves in the alley, he gave it to Mayer, who promised to sell it on the streets, according to testimony. Mayer said he then returned the proceeds from the fake drug deals to King.

"I could kind of see that he was impressed by the money," Mayer said.

Each part of the transaction was recorded, according to Wolf. At first, Wolf and other FBI agents sat in their car with Mayer as he telephoned King. As the investigation progressed, Wolf said, agents taught Mayer how to record his conversations without their help.

King and Mayer also met to exchange money and drugs, Wolf said. When they did, Mayer wore a body wire, a 1 1/2-inch-by-1 1/2-inch digital recorder stuffed in his pocket.

Most of the meetings, according to Wolf, took place in and around a police office in the 300 block of Martin Luther King Blvd. A nearby Rite Aid parking lot was often used, and once, Mayer handed $750 in marked bills to Mayer in the police office's bathroom, according to Wolf's testimony.

Jurors listened as prosecutors played the recorded conversations, large parts of which were unintelligible to the courtroom gallery. Prosecutors provided the judge and jury with transcripts of the conversations but declined to release them publicly Wednesday, saying they were not evidence in the case.

According to earlier court proceedings, the FBI eventually used wiretaps on King and Murray's cellular phones and microphones and global-positioning trackers planted in their department-issued Chevrolet Lumina to track their conversations and movements. Agents watched the officers when they rounded up suspects and held them in their car, according to the indictment. Then they used the threat of force, arrest and prosecution as their enforcement tools, the indictment says.

As recently as April 15, King and Murray detained a man and a woman for drug dealing and robbed them of their drugs and money without arresting them, according to the indictment.

Federal prosecutors said the defendants split the proceeds from the robberies and sold the drugs they seized.

But defense attorneys attempted Wednesday to establish that King and Murray might have been trying to use informants such as Mayer as a legitimate means of busting higher-level drug dealers.

"So [King] was looking for information that would have led him to the higher-ups," defense attorney Edward Smith Jr. asked another informant, Harvey Mickey, who also testified Wednesday.

"Yeah, you could say that," Mickey replied.

Mickey also conceded to defense attorneys that King and Murray had reputations in West Baltimore for busting drug dealers.



"When you saw them coming," Mickey testified of the narcotics detectives, "you go in the opposite direction."

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Detectives' Wiretapped Chats Aired at Drug Trial
By Matthew Dolan, The Baltimore Sun

Mar. 17--A federal jury waded through hours of secretly recorded conversations yesterday that prosecutors say implicates two Baltimore police officers charged with organizing and running an illegal drug-dealing operation.

Prosecutors, on the third day of testimony, spent most of their time with an FBI agent who took the witness stand to interpret language used by street-level drug dealers - and the accused officers.

The FBI's seven-month wiretap probe led to the May 2005 arrests of detectives William A. King and Antonio L. Murray. Both are on trial in U.S. District Court, accused of conspiring to rob and extort cocaine, heroin and marijuana - as well as drug-related proceeds - from suspects they pursued on the streets of West Baltimore.

One 18-year-old woman testified yesterday that she was accosted by King on the street and eventually robbed of the money she had in her pockets. King let her go without charging her, she said, but he ordered her to stay in contact and give him information about the local drug trade.

But much of the day was spent listening as prosecutors played recordings of wiretaps on King's police department-issued cellular phone.

In those conversations, said FBI Special Agent Richard J. Wolf, King orchestrated drug deals and worked with Antonio Mosby, an addict and dealer, who was the detective's lookout. Mosby was later charged by federal officials, pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against King and Murray about their drug deals.

"Can we grind at least?" Mosby asked King during one of the recorded conversations.

Wolf told the jury that "grinding" is drug-world lingo for Mosby going onto the street to identify drug dealers, who were then busted - and robbed - by King and Murray.

Wolf's testimony was buttressed by FBI video surveillance of meetings King had with another informant, who was secretly working for federal agents.

Wolf testified that King gave FBI informant Davon Mayer several items to use for his illegal drug business, including a "cap 'em quick," a device to quickly fill gel capsules with heroin to sell on the street.

The trial, which started Tuesday in U.S. District Court, is expected to last three weeks. Testimony is scheduled to resume Monday.

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Witness describes deal with officers
Addict-turned-informant testifies he resold drugs confiscated by police

By Matthew Dolan
Sun reporter
Originally published March 21, 2006

Almost daily on cell phones and regularly in person at Pete's Place Bar & Lounge on North Franklintown Road, an odd couple commiserated. The police officer sometimes joked about his love life; the informant lamented about his heroin addiction and a daughter who was running into trouble with the law in New York.

But in hours of secretly recorded conversations by federal agents, prosecutors say, one topic of conversation dominated the relationship between Detective William A. King and his informant, Antonio Mosby: selling illegal drugs for mutual profit.

A federal jury heard more than a dozen recorded phone calls yesterday that prosecutors say show how King and his partner, Detective Antonio L. Murray, shook down drug dealers pointed out by Mosby at open-air drug markets across Baltimore.

Yesterday's testimony from Mosby, who struck a deal with prosecutors in hopes of a lighter prison sentence, marked the fourth day in the police corruption trial. The proceeding is the culmination of the FBI's seven-month wiretap probe into misconduct in the Baltimore Police Department that ended with the May 2005 arrests of King and Murray.

In a 33-count indictment in U.S. District Court, they are accused of conspiring to rob and extort cocaine, heroin and marijuana - as well as drug-related proceeds - from suspects they pursued.

Now imprisoned, Mosby, 40, spent most of yesterday morning on the witness stand explaining how he bought and sold heroin in West Baltimore for some 25 years before his arrest last year by federal agents.

He told jurors he first met King and Murray in the spring of 2003 when Mosby was arrested with five gel capsules of heroin.

"They were pretty much asking me what could I help them with," Mosby said.

Mosby was not charged and instead registered as a confidential informant, making him eligible for payments from the Police Department. Hanging over his head, Mosby said, was the possibility that King and Murray would charge him with drug possession if he didn't cooperate.

"They had the pills," he explained yesterday. "So I felt obligated" to call the officers with tips about drug activity.

At first, Mosby said, he thought he would just be providing lawful information to King and Murray. Soon, he said, "I became aware."

His awareness was of the illegal drug business set up by King and Murray, according to prosecutors. Mosby provided information about which "hitters" were carrying drugs; King and Murray would "catch and release" the dealers, stripping them of their money and drugs. Then, according to prosecutors and trial testimony, the officers would illegally sell the drugs to Mosby at a discount. He in turn, he said, resold the drugs back out on the streets.

They called it "grinding," Mosby told the jury.

Among the targets, Mosby said, were "old heads," or older drug dealers and users. King told Mosby that the officers didn't want information about juveniles, who would require a lengthy arrest booking process, or young people who would be apt to run from the detectives and require a chase.

Attorneys for King and Murray centered their questioning yesterday on whether the officers had attempted to use Mosby and other informants to crack large-scale drug dealers.

Under cross-examination, Mosby told King's attorney Edward Smith Jr. that he was a longtime heroin addict who needed five hits of the drug a day to keep from being "sick." He sold the drug to family and friends, delivering heroin to their workplaces at lunchtime.

"You didn't see anything wrong with that? You felt you were doing them a service?" Smith asked Mosby.

"In a sense, yes," Mosby said.

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In one part of the video a man sitting on some steps asks why no drug dealers who work the corner of Brice Street and Edmondson Avenue in West Baltimore aren’t “catching cases.”

A rough translation is that dealers who work that area aren’t getting arrested. The man then tells why those dealers aren’t “catching cases.”

“The word is they work for King and Murray,” he says. “Don’t nobody go to trial. You dig what I’m saying?”

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Case against officers rests on wiretaps
Prosecutors say calls show drug dealing, police corruption
By Matthew Dolan
Sun reporter
Originally published March 26, 2006

The indicted police officers sit in federal court every day but have never spoken to the men and women who will decide their fates.

For two weeks, detectives William A. King and Antonio L. Murray have watched silently as jurors absorbed hour upon hour of the officers' conversations that were secretly recorded by the FBI.

Federal prosecutors say wiretaps show how King and Murray masterminded an illegal drug-dealing operation, nicknamed "grinding," that targeted old and addled addicts in West Baltimore. Often, according to the tapes, the officers "grinded" before or after their regular shifts, calling it their real work.

"You should have been like, yo, you know how King is," King told one man he stopped for drug dealing in March last year and later robbed, according to authorities. "He took my [expletive] drugs and he took my money, told me to get the [expletive] out of here."

This week, their attorneys say, King and Murray will have a chance to fight back when they take the witness stand.

But to do so, the officers will need to overcome a withering picture of police corruption assembled by prosecutors that draws from the officers' informants who became federal witnesses, gel capsules full of heroin seized from the officers' car and bank records showing unusually large cash deposits - a trademark of a drug dealer, according to prosecutors.

The strength of the government's case has been the hundreds, if not thousands, of the officers' conversations. They reveal moments both mundane and monstrous, federal prosecutors say.

One call between the partners Feb. 17, 2005, was fairly typical. It captured both staccato banter between them and the shorthand references that federal agents said the officers used to complete their drug deals. A partial transcript said:

Murray: That was like 60 some pieces, wasn't it?

King: That [expletive] sitting in the car somewhere. Middle console.

Murray: It's in the brown paper bag. Don't leave it in there.

King: I don't know what you're talking about.

Murray: Yo, we went in the house, you found like you said it was like 60 pieces. It was in a brown paper bag. Where is it?

King: I told you I put everything in that middle console.

The conversations are not evidence of a criminal enterprise, the officer's lawyers argue. Instead, attorneys Edward Smith Jr. and Russell A. Neverdon Sr. said that the snippets are raw talk from undercover officers simply doing their job - a demanding one that required them to bend the rules and adopt new, aggressive tactics, some taught by policing experts from New York.

But King and Murray were more than aggressive, according to prosecutors. For more than six months before their arrests in May 2005, the officers are accused of rounding up drug suspects and holding them in cars, robbing and threatening them with force, arrest and prosecution.

Later, the two police officers and their lookout, Antonio Mosby, split the proceeds from the robberies and sold the drugs they seized for profit, according to court testimony.

For more than a decade, King and Murray followed remarkably similar paths. They both graduated from high school in Baltimore and joined the city Police Department in 1992. They spent time in the Central District, the Criminal Intelligence Section and a specialized unit that swarmed over high-crime areas in the city.

In December 2004, when the Police Department assumed responsibility for patrolling Baltimore's public housing communities, King and Murray joined the new unit.

However parallel their careers, a review of almost 700 pages of transcripts of the tapes by The Sun shows the officers' different personalities. Murray comes across as high-strung and aggressive. Records show he amassed a large amount of cash in his bank accounts, and part of the tapes deal with his purchase of a new Infiniti.

In contrast, King is laconic. His answers are short and often without detail. He seems to let his guard down a little when talking to Mosby, whom he used to drink with in his off-hours.

The frustration both officers shared about Mosby, an admitted heroin addict, led to one of the trial's more humorous moments when prosecutors played a conversation from Feb. 17, 2005. In it, Murray is convinced that Mosby is trying to con the officers by getting them to front him drugs allegedly stolen without paying for them first.

Murray: What he think, we're super dummies?

King: Yeah.

Murray: Huh?

King: Yep.

Murray: Seriously.

King: Yeah, for real.

The conversation continues, but Murray appears obsessed with idea of "super dummies."

Murray: I'm dumb, [slight laugh] but I ain't no super super dummy.

King appeared to have more affection for Mosby, who returned the feeling. Playful and teasing, the two appeared to box out Murray at times, including one phone call April 8, 2005:

King: During the daytime, but in the morning before we hit Tony [Murray], even if we could, just get, go get stashes yo. You know what I'm sayin'?

Mosby: Yeah, for real yo.

King: You know we get ... I'm trying to make something from it too [expletive]. You just want me to give everything to you.

Mosby: No, no, no, no, no, yo. We go fifty-fifty yo. Fifty-fifty.

King: All right. Well that's what's up then.

Mosby wasn't King and Murray's only source on the street. The FBI and prosecutors argue that King used others, including government witness Dion Snipe, who were detained and then set free to sell "packs" of drugs on the street and share in the profits.

At 9:52 p.m. May 9, 2005, King and Snipe allegedly talked about one of their last deals:

Snipe: We trying to get a couple of dollars in our pockets, right?

King: Yo, it's [expletive] 10 o'clock!

Snipe: Hmph?

King: It's 10 o'clock. Time I get off ...

Snipe: What does that mean?

King: I ain't at work no more!

Snipe: Oh, so you're off?

King: Yeah.

Snipe: I thought you said you work till 1 o'clock tonight?

King: No, I did not. I said 10.

Snipe: Oh man, oh [expletive].

King: What, what was up?

Snipe: Damn. Remember, when I tell you about the people sitting on the steps.

King: Yeah.

Snipe: Two packs in there, right.

King: Say what?

Snipe: Two packs and I think like maybe 300 dollars. We can split that, right?

King: Damn, I'm off, yo. Tomorrow we can do that though, definitively.

Two days later, the FBI arrested King and Murray.

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CretiNation said:

Wow this is like a mix between a season of "The Wire" and one of "The Shield."

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City detective defends himself at drug trial
Officer says actions were part of approved policing technique

By Matthew Dolan
Sun Reporter
Originally published March 27, 2006, 9:41 PM EST
One of two Baltimore narcotics detectives accused of selling illegal drugs testified at his federal trial Monday that confiscated heroin he gave to a confidential informant was part of an off-the-books, but acceptable, policing technique designed to apprehend some of the city's top drug dealers.

In front of an expectant jury who had only before heard the officer's voice on wiretap recordings, Detective William A. King answered questions from the witness stand for more than four hours. But his calm demeanor turned testy and defensive when prosecutors called his tactics criminal, leading to the most combative moments of the two-week trial.

"I never robbed anybody," King said, leaning forward in his chair, his arms crossed slightly, testifying for the first time. "I gave [an informant] drugs but in return, he gave me the information I needed."

At one point, U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz ordered a brief recess because the heated cross- examination of King by Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Peters had turned into a shouting match.

"Why didn't you write a report?" Peters asked King, one of many times the prosecutor hammered the officer for failing to document his activity with his sources.

King responded that only some of his drug seizures needed to be reported officially, while others could be channeled to his informants.

King's account offered the first detailed counterpoint to the complex public corruption case presented by federal prosecutors. King's attorney Edward Smith Jr. called two other witnesses -- both former city police officers -- as part of the first day of testimony from the defense.

Relying on testimony from cooperating witnesses and hours of secretly recorded conversations by the FBI, prosecutors accused King and his partner, Antonio L. Murray, of conspiring to rob and extort cocaine, heroin and marijuana -- as well as drug-related proceeds -- from suspects they pursued on city streets in late 2004 and early 2005.

King maintained that he never robbed anyone, never sold drugs for money and never brandished his weapon, as charged. He argued that prosecutors misinterpreted his taped conversations. King defended his drug enforcement strategy with informants as a "deceit" to keep them happy and productive.

He agreed that he might have broken department rules and regulations when he gave seized drugs and money to informants Antonio Mosby and Davon Mayer. Mosby earlier pleaded guilty to related drug charges and testified against King.

King called his policing tactic an "acceptable procedure," which had been tacitly approved inside the Police Department under former Commissioner Kevin P. Clark.

Clark had created the department's beefed-up Organized Crime Division -- a unit of largely plainclothes officers that focused on undercover drug buys where Murray and King both served -- but it was de-emphasized after Clark was fired in November 2004. Mayor Martin O'Malley hired Clark from New York in 2002 to eradicate open-air drug markets.

King said that after he received training from police officials in New York, he changed the way he submitted evidence.

"Sometimes you submit the [seized drugs and money]," he said. "Sometimes you don't."

Several current police officials testified earlier in the trial on behalf of the government, saying that under no conditions would an officer be allowed to take seized drugs and hand it over to an informant as a reward.

King said he never shared the profits from the drugs he provided to his informants, and his only reward was information about large stashes of illegal drugs and high-level drug dealers, largely on the city's west side.

His take, King explained, was no take at all. He said he held the money for his informants only because they were too quick to spend their money on drugs, and he was concerned about their welfare.

If he had been a drug dealer, King argued, he would have been wealthier. King said FBI agents found $221 on the detective when they arrested him in May 2005. His bank accounts were almost dry, he owed the IRS money in back taxes and a local jeweler thousands of dollars for purchases still unpaid, according to his testimony and financial records.

King had been presented by prosecutors as a law-breaking police officer who had carved out a side business as a drug dealer. But in his testimony Monday, King, a West Baltimore native, had his first chance to tell jurors his side.

"I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps," King said Monday, describing why he wanted to become a city police officer after a stint in the Army. "I wanted to give back to the community I grew up in."

King said the training from police experts in New York was a transformational moment. King said he employed the new tactics during his successful drug busts.

His testimony is expected to continue Tuesday morning.

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Officer admits he breached police policy
King says he gave informants drugs to sell but insists he's not guilty of corruption

By Matthew Dolan
Sun reporter
Originally published March 29, 2006
In the end, after almost two days of testimony, the police officer and the prosecutor sparred one more time.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Peters approached the witness stand in Courtroom 5A late yesterday afternoon and stood just feet away. In the chair sat Detective William A. King, charged along with his partner with robbing drug dealers on the streets of West Baltimore.

"Did you have the right to retain drugs and money for personal use?" Peters thundered.

"The money and the drugs were used in an investigation," King shot back. "It was never for personal use."

The question-and-answer session yesterday ended the most dramatic part of the trial, now in its second week. King's testimony was highly unusual in a place where the majority of defendants charged plead guilty. Many defense lawyers advise against letting their clients take the stand for fear of self-incrimination.

But King, who had rebuffed earlier offers for a plea deal, seem determined. His unwavering descriptions of supplying drug dealers with money and illegal drugs riveted the federal courthouse in downtown Baltimore and filled the courtroom with lawyers and law clerks in addition to the officers' families.

When King's testimony was over, his attorney rested his case. An attorney for King's partner, Antonio L. Murray, said the detective is likely to take the stand when the trial resumes in U.S. District Court on Monday.

Under a barrage of skeptical questioning by federal prosecutors, King steadfastly maintained his innocence. He did admit to flagrant breaches of department policy - providing his informants with drugs to sell on the street and accepting money from informants who thought they were sharing the illegal profits with him.

But King, a 13-year veteran and West Baltimore native, insisted that he had been taught these off-the-books and "acceptable" procedures during training from narcotics officers based in New York. Earlier, he said he had employed the same tactics in a separate investigation and his supervisors knew about the way he and others bent the rules.

Relying on testimony from cooperating witnesses and hours of secretly recorded conversations by the FBI, prosecutors charged King and Murray of conspiring to rob and extort cocaine, heroin and marijuana - as well as drug-related proceeds - from suspects they pursued on city streets in late 2004 and early 2005.

King and Murray were arrested by the FBI in May. Attorneys for the officers sought to focus on King's and Murray's work to cultivate sources on the street and use their limited police resources to take down some of the city's most notorious drug dealers.

But prosecutors criticized King for failing to back up his actions by writing up official reports.

"Why didn't you give [informant Antonio] Mosby one of these receipts?" Peters asked King.

King said that he filled out department receipts only for the times he used official funds to pay Mosby and others. Mosby earlier pleaded guilty to a related federal charge and testified against King and Murray in the hopes of gaining a lighter prison sentence.

Defending his practice of seizing drugs from one suspect only to pass on those same narcotics to his own sources to sell on the street, King said: "The more [an informant] interacts with people, the more arrests I get."

The detective said he also lied to his sources, making them think that he was involved in the drug trade when he was only pumping them for more information about high-level dealers.

King also said the other rules in the department had been bent or broken before, including a gun-interdiction strategy that allowed police officers to let drug suspects go if they gave police a weapon.

Department officials testified earlier that letting informants keep drugs would never be allowed.

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The first gun charge carries a mandatory five-year sentence; each subsequent count carries a mandatory 25-year sentence, to be served consecutively.

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