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Mailing address:
Reginald S. Lewis
#AY2902
1040 E. Roy Furman Highway
Waynesburg PA 15370-8090
It is a name those sworn to "protect and serve" wear with distinction and honor - like the shiny silver badges pinned to their crisp, sharp-pressed blue uniforms. But in the wake of an ongoing federal probe into police corruption, which thus far resulted in the arrests and convictions of six 39th district police officers for beating, robbing, and deliberately framing hundreds of innocent drug suspects - their badges have become badly tarnished.
Over a period of three years, 39th district officers John Baird, Thomas Ryan, Louis Major, Stephen Brown, Thomas Degovanni, and James Ryan admitted to roles in purposely planting evidence, conducting illegal searches, falsifying statements and arrest reports, and to stealing more than $100,000 from suspected drug dealers. The wayward cops' perfidious conduct came to the attention of federal investigators after the leader of the pack - Officer John Baird (his fellow officers dubbed him "Wacky Jacky" because of his propensity for gratuitous violence and for terrorizing suspects with a sadistic game of Russian Roulette) - beat and illegally detained Arthur Colbert, a college student whose only crime was being a young black male who resembled a drug dealer Baird wanted to rob.
If this proved to be the one case that precipitated the dirty cops' execrable doom, so too was another case that sent shock waves ripping through the entire community. In an astounding admission, the uniformed crooks revealed that they had even framed Betty Patterson, a deeply religious, black woman. They had been stalking her three sons - who hadn't resided at her residence in over three years - when they stormed into her home, planted drugs, and arrested her.
In court they testified that she was the titular head of a major drug operation she ran out of her home. She languished in prison for three long, harrowing years before she was freed.
The elderly black woman's tragic story was the focus of national media attention that cast a dark cloud of suspicion and shame over the entire Philadelphia police department. Hundreds of drug convictions have either been overturned or thrown out (one judge dismissed 60 cases in one hour) and the officers' wrongful conduct has cost the city millions of dollars in civil jury awards.
Is it reasonable to believe, then, that the police corruption is only limited to the 39th district? And is it logical to think crooked cops who prodigiously and mercilessly framed hundreds of drug suspects would not stoop so low as to frame suspects for more serious crimes - such as murders?
It comes as no surprise then that two of the same cops who were wedded in the evil symbiosis of the plot to frame innocent citizens - officers Thomas Ryan and John Baird - also played pivotal roles in sending five defendants to prison for murder.
In a case-by-case analysis of the tainted evidence and perjured testimony by police officers who confessed to wrongdoing, there is no clamor and enthusiasm to toss out these murder convictions. There are no reporters for the local or national media scrambling to document the sordid details of a rogue cop's complicity in sending innocent people to prison for homicide. No one wants to, because in the dark, secret ecology of Philadelphia's criminal justice system, political machinations drive the collective aspirations for higher office. A prosecutor with an astounding conviction record (particularly for capital crimes) can eventually be appointed to a judgeship, the position of attorney general, a seat in Congress or the Senate - or on to the Supreme Court. Detectives who diligently cracked that one big case can get promoted to the rank of lieutenant or captain or even pen a book on the subject. And an expert witness whose testimony contributed to the conviction in a murder case that seized the public's imagination can enjoy a significant increase in the demand for his or her services.
You have to try to imagine the enormous taxpayer dollars (and human resources) that are spent on a murder trial to understand that no prosecutor or judge or expert is willing to bear the onus of blame for not sanctioning a Corrupt cop whose questionable evidence sent an innocent defendant to prison for life - or to death row. How could they explain their complicity in this deliberate farce to the American people? How could they assuage the pain of this great Shakespearean tragedy with the VICTIM'S family - the DEFENDANT - who they knew all along was innocent?
Such a proposition can prove to be politically embarrassing and career threatening. It's better to let dead dogs lie. Whats done shouldn't be UNDONE. And so there is a deliberate obstinant resistance to the transference of culpability.
And if you're poor and black like me - a cry of innocence can fall on mute ears.
THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN
My own descent down the long dark corridors of death row began on January 25, 1983, several days after I returned from visiting my brother, Marine Sergeant Michael B. Lewis, and his wife, Kimberly, in San Diego, California. My little brother had enlisted in the USMC four years earlier. In our letters and long-distance phone calls to each other, Mike dazzled me with wildly extravagant success stories about the plethora of opportunities that awaited a young black man in sunny and exotic California.
"You'll love it out here, bro'," he'd say, his voice rich with enthusiasm. "And the girls are fine, man."
Since I was a self-employed jewelry and perfume salesman, I envisioned throngs of female customers festooned with my jewelry, smelling of my redolent perfume. Maybe I could establish a large enough clientele to enable me to open my own jewelry store. Maybe I WOULD love it in California and relocate, I'd thought.
I accepted my brother's
invitation to visit and took a Trailways bus to San Diego, California.
A month later, my dream
was deferred when my mother called me in San Diego and informed me that
Philadelphia homicide detectives wanted to question me about a murder.
A 250-pound black pimp was stabbed to death during a birthday party in
a seedy drug bar in north Philadelphia.
"I know you didn't do it, son," my mother said, her voice cracking with emotion. "So jus' come on back and clear things up !' I took my mothers advice and eventually returned to Philly on a Greyhound bus.
I was taken into custody, fingerprinted, booked, and locked in "The Bubble" with other arrestees at police headquarters at 8th and Race Streets. Hours later, I was escorted in handcuffs upstairs to the homicide division and placed in an interrogation room. In the center of the small, faintly lit room, a crude, small gray metal table and two squat chairs were bolted to the floor.
The air reeked of the foul smell of sweat and urine. I could barely breathe. Every inch of the walls was defaced with graffiti. Paper cups and cigarette butts and crumpled pieces of paper were strewn about the room. To my right, against the wall, a dusky and scarred two-way mirror conspicuously stared down at me. Unseen eyes burned through the glass. In one corner, dark brown dollops covered the entire bottom half of the wall to my left. Another large smear of long-dried blood snaked up the side of the back wall and curved to the right.
I'd heard horrid stories of sadistic cops torturing black suspects until they confessed. Several years earlier, a cousin by marriage, William Hoskins, was beaten nearly to death by a deranged detective because he refused to talk.
Detective Robert Kane entered the room, a grim- face white man with powerful shoulders and large hands. His cold, hawk-like eyes pinned me in his sight as if I was some small quarry he wanted to rip to shreds.
He began to question me about the murder that occurred on the evening of November 21, 1982. I voluntarily gave him my statement. I had nothing to hide - so I told the detective that on the day in question, I' d been in San Diego, California, 3,000 miles away, visiting my brother, his wife and baby. I couldn't have killed this guy, who was stabbed repeatedly over a small debt or an argument, because I'd been in California since November 18, 1982.
Detective Robert Kane slapped me first. Then his large fist flew across the table and crashed into the side of my jaw. Blood flew. I was used to taking hard blows to the body and head - after all, I'd been a boxer. What I wasn't used to was a white man laying his hands on me without provocation. So I sucked up my pride.
"You're lying!" Kane snapped.
"You know you did it! I got witnesses who identified YOU!"
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