Collateral Catch: Investigation into indicted bailbondsman snared other members of troubled waterfront union

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Mar. 31, 2010

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), the nation’s largest union of maritime workers with some 43,500 members stationed along U.S. and Canadian coasts, has deep roots in Baltimore. Baltimore native Richard Hughes Jr. has been its president since 2007, and he is also the business agent for ILA Local 953, based in Locust Point. Del. Brian McHale (D-46th District), who represents Baltimore’s waterfront in the state House of Delegates, is on Local 953’s roster as a steamship clerk. One of the ILA’s vice presidents, Horace Alston, heads the union’s Baltimore District Council. He and former ILA general vice president John Shade are trustees of Baltimore’s ILA Local 333.

But amid the well-connected ILA members in Baltimore, one longshoreman in particular raised the union’s profile recently: Milton Tillman Jr.

A politically connected ex-con and real-estate investor who is the dominant force in Baltimore’s bailbonds industry, Tillman Jr. is also a member of ILA Local 333. On March 17, a federal indictment charging Tillman Jr. and his son, Milton “Moe” Tillman III, with tax fraud, wire fraud, and unlawful bailbonds practices, was unsealed (“Milton Tillman and Son Indicted in Bailbonds Conspiracy,” The News Hole, March 17). It includes charges that Tillman Jr. was paid for unloading ships at Baltimore’s docks on shifts when he was in Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Las Vegas, among other places.

The Tillman investigation, court records show, also helped prosecutors nab three other ILA members in Baltimore–William Zichos Jr., Dale Kowalewski, and Joseph Bell–who were indicted on wire-fraud conspiracy charges last November. The three men are union timekeepers who record the hours clocked by dockworkers for payroll purposes. They are members of ILA Local 953, which represents clerical workers in Baltimore’s maritime industry. The case against them alleges they also got paid for no-show work by the stevedoring company Ports America, including at times when they were in France, Costa Rica, Iceland, Las Vegas, and Florida.

The trial in the timekeepers’ case, which had been scheduled to begin in April, was recently postponed until September. The Tillmans’ trial is expected to take four to five weeks, and is currently scheduled to start on May 24, though at a March 26 arraignment hearing in the case, Tillman III’s attorney, Steven Allen, questioned whether that’s a “realistic date.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland declines to confirm a connection between the Tillman investigation and the timekeepers’ indictment. “We can’t go beyond what’s in the public record,” spokeswoman Marcia Murphy says in an e-mail. “And there is nothing in the public record connecting those cases.”

But records in both cases show a nexus: an Aug. 18, 2008, raid on Building 1200A at Dundalk Marine Terminal.

Building 1200A, known as the “timekeepers shack,” was one of seven locations raided as part of a multi-agency probe into the Tillmans (“Tillman Properties Raided by Feds,” The News Hole, Aug. 20, 2008). The other locations–residences, a vehicle, and business offices associated with the Tillmans–were searched because agents expected to turn up proof of tax fraud and unlawful bailbonds practices. The timekeepers shack was targeted, according to the 65-page search warrant affidavit, because investigators expected to find evidence of Tillman Jr.’s suspected “‘no-show’ or ‘ghost worker’ scam.” Investigators on Tillman Jr.’s trail seized payroll documents and computer records from Building 1200A, including from the desks of Zichos, Kowalewski, and Bell.

Tillman Jr. was convicted of a similar scam in the 1990s, when he used a straw employee to work hours in his stead, so he could get paid without actually working.

After the raid, court records show, Zichos was called to testify before a federal grand jury. He met with prosecutors Martin Clarke and Stephen Schenning leading up to that grand-jury testimony, and his answers to their questions raised suspicions.

According to a Feb. 17, 2010, government filing in the timekeepers’ case, the prosecutors asked Zichos if he had ever received “no-show” pay. The filing says that initially, Zichos said “he had received pay for a no-show shift only once in his career . . . and that was when he attended his father’s funeral. In giving his answer, he appeared to be very nervous and overly emotional.”

Then Zichos owned up to “other times when people covered for him, such as when he had a doctor’s appointment or important personal business.”

“There were other times when he was paid for work he did not do, including when he went on vacation,” the filing states. “He was reluctant to give details or say who covered for him and he appeared nervous and upset while giving his answers.” The prosecution’s filing says that Zichos admitted to more occasions when he received no-show pay, though he is “still not clear on some of the details, especially who had covered for him.

“The government later learned that Zichos’ grand-jury testimony was inconsistent with evidence . . . from other sources regarding the scope of his involvement in a no-show scheme involving the timekeepers,” the filing says, “especially the extent to which he covered for others so they could receive no-show wages.”

The ILA’s problems in Baltimore got worse in January when Local 333’s members sued its leadership. Among those leaders are ILA vice president Alston and former general vice president Shade, who gained control of Local 333 in 2005 when the national union placed it in trusteeship due to alleged improprieties. The suit, filed in federal court, alleges that since Local 333 entered trusteeship, unlawful conduct has pervaded its leadership. It cites missing money, unapproved salary increases, shifting Local 333’s jurisdiction over port jobs to another newly formed local, and negotiating with employers behind the membership’s back. The lawsuit also claims that Local 333 is close to bankruptcy.

Shade has other problems, as well. Last year, he lost his position as ILA general vice president after the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, which polices the New York/New Jersey docks for organized-crime ties, concluded that he was prohibited from holding the position due to his criminal history. According to a New York Supreme Court ruling from Oct. 2009, which upheld the commission’s decision, Shade has “convictions for felonies, all dating between 1970 and 1990 and relating to illegal gambling.”

Since 2005, the union’s bosses in New York have been fighting prosecutors who, in a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) case, say the union is captive to organized crime. Hughes and Alston are named as defendants in the case, which includes allegations of no-show jobs. “We’re still waiting for a decision on our motion to dismiss,” says Don Buchwald, Alston’s New York lawyer.

Attempts to reach Shade, Alston, and Hughes to comment for this article were unsuccessful. McHale, who is busy tending to legislative business during the ongoing General Assembly session, also could not be reached for comment. Lawyers for the Tillmans, Zichos, Kowalewski, and Bell either declined to comment or did not return phone calls.

Ronald Barkhorn, one of Local 333’s members and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the local’s leadership, offered his perspective on the ILA’s problems in Baltimore in a recent interview.

“The Tillman thing was just something the feds could use to get the door open,” he says. “To get that warrant to get the payroll records and prove the ‘ghosting,’ when they pad the payroll with fictitious people, just like in the RICO case in New York.” As further evidence of dockside intrigue, he points to another federal criminal case involving embezzlement of pension funds from the Waterfront Guard Association Local 1852, in which two union officers pleaded guilty last year.

“It’s all ongoing,” he says of the government’s waterfront probe, “so you’re not going to find the real deal because it’s all secret.”

Barkhorn’s contention appears to be confirmed in the court record of the timekeepers’ case. The Feb. 17 filing by prosecutors says that the “underlying investigation” is “still ongoing,” though it’s not clear if it refers to just the Tillman case or something more far-reaching.

The Last Dirty Picture Show: The Heyday of the Apex Theatre Has Come and Gone. Can It Rise Again?

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Jan. 27, 2010

Tuesdays are Retro Night at Baltimore’s 580-seat Apex Theatre, meaning old VHS porn tapes are projected on the big screen instead of the usual DVDs. On a recent Tuesday, the onscreen action featured a mustachioed guy with a champion mullet going down on a big-breasted blonde. It’s a long, quiet scene, with no musical accompaniment, so in the cavernous silence it’s hard to miss the sounds in the seats: a zipper zips down front, and in the back, someone’s moving rhythmically. The two other patrons of tonight’s show would seem to be enjoying their solitary, if somewhat public, recreation.

A sign in the foyer baldly declares no sex acts performed in this building, but someone has scratched out the no. After all, pulling the juice in the dark is pretty much what X-rated movie theaters are all about.

Behind the Plexiglas at the Apex’s entrance, DVDs, snacks, and sodas are for sale. The cashier estimates that, on average, five customers an hour pay $10 to pass through the theater’s turnstile. Asked when to visit should one be looking for a crowd, he thinks for a second, takes a sip from his paper cup, and says: “About 1965.”

It’s a funny answer. But for the Apex’s owners, it points to an obvious problem: In today’s smut economy, they may as well be wearing powdered wigs and writing with quills. Porn consumers for decades now have been easily getting off in the privacy of their own homes, thanks to the boom of home-video technology in the 1980s and, more recently, the ubiquity of cheap, or even free, porn on the internet.

Today, according to cinematreasures.org, an ever-growing online catalog of more than 27,400 movie theaters around the globe, the international inventory of adult cinemas is down to 105, with 31 in the United States. They still hang on in big cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and in less bustling locales, such as Bay City, Mich., Youngstown and Toledo, Ohio, Clarksville, Ind., and East St. Louis, Ill. But they are steadily on the wane. Since the Earle Theatre on Belair Road closed in 2006, the Apex–located on Broadway in Upper Fells Point–is Baltimore’s only remaining adult theater.

Apex owner Isa Mufareh (whose business partner is his son, Maurice) acknowledges that the business model is anachronistic, but says the theater still makes money. “With home entertainment, it’s available everywhere,” he says of adult films. “But keep in mind,” he continues, “there are always some lonely people in this world. Our patrons, many are older people who don’t have that [technology] at home, and they don’t want to be at home alone. They want to mingle with other people who are in the situation they are in. There will always be people like that–we need more of them.” As for profits, Isa Mufareh says the business is “sustaining. We’re not getting rich out of it, just breaking even.”

The routine at the Apex is quite simple. The theater, other than the VCR tapes shown on Tuesdays, screens DVDs. “We buy them by the hundreds,” Mufareh explains. “We just take them out of the box and, well, just show them one after the other. On Thursdays, it’s the gay movies. We get about 100 people coming in on Fridays and Saturdays, half of that in the middle of the week.” As for costs, he says, “normally, there are one or two people working,” manning the cash register, operating the projector, and ensuring that patrons are behaving. Other than that, there are rent, insurance, and utility bills to pay.

Inside, the Apex retains its allure as a historic, single-screen theater. Four fleur-de-lis shaped sconces on the walls shed red light upward, and though a bit rag-tag in places–the ceiling is showing its age, and the bathroom has some plumbing issues–its homely grandeur is generally well-preserved. Upstairs, the projection room serves now as storage (the DVD projector used today is housed behind the last row of seats), but still boasts two vintage Motiograph projectors and some 35mm prints of old porn films, such as Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones III, Education of the Baroness, and Freedom to Love. The marquee, according to erstwhile Senator Theatre proprietor Tom Kiefaber, is “the second best marquee in Baltimore [after the Senator’s] in terms of its look, its maintenance, proper spacing, and matched letters.”

Isa and Maurice Mufareh, along with a third partner–Khalid Darraj, Isa’s nephew, whose one-third share in the business, Isa explains, was purchased by Maurice two years ago–have been running the Apex since 2003. Back when it was first converted from a bowling alley in 1942, it screened major Hollywood releases, but it has been an adult theater exclusively since the mid-1960s. With a market that consists largely of older, technologically unconnected people, the Apex is up against the law of attrition: Such patrons die off, and it’s not clear who, if anyone, will replace them. So the question becomes, how much longer can the Apex survive screening porn?

It’s a question that Khalid, Maurice, and Isa, incorporated as KMI Entertainment, tried to resolve several years ago by attempting to turn the Apex into a strip club. After the city liquor board consented to the change, in 2004 the Mufarehs and Darraj applied for a building permit for $250,000 in planned renovations, but zoning officials balked. In court documents, their lawyer, Fred Lauer, argued that “the Apex is used as an adult entertainment business and would continue such use, the only difference being that the adult entertainment would now be live.” The zoning board didn’t buy it, so in 2005 KMI Entertainment appealed to Baltimore City Circuit Court, where judge Evelyn Cannon didn’t buy it either. Live adult entertainment “is not similar in nature” to adult movies, she wrote in her 2006 opinion.

“The neighborhood made a fuss about it and filled up the courtroom,” Isa Mufareh recalls. “We said the law would let us do it, but [zoning officials and the judge] interpreted it differently–they wanted to interpret differently–so we didn’t get it. You can’t fight City Hall–if they don’t want it, then they don’t want it, and that’s that.”

Neither did the Apex’s neighbors. In letters to the zoning board, and in testimony before the board at the June 2005 hearing on the matter, several officials of neighborhood groups stridently opposed KMI Entertainment’s plans, essentially saying they preferred an existing X-rated movie theater to the possibility of a strip club instead–all the while attacking the theater, nonetheless.

“The Apex Pornographic Theater,” offered one letter-writer, “is a stark reminder of the troubled past of the surrounding area. It is time that this business stops being a hindrance, a moral drain and impediment to continued improvements” in the neighborhood. “I would like to see it resurrected as another general movie theater, not an adult theater,” wrote another.

In testimony at the hearing, neighborhood leaders observed that the Apex appeared to be struggling. “I don’t see people coming in, I don’t see people coming out,” said Edward Marcinko, president of the Upper Fells Point Improvement Association, concluding that “they’re not making any money. That’s why they want to bring in a nude adult entertainment complex.” Isa Mufareh, answering boardmembers’ questions, confirmed his dilemma: “No one wants to run a business that is not successful,” he explained, adding that “whatever we do within the law, we hope that we’ll make a profit out of it.”

“Those movie theaters are dying,” Isa Mufareh says today of X-rated cinemas, “but live entertainment is not dying.” Recalling KMI Entertainment’s efforts to bring Apex’s neighbors on board with their strip-club plans, he says: “We tried. We met with them, but everything was against us.”

It seems everything was, in fact, against them. The meeting Khalid, Maurice, and Isa had with community leaders, in a failed effort to appease them, occurred on Jan. 14, 2005. But first thing in the morning the day before, KMI Entertainment’s owners awoke to other, more serious troubles: Internal Revenue Service agents with warrants knocking on the doors to their homes, looking to turn up evidence of suspected tax evasion in connection with KMI Enterprises, a company owned by the three men that operated the strip club Christina’s Female Revue on North Point Boulevard in Baltimore County. The resulting searches turned up evidence that KMI Enterprises’ owners also were underreporting their income from KMI Entertainment, doing business as the Apex Theatre.

“I can’t talk about it,” Isa Mufareh says today of the criminal case that resulted–though he contends that “that subject has nothing to do with the Apex Theater.” It is relevant, though. Mufareh and his partners were convicted of underreporting the theater’s income, indicating that the Apex–despite its appearance of barely scraping by–makes enough money screening porn to merit hiding some of its revenues, however ill-advised the tactic turned out to be.

All three owners of KMI Entertainment and KMI Enterprises were charged with tax evasion and pleaded guilty in December 2008. The warrant described the IRS’ undercover operation targeting KMI Enterprises, doing business as Christina’s, and their owners, who had advertised the club for sale. The investigation began in August 2004, just as KMI Entertainment was applying to renovate the Apex Theatre. An agent posing as a prospective buyer called the real-estate agent representing Christina’s, and then, in September, met with Isa Mufareh, who told the agent that “the business was making a profit, but not on paper,” according to the warrant.

Meetings and conversations about the prospective sale continued into December 2004, with Isa Mufareh and Darraj increasingly disclosing the ways in which Christina’s operated under two sets of books, and how they and Maurice siphoned off unreported cash from the business, including through revenues from illegal gambling on video-poker machines. But the owners were cagey about sharing their records of the unreported income. “Isa Mufareh,” the warrant states, “stated that the law can get you for anything, such as money laundering. ‘We have to be careful with who we are dealing with.’ Khalid then stated ‘I do not want to end up someone’s girlfriend in jail.'”

When agents raided their homes on Jan. 13, 2005, the records showing that the Apex Theatre kept two sets of books were recovered from Maurice Mufareh’s house. The plea agreements in the case explain that the three owners each held a one-third share of the Apex, and that each “did in fact receive a one-third share of the earnings of Apex. Comparison between the second set of books recovered for Apex with the tax returns filed in 2003 for KMI Entertainment revealed that the conspirators had engaged in a similar pattern of underreporting the revenues of the theater” as they had with Christina’s. The amount of Apex’s underreporting came to $26,643, according to the plea agreement, compared to almost $300,000 for Christina’s.

As Isa Mufareh sat in a federal courtroom in downtown Baltimore in February 2009, preparing to be sentenced, he appeared comfortable with his fate, laughing and smiling with his attorney, Larry Nathans. Once the hearing got underway, a reason for this became clear: The prosecutor, Michael Hanlon, praised the defendants for taking “a very dignified approach” to the case, saying they were “on the right track from the go,” and recommended that U.S. District Court judge Catherine Blake hand down a lenient sentence.

When Isa Mufareh rose to address the judge, he was profoundly apologetic, acknowledging that “Four years ago, I made a mistake.” He described a long life of hard work and service, and said with sadness that “Two months from today, I will be celebrating my 40th wedding anniversary, perhaps alone.” Blake, after saying “Mr. Mufareh is, I’m sure, punishing himself with regret,” agreed with Hanlon’s recommendation of five months’ imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release, including five months of home detention, and, of course, restitution in the amount of $19,771. The other two defendants received the same sentences, though their restitution amounts were greater: $31,779 for Darraj and $20,667 for Maurice Mufareh.

In 2006, KMI Enterprises and its liquor license for Christina’s was transferred to Marc’s Vision, LLC, and Marcello Burdusi, state records show. KMI Entertainment survives to keep showing porn at the Apex Theater, with Isa and Maurice Mufareh as the remaining partners.

“We were thinking about it recently,” Isa Mufareh says, when asked by a reporter whether he’d ever considered showing something other than X-rated flicks at the Apex, “but couldn’t come to any conclusions.” When the possibility is raised of showing Spanish-language films, given the high density of Latinos living in the theater’s immediate vicinity, he says, “You are right, there are thousands. When I go to the theater, they are always asking me if I have any work for them. It could be done.”

Tom Kiefaber, who owned and ran the Senator Theatre as a first-run movie house for major Hollywood releases from the early 1990s until last year, agrees. In fact, he says he’d raised the possibility before with the Apex’s landlord, Mark Wagonheim, who is a beneficiary of the family trust that owns the Apex property. Wagonheim, who did not return a message asking to discuss his family’s history in the film-exhibition business in Baltimore, is the son of Howard “Boots” Wagonheim, Kiefaber explains, who helped chart Baltimore’s film-exhibition history as vice president of Schwaber Theatres.

“That’s what’s needed there,” Kiefaber says of the idea of screening Spanish-language films at the Apex. “That’s what its ideal cinema use would be, because of the population base. If you look at other cities where this is done, the audience can be very loyal and enthusiastic, so much so that it almost becomes a throwback to the heyday of the motion-picture business. There are enough people within walking distance to really make that location one which serves the community. It would be the ideal evolutionary move that not only would be more profitable, but would allow the landlord to improve this historic structure and provide a heightened sense of community. It would be win-win all around.”

Jessica Contreras, the mayor’s office liaison to the Hispanic and Latino community, also agrees. “It would be a great opportunity not only for the community, so they have someplace to go with their families, but also beneficial to the business owner–it would open the door for him to grow his business,” she says, pointing out that, while “no one really knows” the size the Spanish-speaking community in Baltimore, “most people would put it at between 30,000 and 35,000. How great would it be if the community does respond? It’s a very good business opportunity. There’s definitely a market for it.”

Kiefaber cautions that he prefers to be “reticent about telling someone else how to run their business, because I’ve heard enough of that myself over the years,” but he can’t contain his fervor when it comes to this subject. The Apex “is crying out for” Spanish-language film programming, he says, “and has been for years.”

Given the Wagonheims’ long history in Baltimore, Kiefaber adds, a successful shift to Latino films at the Apex would, in a certain sense, be a repeat performance. “What Boots did at the old Parkway Theatre and the Playhouse, it changed our culture in Baltimore, bringing in the Euro films, the art movies. It fostered a salon atmosphere, where people talked about films, engendering a community with common interests in, say, seeing and discussing [Ingmar] Bergman films. The Wagonheims utilized their theaters in Baltimore to change the film-viewing culture here, and I think they probably have an opportunity again with the Apex, don’t they? Sure got my vote.”

Isa Mufareh’s eyes, magnified by thick glasses, look friendly in his round face, and, for being in his mid-60s, he’s quite well-preserved. A short, unassuming man, one would never guess by the look of him that he’s an X-rated movie purveyor who used to be in the strip-club business. And it’s clear, as he gives a tour of his theater, that he’s not out to hurt anyone, only to make money.

“You should never run out of thoughts about improving things,” he says, reflecting on the option of screening Spanish-language movies. “I don’t want to upset the neighborhood. If anything comes up, it is not going to be derogative to the neighbors.”

Inside Job: Evidence of Corruption in Maryland Prisons Has Been Mounting. Can Current Reform Measures Clean Things Up?

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, May 12, 2010 (Illustration by Mel Guapo)

At about 9 p.m. on March 8, 2009, Musheerah Habeebullah called Eric Brown to dish about people they know. Three things were notable about the call. First, Habeebullah was a correctional officer at the Metropolitan Transition Center (familiarly known as “the Pen”) where Brown was, and is, an inmate. Second, even though they were talking on cell phones, not prison landlines, the call was being recorded. Third, the people they discussed were fellow corrections officers (COs) and inmates in the Maryland prison system who were doing business together.

They got to talking about one inmate who had recently transferred to the Pen from another institution, where he had monopolized the market for smuggled goods among inmates. He was finding the prison economy at the Pen much more competitive.

“You know down there, there are so many people who doing shit, you know it’s impossible, it’s impossible to be the only one,” Habeebullah said of the Pen.

“Right, right, everybody going to get their thing on,” Brown responded.

Habeebullah said that at the inmate’s prior prison, only a small number of corrections officers helped smuggle goods to inmates–“like one on each shift that be really making moves.” But at the Pen, “you got like seven, eight people. Soon it’s the whole damn shift,” she continued, so how “is it possible for you to take over” as the only inmate with contraband for sale?

“You ain’t gonna be on top like you was down there,” she went on, “cause it’s too many horses. Too many ways” to bring in contraband.

“Yeah,” Brown agreed, “ain’t nobody going to be the only game in town. . . . They ain’t just gonna let a motherfucker take over.”

Habeebullah told Brown how she’d provided another inmate, nicknamed “Baby,” with smuggled cell-phone parts, and how other prison guards smuggle contraband for inmates, identifying four correctional officers (COs) by name.

Inmates are not supposed to have cell phones, and, obviously, COs are not supposed to smuggle contraband into prisons. Nor are they supposed to have relationships with inmates outside of the normal routine of their official duties. But based on this conversation–and many others that were intercepted by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Special Investigations Group (DEA-SIG) investigators as they built a drug-trafficking case against the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang in Maryland, which Brown is alleged to head–contraband-smuggling by COs and extracurricular relationships between COs and inmates are rife in most Maryland prisons.

Habeebullah got caught. So did two other COs–Terry Robe and Asia Burrus–and a prison kitchen worker, Takevia Smith. They were among 25 defendants indicted by a federal grand jury in April 2009 for taking part in the BGF’s drug-dealing scheme; all later pleaded guilty to knowingly aiding the BGF by smuggling contraband, including cell phones. Robe, Burrus, and Smith are currently serving federal prison time, set to be released next year; Habeebullah awaits her sentence.

Last year’s BGF indictments were not alone in uncovering suspected or confirmed integrity issues among state corrections officers. Evidence has surfaced that a prison investigator was ordered to stop a probe into gang-affiliated COs; that a veteran CO shared a house and a bank account with a murderous Baltimore drug dealer; that COs have been running extortion schemes on behalf of gangs; that COs have been having sex and becoming pregnant with inmates; and that COs have smuggled drugs and cell phones into the prison system–including to a man awaiting trial for murder who had just learned whether or not his codefendant had given a police statement about the case. In a capital murder case over the killing of a CO, lawyers for the two inmates charged have maintained that the stabbing was over a contraband-smuggling ring among COs that the victim–who was nicknamed “Homeland Security” by inmates due to his by-the-book approach to his job–wouldn’t tolerate.

The list of recent CO scandals is long, but it only includes circumstances in which the details have reached the light of day through the courts. These instances may well point to more widespread problems, though the reality inside prison facilities–where fear, stress, the potential for violence, and power struggles among and between staff and inmates are part of the day-to-day grind, and where the flow of information is tightly controlled–is hard to gauge.

During the past year, City Paper has been contacted by COs concerned about corruption within their ranks, offering to help get the public a truer picture of the depth and breadth of the situation, but their fears over the potential for harm to themselves or their families got the better of them. Attempts to reach out to COs and other prison staff–outside of official channels, so they can speak freely on background–have gone nowhere.

But a December 2009 letter to City Paper from an inmate, responding to coverage of the BGF indictments, provided a shocking glimpse of the environment within one of the prison system’s facilities in Baltimore. (The writer’s name and place of incarceration will be withheld, to protect the inmate’s safety.)

“I just wanted to correct the thought that is was [sic] just Eric Brown and a few accomplices,” the inmate wrote of corruption inside prison walls, “because it’s bigger and more widespread than printed [in the paper].” The letter contended that “I can honestly say that I am a witness to the ‘BGF’ running the correctional system here in Baltimore. Seriously, there are some [sic] many correctional officers working here associated with either the ‘Bloods’ or ‘BGF,’ it almost tallies [sic] the inmate population. And what unnerves me is that they openly flaunt it.”

The letter explained that COs’ “tattoos of ‘stars’ on wrists, behind ears, on arms, necks, and even faces, ‘butterflies’ and ‘beetles,’ help to tell . . . [the] level of their affiliation. They offer sex, money, and drugs to ‘move’ up in their rank or affiliations. There really has not been a day that I have spent here, where these things are not witnessed. It amazes me how the older correctional officers turn a blind eye to these occurances [sic] . . . a thorough purging of this system and investigation is necessary immediately.”

Rick Binetti, director of communications for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Service (DPSCS), urges that corruption problems be kept in perspective. “There is no systemic issue” with corruption among COs, he says. Despite overwhelming evidence of widespread problems, he asserts that “there is an ugly case here or there coming out, but it’s not necessarily all gang-related.”

Binetti points out that of the nearly 7,000 COs statewide, 70 were fired last year. Twenty of those firings were for fraternizing with inmates and another four were for possessing contraband. Currently, Binetti says, the department is investigating three COs for having contraband cell phones. Binetti adds that, under current law, firing COs can prove difficult due to a 30-day timeframe for completing an investigation into wrongdoing. “You can’t build a solid case in that amount of time,” he says.

Meanwhile, Binetti adds, “our efforts in identifying these gangmembers [who are COs] is so much better than it was three years ago. We’re figuring out who those people are, and they are getting the chop.” New state regulations put in place late last year by the Maryland Police and Correctional Officer Training Commission require that CO applicants answer specific questions about gang ties and that DPSCS background investigators scour law-enforcement gang databases to see if applicants are listed. “If there is any sort of gang affiliation in your background, you could be out,” Binetti says.

“The department is trying” to confront the integrity challenges among its staff, Binetti concludes, “and we’re doing a hell of a lot more than we were three or four years ago.”

Last November, to mark Terry Robe’s conviction for her role in the BGF drug-dealing conspiracy, DPSCS Secretary Gary Maynard issued a statement to buttress the case that the department is getting better–and succeeding–in combating gang influences and contraband smuggling in prisons. He noted that gang-intelligence efforts had yielded a 35 percent increase in identifying gang members among prison inmates, that improved security had yielded a one-third increase in the number of cell phones recovered from inmates (to a total of 1,658 in fiscal year 2009), and that 24 Body Orifice Security Scanners (highly sensitive metal detectors known as BOSS chairs) installed in the state’s prison facilities had provided new opportunities to detect and prevent contraband from getting in.

The department’s confidence in its anti-corruption efforts is bold, and it is getting legislative help. During this year’s General Assembly session in Annapolis, which ended in April, two bills addressing the hiring and firing of COs were passed and will soon be incorporated into departmental regulations.

One, House Bill 1402, entitled Public Safety–Preemployment Polygraph Examinations for Correctional Officer Applicants, allows DPSCS to order lie-detector tests to screen applicants. Already, Binetti says, nearly 70 percent of applicants–which number 4,000 to 4,500 per year–are rejected because they don’t pass the background check. Ordering polygraphs on a selective basis may make it even harder to gain employment as a CO.

The other bill, Senate Bill 887, Correctional Services–State Correctional Officers’ Bill of Rights, affords new protections and procedures for COs accused of wrongdoing. It was backed by unions representing COs, and Binetti says DPSCS also supported it. “It establishes procedures for correctional officers to be interrogated and investigated, and it gives them a trial board, like police officers have, when they are accused” he explains. A strong plus, he adds, is that it extends the 30-day period for conducting investigations to 90 days, allowing more thorough work before investigators have to either file formal charges or drop the case.

Patrick Moran, director of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in Maryland, praised the bill-of-rights measure on a number of fronts. “Correctional officers accused of wrongdoing are now innocent until proven guilty, just like the prisoners they are surrounded by every day,” he says. “It gives people solid due process, where they didn’t have that before.”

As for bad actors, Moran says the new bill-of-rights law won’t protect them if the evidence is tight. “The vast majority of correctional officers are honest, solid citizens, working in a very stressful environment unlike any other job in the world. But there are always exceptions to the rule, and those who are found to be corrupt ought to be dealt with roundly and sharply, because it affects everybody,” he says. Now, he adds, the department “will have more time to investigate those situations, so they’ll find the evidence if it’s there, and the wrongly accused will have their opportunity to fight the charges if it’s not there. Before, the department was prosecutor, judge, and jury all at once.”

The bill’s chief sponsor, state Sen. Donald Munson (R-Washington County), says his main concern in bringing the legislation was a troubling case of COs getting railroaded by the existing disciplinary process over charges of inmate abuse a couple of years ago. When asked how it will affect the department’s efforts to rid itself of gang-tied COs assisting inmates in criminal schemes, Munson says, “I’ve never thought of this measure in this context. My guess is that the correctional officers who are going to be judges are going to be very hard on those cases.” He adds, “If it doesn’t work, we’ll fix it in the future.”

Robert Walker, a veteran law enforcer whose long career began as a correctional officer with the Maryland Department of Corrections in the 1950s, knows a thing or two about gangs and corrupt COs. After leaving Maryland, he began a decades-long career in federal law enforcement (including for the DEA). He retired to return to prison work in the South Carolina penal system, doing internal investigations and running the gang unit, where he developed a gang identification and tracking system in order to monitor inmates. Today, he is a gang consultant, serving as an expert witness in trials and teaching law enforcers and prison personnel the ins and outs of gangs.

Walker is a strong supporter of COs, and, just as strongly, has antipathy for corrupt ones. When told that Maryland is grappling with CO integrity problems, he says, “I hope they are really going into heavy penalties for that. To turn to the other side and try to make a buck is truly outrageous. You have got to have some honest people–and most of them will be honest. There are maybe 10, 15 percent, at the most, who are on the other side.” Given the litany of revelations about CO corruption coming out of Maryland courts, though, he adds, “I may have to change my assessment of the percentage . . . the worst thing that can happen is to engage in denial, because that means the problem will get bigger and bigger.”

As for the proposed reform measures, Walker likes them all–except for the selective pre-employment polygraph law, which he believes should be universal, not only among prospective COs, but among all staff. To save money, he says the state should hire its own polygraph examiners and lie-detecting equipment. “With so many concerns about so much wrongdoing, you have got to find the money to do it right,” he says.

Whether DPSCS’ ongoing efforts to combat corruption will have any significant effect will become evident as time passes. In the meantime, integrity cases keep popping up.

In February, two COs were arrested, one in Western Maryland and another in Baltimore City. In the Western Maryland case, Correctional Dietary Officer Justin Wayne Smith was caught trying to bring a balloon filled with heroin and a syringe to an inmate at the maximum-security Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland. In Baltimore, CO Shanika Johnson’s bag was searched as she entered the Baltimore City Detention Center and was found to contain an ounce of marijuana and two cell phones. She told investigators that an inmate, who she refused to name, was going to pay her $1,000 for delivering the contraband.

A serious case was brought against CO Lynae Chapman in October 2009. The father of her unborn child, BGF member and murder suspect Ray Donald Lee, was detained pending trial at the Baltimore City Detention Center when his prison cell was searched in late September, turning up marijuana, tobacco, and a cell phone that investigators quickly determined had been procured by Chapman. When confronted about the phone, Chapman promptly confessed to delivering it to Lee. At the time, discovery in Lee’s murder case had reached the point when he would learn whether or not his codefendant, Quinard Henson, had given a statement to police. Recovering the phone Chapman had provided Lee may have forestalled the potential for Lee to use it to arrange for retaliating against Henson. Chapman is scheduled for a June trial, after having been re-indicted in March for misconduct, contraband delivery, and–with Lee as her codefendant–drug dealing.

Also last fall, a federal civil-rights case brought against CO Antonia Allison by inmate Tashma McFadden brought to light DPSCS internal documents, supported by depositions, showing that a prison investigator, Santiago Morales, had developed evidence in 2006 and 2007 of 16 COs at the BCDC who had gang ties. Morales had named the 16 COs in written reports to BCDC’s warden at the time, William Filbert, who promptly ordered him to stop writing the reports.

McFadden’s case alleges that Allison is a Bloods gang member, and that, after a verbal argument with McFadden, she unlocked his cell to allow fellow Bloods members who were inmates to attack him, resulting in 32 stab wounds. Allison, who is represented by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, denies the allegations. Recent activity in the case includes a motion by the defense to keep jurors from hearing testimony about Allison’s alleged gang ties, as well as Morales’ suspicions of gang-tied COs.

Meanwhile, McFadden’s attorney, Aaron Casagrande, on Apr. 27 filed a motion to re-open discovery in the case. The reason, the motion explains, is that McFadden was recently put in administrative segregation at the Eastern Correctional Institution to protect him because other inmates there, who are Bloods members, have ordered him murdered for bringing the case against Allison. Attached to the motion is an inmate’s letter that alleges McFadden’s murder has been ordered and describes Allison as “doing right by us . . . all she asked from her brothers was to keep her safe . . . that’s what we did.”

Nothing beats last year’s BGF case in federal court for suggesting that dirty COs are a major and ongoing problem for the DPSCS. Habeebullah, Robe, Burrus, and Smith may have been indicted and convicted, but the evidence in the case includes troubling references to other COs in on the gang-related action.

One of the DEA’s sources for building the BGF case provided details of a BGF extortion scheme that relies on the assistance of corrupt COs. The scheme–similar to a case from 2007 involving a former CO, Fonda White, who also pleaded guilty–was described in a lengthy affidavit.

“Several guards with the Department of Corrections are assisting BGF members with an extortion scheme under which BGF offers ‘protection’ while in jail to newly arrested persons who are not BGF members,” the affidavit states. It continues:

In exchange for this “protection,” an arrested person is required to pay money to BGF. Specifically, BGF supplies the person to be protected with a credit card number of a prepaid credit card (sometimes referred to as a “Green Dot” card), and the person to be protected is required to have family members or friends place money onto the card when periodically directed to do so by BGF. The credit card is often held by one of the corrections officers who are assisting BGF or by BGF members on the street. The credit card is then used to pay for items for BGF members. If the newly arrested inmate does not agree to pay for the “protection,” then he or she is targeted for violent crimes while in prison.

The affidavit also describes CO corruption at the Supermax, as described in intercepted cell phone conversations among inmates. Eric Brown, on the same day he spoke with Habeebullah about COs smuggling at the Pen, talked on a cell phone with a Supermax inmate, Melvin Gilbert, who was awaiting a federal trial on charges of drug-dealing and murdering a witness. They discussed the difficulties they were facing in getting contraband cell phones due to a crackdown by prison authorities. Though Brown had been able to get three phones recently, there were still “holes”–meaning dirty COs–to be discussed.

“If we don’t open a hole up by the end of this month, it probably don’t be no more than about 20 phones left in this motherfucker. I’m telling you. They’re tearing our ass up, Melvin,” Brown said.

“Yeah, they heavy over here, too,” Gilbert responded.

Later in the conversation, Gilbert asked Brown if he knew a CO named “Simmons,” and Brown said he did. “Man,” Gilbert said, “holler at that bitch for us. She over here [at the Supermax] and she working, but she’s staying away from me.” Gilbert complained that “Simmons” was instead doing favors for other inmates, whom Gilbert called “low budget.” Then Gilbert talked about another CO he thought was smuggling contraband into the Supermax, and another who was carrying his child. This last CO, Gilbert said, was suspected of snitching on inmates and had been threatened for it recently, but Gilbert said he told her: “Don’t you ever call me and tell me, like, you’re worried about another motherfucker. Them niggers be bluffing. I’m not a bluffer. I’m the one that you gotta worry about.”

Later last year, Gilbert was convicted on drug-dealing, witness murder, and other murder charges, and was sentenced to life in prison. He is currently housed at the high-security United State Penitentiary–Canaan, in Northeast Pennsylvania.

What Gilbert and Brown were discussing–and what facts in other corrupt-CO cases describe–suggest a prison culture where COs smuggling for inmates, having sex with them, and having other inappropriate contact with them are a given. However, as Gilbert and Brown noted, a crackdown on cell-phone smuggling was working–and still is, according to Binetti, who points out that “we may have a reached a tipping point” since fewer cell phones are being found in prisons this year than in prior years. If a bill currently before the U.S. Congress passes, allowing prison systems to employ cell-phone jamming technology, any phones that remain may become useless.

But perhaps the best indicator that DPSCS’ attempts to thwart corruption are taking hold is the most recent federal indictment of alleged BGF drug dealers: No COs were among the defendants in the case, indicted in mid-April, which was built on a continuing investigation from last year’s indictments. That’s not to say the new BGF case doesn’t reference CO corruption, though.

In a Feb. 18 conversation that DEA investigators intercepted between one of the defendants, Duconze Chambers, and a drug dealer known as “Chips,” reveals that Chambers knows a CO at Brockbridge Correctional Facility that could smuggle something in for Chips’ cousin, Bug, who’s an inmate there. Other than that, the only evidence in the case so far is that one of DEA’s sources gave up a cell phone number for a “female correctional officer” said to be “an active BGF member.”

If that’s all the DEA-SIG investigators turned up this time around, well, that’s improvement over last year. One has to wonder, though, if such a problem can be eradicated so quickly.