The Daily - “Charm City,” Part 4: The Police Scandal That Shook Baltimore

Episode Date: June 7, 2018

As the Baltimore Police Department tried to repair its public image, a corruption trial exposed the startling depths of misconduct and delivered a fresh blow to the community’s trust. An elite group of officers — part of a task force created during the peak of zero-tolerance policing — had been stealing from residents for years. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.This episode includes disturbing language and scenes of graphic violence.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Part four of our series about race and policing in Baltimore. As the city tries to start fresh, something happens that reveals new depths of police misconduct and delivers a fresh blow to the community's trust. It's Thursday, June 7th.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Slide over. Are you ready? Mm-hmm. Let us begin. Catherine E. Pugh, please raise your right hand and repeat after me.

Raise your right hand. Left. Thank you. I still don't know. I don't know the Bible. So when a new mayor comes in at the end of 2016, the violence in Baltimore is some of the worst the city's ever seen. I should know.

I. I. State your name. Catherine Elizabeth Pugh. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. And a week after this new mayor, Catherine Pugh, was sworn in, Nick was shot.

He was one of the last killings of the year. So the homicides were urgent, but so was reform. There's been issues around policing in Baltimore for quite some time. Mass incarceration, lack of trust, lack of technology in our police department. A few months ago, we went to see her and the police commissioner, Daryl D'Souza, to ask them what had been done. We had to recreate the policy on seatbelt use, put cameras in our vans. And then we went through the process of selecting a monitor, creating a community oversight group. So they give us a list of the things that the department was doing to show us that the city was really serious about change.

We started a police basketball league, a commissioner's basketball league, where we have 500 kids. I personally was part of a listening tour where I went to three different middle schools. A lot of people don't know we have flag football. We do tons of things, building curriculums. And you talk about. I went to the African-American Cultural Museum of History. They were trying to get out there, show that they were different, that they were really serious about wanting to change. We want our neighborhoods to be safe. We want them to be protected. We want violence to go down.

And community engagement will make a difference in what Baltimore becomes in the future. I think that we are taking steps in the right direction. And I think we're headed in the right direction. So things seem to be moving in the right direction. Forward. Now to a shocking corruption scandal in Baltimore. Seven police officers indicted on federal charges accused of stealing money from

innocent people. But then something happens that just sets everything back. It literally just turns back the clock. Indictments are announced against an elite group of Baltimore police officers, the Gun Trace Task Force. The alleged stealing from city residents was rampant. They're 1930-style gangsters, as far as I'm concerned. And authorities say there was a widespread cover-up. This group was formed in 2007, at the peak of zero tolerance. These officers had been on the front lines of it. But they'd also been doing something else.

They'd been stealing from residents. The jury was chosen yesterday. The trial is expected to last three to four weeks. This is suddenly a whole new level of bad for the Baltimore Police Department. This isn't just unfair policing. This is the police turning into criminals themselves. And the week we met DeVetta in the library

for the first time, these officers were being tried, eight of them, mostly on racketeering charges. This is Mike Helgren here outside the federal courthouse this morning. Opening statements are scheduled for this morning in the police corruption trial involving the Gun Trace Task Force, and we'll be bringing you updates throughout the day here on WJZ. That's the latest from the federal courthouse. you updates throughout the day here on WJZ. That's the latest from the federal courthouse. So I walked to the U.S. Attorney's Office, a big federal building in downtown Baltimore. I met the two prosecutors behind the case. So ultimately, we found over 25, this is Leo Wise,

over 25 robberies. Sure, sorry, this is Leo Wise. Leo Wise and Derek Hines. Traffic stop. This is Derek Hines. The traffic stop. The city calls them the Twin Towers of Justice. They're really tall and really skinny. And they're building this case that would eventually lay bare this entire network of crimes that this plainclothes unit had perpetrated for years. And this is what they bring out in court for all of Baltimore

to see. So these police officers, they were operating like a criminal organization. They were going out, planting guns on people, planting evidence, and then stealing from their homes, stealing from their cars, stealing from their wallets. They were acting with absolute impunity, and they were acting for years. How about we just go insane and just act like, oh, is everything okay?

You get what I'm saying? So these guys, they had the tools of the trade. They had big duffel bags in the back of their cars full of masks, bats, ropes,

brass knuckles. It was like they were going to rob banks. They also carried BB guns to plant on people. That's when you know, oh, well, we were here. So, for example, in one case, the time they had actually stolen the most money

was from a man named Areece Stevenson. He was a drug dealer, and they found several hundred thousand dollars in a safe in his basement. They found the safe, found the money. They took a bunch of it. And then they filmed on their phones a video of them pretending to open it and find it for the first time

and leave the money untouched. Hey, y'all get that open yet? Hey, Sarge! Hey, come downstairs right quick. They're about to get it open.. Hey, Sarge! Hey, come downstairs real quick! They about to get it open! Hold up, hold up, hold up. Oh, shit! Alright, hold up, hold up, hold up.

Take it out, take it out. Stop. Stop right fucking now. Take a picture of it, Taylor, and record it right now. Hold up, hold up, hold up. I need lights in my flashlight. How much you think it is? Don't touch it, Stay next to it. We're calling out defense. They were just making up a scene to give to their superiors to pretend that they'd found exactly the amount that was in there when, in fact, they'd already stolen two-thirds of it.

I see a lot of hundreds. Don't touch it. We're not even going to fucking touch it. Keep recording. No one's touching this money. Yes, sir. Another time, one of them got his cousin and a friend to dress up as police officers. I'm the owner of a Patapsco Feed and Supply pigeon store on Patapsco Avenue. He'd gotten word that a woman who owned a pigeon store was about to pay her taxes,

and she probably had $20,000 at home. We had a knock at the door where two men dressed as police came into my home, had paperwork. We're assuming that they were the police. So his cousin and his friend, dressed as police officers, go into her house in the middle of the night and take the $20,000 out of her wallet. Without me seeing, he took and picked my pocketbook up and took my pocketbook into the kitchen. Pretending that they're investigating something. And then it also became clear that they were not only stealing money, they were also stealing drugs.

So the case took another turn. Because it's one thing to steal money, right? But another thing to steal drugs, because if you steal drugs, you have to resell them for them to be of any value. So then the question became, well, how are they reselling the drugs? The answer came at one of the most dramatic moments of the trial, when a bail bondsman named Donald Stepp took the stand. He lived in Baltimore County, and he said Wayne Jenkins, head of the Gun Trace Task Force, would bring bags of drugs into his shed almost every night.

Drugs that he'd stolen from dealers across Baltimore. He said he'd leave the shed open so that Jenkins could have easy access. He even brought two trash bags full of prescription drugs during the looting after Freddie Gray's funeral. Remember those pharmacies that were looted? That's where they came from. I mean, money's money, right? But to actively be robbing people, taking drugs, and then reselling the means,

these officers are actively participating in the crime we have in our city. And they weren't just stealing from drug dealers. They were very deliberately targeting people with criminal records. One of those people was Ronald Hamilton. Yes, we were shopping at Home Depot. Me and my wife were looking for a line. He's a car salesman, and he was called to the witness stand during the trial. As we're looking at the blind,, we sitting down at the desk.

So he's with his wife and he notices that a guy in the next aisle is just constantly staring at him. The way he was staring at, he had a good visual on me. The guy like is standing in the soap aisle and he just doesn't move. And the first thought I was saying,

I was like, he is staring at that same thing an awfully long time and he didn't really move. We made eye contact. Didn't think nothing of it. And when he leaves with his wife. So suddenly his car was surrounded by like four or five police officers. He's completely confused. I don I made an illegal turn or something. I don't know what was really going through my mind, but when he grabbed me,

he said, where your money at? That was the first question he asked. I said, what? I had like $3,000 in my pocket, like $3,400. He takes that and step in his vest, the top of his vest. He puts me in a car. They take my car. They put my wife in another vehicle. They drive me to And they take him to a large sort of warehouse type thing about 20 minutes away. So they call Jenkins, the ringleader, to tell him they have Ronald. Yeah, we want to meet up with you and we want to talk. Okay, and when I get there, treat me like I'm your dog. Like, hey, sir, how are you? We got our car in the pocket. And then introduce me as the U.S. attorney.

I got you. All right, dog. I'm handcuffed. I get out of the car. As they walk me in there, he walks to me, Officer Jenkins. He introduced himself as a federal agent. I said, okay. And he looks at Ronald and he says, we got you. I said, man, get the fuck out of here. I'm not, I don't sell no

fucking drugs. He said, we got you under three controlled buys. A bunch of controlled buys. Basically, that means an undercover cop buys drugs from a drug dealer and then arrests him. I was like, that's a fucking lie, because I ain't selling no fucking drugs. And they're putting on this whole show for him. They have all these files that are just completely fake. Nothing about him in the file at all. They're doing them in front of me like, oh, we got you, we got you. I say, okay, I ain't doing nothing.

I don't care what you say. They say, oh, you know, we know your history. We know you really well. We've been following this for months. And Ronald isn't buying it. Oh, oh, you know, we know your history. We know you really well. We've been following this for months. And Ronald isn't buying it. So then they get all blustery. They take him out, put him back in the car. He puts my wife in the car with me. I'm thinking we get going towards 83 to go downtown. I ask them, where are we going at?

They say, to your house. I say, for what? If you had me in handcuffs, you got me under three controlled bars. Why are you not taking me to the court? So Ronald looks at his wife, and then he looks back at them. I knew they was fishy. Once I realized they was taking me to my house, I knew they was up to something. So I leaned over to my wife and I said, just be quiet. They about to rob me. She was like, what? So they get to the house and Ronald and his wife are in the backseat and his wife's children are at home. She was like nine years old, crying, traumatized, don't know what the hell was going on. She don't see her mother in handcuffs

because she don't see her mother. They got us in the backseat of a dark tenant, a car with tenant windows. So they allowed them to leave, take us in the house, just me in the living room in handcuffs, just my wife in the living room. And the cops bring them in

and put them on a love seat in the living room, handcuff them together, and then go upstairs and start searching. Hershel was sitting in a regular chair. He pulled a chair from out my dining room and sat in the chair. It was basically like they were holding me hostage, like I was actually kidnapped, being held at gunpoint. I wasn't tied up, I was just handcuffed, like you tied up from like from a Western movie, like you've been tied up and can't do anything. I said, this is some bullshit, man. They're looking for money. They're looking for drugs. They're sure he has drugs in the house. So they were just going through my house, searching, searching, because I'm in my family room. So you can hear him just walking back and forth. Kept bringing me downstairs like, where the money at? Where the drugs? I said, man, I don't sell no drugs, man. The house is clean.

There are no drugs there. But they do find money that he said he has from his car business and from gambling. said he has from his car business and from gambling. I don't have nothing in here. You didn't find nothing. No guns, no nothing illegal within my house. Nothing.

They find $50,000 and they take it. Like, who the fuck, I mean, excuse my language, but who does that? I would have went to jail for something that never, ever happened. But one police officer telling this story against me,

who do you think the public are going to believe? And this was something that we heard from a lot of people in Baltimore. Drug dealers were robbed, but they had nowhere to go. No legal recourse. No one believed them. We heard the story of one drug dealer who got his money stolen by the task force, but he owed it to someone else. And when they came to collect the debt

and didn't find it, they killed him. Ronald was a perfect target for the task force. He used to sell drugs. Think about it. If he had fought this, and the cops had fought back by planting drugs at him or something, who's going to win?

I'd have been a goner. I probably wouldn't have saw the light of day. Hey, he did time before. Been to federal prison before. Nobody wouldn't have gave a fuck about me if I was sitting on the other end of that table fighting to get out of this shit. And that's what ticked me off.

Not saying you per se, but New York Times wouldn't have called me if they would have said, hey, you got found guilty for selling drugs. New York Times wouldn't have wrote to me and said, oh, we want to do an interview because a cop lied. I mean, because you said a cop lied on you.

But I would have been in jail. But now it's reversed. Now that the cops made out to be liars, now the interview is coming. But if I was on the other end of that table fighting for my life, New York Times, BBC News, these networks wouldn't have been calling for me because they'd say, oh, that's just how it is down there. Guy sell drugs, guy go to jail. This whole thing,

it's really messed with Ronald's head. His wife's too. For the first six, seven months, messed with Ronald's head. His wife's too. For the first six, seven months, I had to go home every day, walk around the fucking house, turn on every goddamn light, hear a call,

call, call. Because she was scared. I can't force her from that. Any little thing she hear, she will call. I heard something. It could be when. But this with this, you know, they came in on a mission. Even giving this interview, I feel for my life, though. That's why I was so hesitant about joining. You know, it's like something that you just don't think of ever happening in the United States, you know? Why?

I don't know, because it just... Do you think you could ever trust the police again, Ronald? Oh, hell no. No. I would never will. Never will I. We talking about these people that got on our oath, took our oath to serve and protect. Not to destroy. Not to take. They just had this power over people in that way.

What'd they have? Them cops did everything they could possibly do to everybody in this city. And everybody that went to jail, it's people that went to jail for something that never, ever, ever, ever took place. And all because a guy in a badge got up there and said it. We'll be right back. I'm Mike Helgren, back at the federal courthouse this morning for the second week in the police corruption trial. Walking around Baltimore during the trial, it was the talk of the town. But no one seemed surprised.

No one living in West Baltimore, anyway. People said, oh yeah, we know about that. They've been doing that for years. You had corrupt cops forever. You know what I mean? And long after this, there's still going to be corrupt cops. Police doing a lot of corrupt stuff forever. You know what I mean? Long after this, there's still going to be corrupt cops. Police doing a lot of corrupt stuff nowadays, robbing people. They might be selling drugs to get the money.

They sure as taking it and putting it in their pocket. It's been happening, but nobody believed it, because if you're an addict or a seller and the police, who are they going to believe, you or the police? You can't trust them. You can't trust them. These were the people that were sworn in to protect you and they out here doing most of the dirt their own self. So that's why I wasn't surprised, because it's been happening since the beginning of time. They just bringing it out.

So the Gun Trace Task Force was formed when Nook was about nine. Zero tolerance was in full swing. The unit was tasked to do exactly as its name suggests, to track down guns and get them off the street. And they were getting results, boosting statistics, and they were getting rewarded for it. They say, look, look what we're doing. Look how many guns we got.

They don't ask you how they got them. You just show the stats. And remember, a lot of these young officers get seduced. So say we're in a five or six-man unit. One guy in that unit gets a gun. So you might have a sergeant say, okay, every gun you get, you get two free days. Really? But isn't that just their job to get the gun?

Why do they get free day for that? Because they can't. This is part of the seduction. And so the other thing that prosecutors revealed was that beyond stealing from ordinary people, these cops were stealing from the state. We also at one point discovered that they weren't really working very much.

And so they were also charged with just massive overtime fraud. They were sometimes doubling their salary in a year, you know, making $165,000 by claiming to work when they didn't, claiming to be making arrests when they weren't. It came out of trial, one officer was working on his house basically for a month and pulling down his salary and didn't really set foot in the city with the exception of a handful of days in that whole month. They built decks, additions on their houses, had fancy cars, said they were at work when they were actually on vacation at the beach. Really egregious violations. violations. So this whole time, we were asking ourselves, how could this possibly have happened?

I mean, you had all of this scrutiny, a Department of Justice investigation, the city soul-searching and looking inside itself to figure out how to change its police department. Meanwhile, these guys were out in masks with baseball bats, stealing from people in broad daylight. You want to find corruption, follow the money trail. It's always about the money, especially in Baltimore City, especially in the Baltimore City Police Department. It's about the money.

It always has been. Every time you talk about policing and they talk about statistics, this is about money, period. You know how many people's lives have been ruined? Do you know how many people are probably in jail, or they should be in jail? How many people are they planning drugs on? These units, I can go back. I'm going to tell you a real quick story.

Okay. If you want to know how we got here, like the murders and the corruptions, this is probably going to be a bestseller one day, to be honest with you. murders and the corruptions. This is probably a bestseller one day, if I'm honest with you. So there's a very complex explanation that's incredibly important. They've been doing this for years, over and over again, when they get caught and just change the name of the unit. And every plainclothes unit that got caught, just like this last one here, what they would do was, they would wait a couple months, they'd just change the name of the unit, and start doing it again.

And that's because of this long, deep history in the Baltimore police, where they're doing something wrong, they get caught, they close ranks, they shut down people who speak up. Like Sergeant Lou Hobson. like Sergeant Lou Hobson. When I got promoted, 1993, I went to a district that was basically an all-white district. They used to call it the country club. When I first got there my first day,

and I was in my cubicle, about four or five white soldiers came in asking, why are you over here? I said, well, this is where they wanted me to sit. One of them said, well, you know, we don't really want your kind over here. So I said to him, yeah, well, that's not your decision to make. So what did they say? Well, you know, it's just a whole lot of N-words and things of this nature. This is 1993.

1993, you haven't seen anything. One day they took my desk. You know, they put grease on it. I had a computer that I was using, and they destroyed that. They got an Afro newspaper, and they put dog stuff in it and used to leave it on my desk and stuff like this. One day my wife, well, my wife is not African-American. And so, you know, I have my kids in my wife picture.

I had put, you know, you know how you put it on your desk and stuff like that. I had biracial children, beautiful kids. They took that, drew zebra stripes on it and put it on the bulletin board. They wrote on my wife's niggle level on it and put that on the bulletin board. They wrote, on my wife's nigger level on it, and put that on the bulletin board. Oh my God. And so, you know, what they try to do is to intimidate you to lose it,

and use that to get rid of you. You know what? You pushed the wrong buttons here. So Sergeant Thompson filed a complaint. Then it really started pumping up. And when word spread, he had an even harder time. His case was basically ignored, and then eventually shut.

He told us many stories like this, where an officer spoke up about something and was punished or demoted. So their careers crash. That culture had taken hold long ago, long before the Gun Trace Task Force. He said, those guys are right here, they're stealing like crazy. So their careers crash. That culture had taken hold long ago, long before the Gun Trace Task Force was ever formed. You have a lot of good police officers, but a lot of good police officers are stifled, they're silenced because of what is called retaliation. Retaliation is real. And what I mean by that is, once you file a complaint, they take your complaint and put it on the shelf. And then they will create a complaint on you.

I mean, it's a made-up complaint, but they'll find a way to charge you. Once they do that, then they will take that complaint and they will always add a false statement on that complaint, which is a termination offense. So they get rid of you. And meanwhile, the complaint you have against them goes away. So that's why officers, even today, won't file a complaint because as soon as they do, they're gone. And a lot of them still do.

And a lot of them are gone. So they turn their heads. So there's this perfect storm. You have this culture that punishes speaking up. Then you have this strategy of chasing statistics and getting good numbers. That gets you promotions and perks. That was the Gun Trace Task Force. This thing that was created to get guns,

but then it went off the rails, and nobody did anything to stop it. So instead of getting crime off the street, they're putting it back in. They are literally part of the problem. But there was something else, something bigger, and arguably more destructive for Baltimore. Any belief in this institution, any benefit of the doubt it once had from the citizens of the city, that was gone. And it was the police themselves who did it.

Sergeant Hobson, what proportion of Baltimore Police Department do you think is implicated in this corruption stuff? Let me put it to you this way. Everybody knew. Everybody knew. Everybody knew how corrupt the task force was. If you want an exact number, I don't think you're going to get it.

That's like asking me, what percentage of the borough is rotten that we know we had some few bad rotten apples in them. Can you really answer that? I don't think you can. Any rotten fruit among good fruit, pretty soon all the fruit is rotten. That's what you have here. If you don't get those rotten apples out or bad actors in a specific amount of time, then the whole batch becomes certainly not edible.

And certainly, you can almost say, they're crooked. So my, I would say 50%. Wow. That's a lot. I put the same question to Tyrone Powers. Wow. That's tough. I would say 50% either were involved or knew and didn't tell as an indication or maybe as comparison. When I was in the FBI, we would work drug cartels. There is no way that drug cartels or drug organizations can operate in any city without the police being involved.

If you've got a large drug organization in Manhattan, there's some corrupt cop because they cannot operate without police participation. So I can say that in Baltimore City, the situation that we're into now, everything that's been involved in getting us here could not have been so without the cooperation of every aspect of the system, the criminal justice system,

and to an extent, the political system from the mayor's office on down. The jury convicted all eight men on racketeering charges. Leo Wise and Derek Hines are seeking sentences of up to 30 years. And the fallout keeps going. Just this week, the city said it will have to reexamine 1,700 cases, cases that the task force had touched.

They're hoping that this closes the door. You know, let's turn the page. That's what they want to do. Turn the page and move on. Let's not fix the problem. Let's just turn the page. You don't know these people. They better hope and they better pray

that no one has the intuitiveness to go back and really look at this stuff and start peeling back this onion. Because if they do, there's going to be a lot of people in jail. I mean, a lot of people in jail. Now, are you still actively with working in the police department? Or what's your current... Yep. And is it okay talking to us? I mean... What are you going to do? Shoot me? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha All right, y'all, let's go.

Bennett in Fremont for the Signal 13. Call reporting that a partner got shot. No description. No further. It says in call reporting that a partner got shot. No description of the suspect. No further. They advised it came in with a name.

It said off duty. Let's go. Back in the fall, something really strange happened. At 4.30 p.m. on November 15th, police responded to a shooting in West Baltimore. They found their colleague, Detective Sean Suter, lying face down in a vacant lot, shot once in his head, his service weapon beneath his body. Some say it was a suicide, staged to look like a murder. Others say it was a murder, staged to look like a suicide. But one thing was clear.

He died the day before he was supposed to testify in front of the grand jury about the gun trace task force. And so even though his death is still a mystery, and no one has been charged, given everything this trial exposed, people in Baltimore think they already know the answer. Like Ronald. You think that guy got killed for nothing? Yeah. You really do? That suitor guy, right?

Yeah. The day you bought the test fire against him? He knew too much. But you had a first description of a black man with a white t-shirt. The first description of a person that did it with a black man with a white T-shirt. The first description of a person I posted did it with a black man in a white T-shirt.

Who do you think actually did it? I don't know. It's just self-explanatory who did it. It wasn't a black man in a white T-shirt. Oh, that's the guy right here. Did you see this moment? We did. Yeah, we watched that. Yeah.

So for Toby, this is just the world in which she's searching for answers about her son's death. And she's suspicious. She's searching for answers about her son's death. And she's suspicious. She watched the police press conference, the one that talked about her son and his shooting, over and over and over. How many times have you watched this? Maybe a thousand and three. Every time I see it, though, guess what?

I see something I didn't see before. I'm not trying to solve no case. I'm just trying to find some closure and peace somewhere. Since nobody like that guy right there or Detective Taylor, nobody won't give me no peace or no closure. I have to find it on my own. She's been watching these videos again and again and again on her phone, Googling for new pieces of information. For any scrap.

She thinks she an investigator. Like oh my gosh. I've Googled everything I can to see a video. Plain video of that shooting. Google and Google the same thing. 50 million times. And then like the same stuff pop up. And she gonna read it and read it.

And then she gonna pick through it. And see what's different that she didn't notice the first time and pick it up. I think she'd really be writing this stuff down. Like, if you really go through these papers, she really got notes and everything. She Googles everything. That's what one of Nook's best friends told us. Her son's name, the video. You did this 60 million times. We both did it together.

It's not going to pop up, mom. What are you doing? Like, why do you keep doing it? First of all, I'm going to show you my screenshots, what I would call my video. She takes screenshots of each piece of the video and compares them. So my son is running this way, shooting at that car. He's turning his back around, right? And the more she's looking at her phone

and watching these videos, the more details she sees. Focus on that car. He's looking. See the person? They're letting him out. You see him falling? Do you see him falling

when he's getting out of the car? I do. She thinks she sees somebody getting out of the passenger side of the police car. She's sure she sees it. It's a body frame hanging out that car that's behind that police. It's a body frame hanging out that window.

She thinks she sees a person hanging out of a car when we see a mirror. It's not a mirror. It's a body frame. It's somebody. A silhouette. We don't see what she's seeing. This is the call to police saying wait till they get right by that pole. Pay attention to the passenger window. This is a bad spot. Right around there.

Let's just make it out of there. And Toby has concluded that the police were in on it. Right around... After all, it's a very strange coincidence that a police car that was unmarked would turn directly behind Nook. I almost got it from the beginning. What? I can't tell.

That's the beginning. Just pay attention. It does look like somebody's getting out of the white car. You think so? I can't see. It just looks like somebody's getting out of the white car. You think so? Mm-hmm. I can't see. It just looks like he's... So see when... See when effort makes the turn.

Yeah. Right... There. That's totally someone who's getting out of the back. But then we start to see it, too. I see it. But then where do they go? You can't see it because there's a black box.

Right? It no longer feels impossible. possible. We'll be right back. Hi, it's Michael Barbaro. Daily listeners often ask how they can support this show. Thank you. For daily listeners who don't yet subscribe, The Times is now offering 50% off your first year, plus your first month free. It's a good deal. To learn more, visit nytimes.com slash the daily offer. That's nytimes.com slash the daily offer.

And thank you. Here's what else you need to know today. During a news conference on Wednesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that the FBI acted appropriately when it used a confidential informant to contact members of the Trump campaign in 2016, becoming the highest ranking Republican to dismiss President Trump's claims that the

agency planted a spy in his campaign for political purposes. Mr. Speaker, do you believe that the president has the power to pardon himself? Ryan also warned Trump not to pardon himself, as the president has suggested he might do at the conclusion of the Russia investigation. I don't know the technical answer to that question, but I think obviously the answer is he shouldn't and no one is above the law. The Times reports that Ryan's warning

is a sign that the president is starting to face trouble in Congress from members of his own party. And... I think that, you know, he really spent the time to listen to our case that we were making for Alice. He really understood.

And I am very hopeful that this will, you know, turn out really positively, I hope. On Wednesday, President Trump commuted the sentence of a 63-year-old woman serving life in prison for a nonviolent drug conviction after the case was brought to his attention by the reality TV star Kim Kardashian West. The commutation of the woman, Alice Marie Johnson, seems to contradict Trump's directive to his Justice Department to pursue the toughest possible charges and sentences in criminal cases, including nonviolent drug crimes like the one Johnson was charged with. And it raises questions about the president's process

for granting clemency. Trump has ignored similar requests from hundreds of nonviolent drug offenders, but commuted Johnson's sentence after a single meeting with Kardashian. If it takes me to go and talk to the highest person in power, the only person that can make this happen, which is President Trump, then I will definitely do that. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.