Questionable stops

car from Pennsylvania, which doesn’t require front plates.

According to Bey and attorney Brandon Mead, the officers ordered the occupants out, found a gun, and took $550 in cash he was carrying and his cellphone.

Mead said Bey was most upset that the officers sent texts to Bey’s girlfriend pretending to be him and asking her to send explicit pictures. Speaking outside the courthouse, Bey and Mead said Bey has the texts and plans to go to internal affairs.

“This is still America,” Bey said. “It’s like, they just do whatever, and it’s unbelievable that they’ve been getting away with this for so long.”

The probe of the Gun Trace Task Force was not sparked by citizen complaints, judicial admonitions or internal affairs investigators, but by federal agents. U.S. Attorney for Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein said the Drug Enforcement Administration began looking at the officers about a year ago while investigating a drug organization.

Defense attorneys for suspects and attorneys who settled lawsuits against some of the officers say there were more than enough red flags. The city has paid out at least $524,000 to settle separate claims involving Hersl, Jenkins, Rayam and Ward, The Baltimore Sun found in its review of court records for a 2014 report on police misconduct settlements. Other claims are pending.

The city admitted no wrongdoing in the settlements.

For years, Baltimore State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy maintained a “do not call” list of police officers with integrity problems, whose cases she instructed prosecutors not to pursue. State’s Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein, who succeeded Jessamy in 2011, discontinued the practice. Mosby has not used a list.

Prosecutors say there’s a difference in court between officers accused of using excessive force and those whose credibility is questioned.

They said they have improved the process for informing defense attorneys about problems with officers. Attorneys still need a judge’s approval before they may discuss those problems in court.

Local defense attorney Paul Polansky, who represented a client who was acquitted in a gun case brought by Gondo, Hersl, Jenkins, Rayam, Taylor and Ward, said questionable car stops or other searches “happen all the time.”

“Perfectly good officers make bad judgments,” Polansky said. But he also said the Gun Trace Task Force officers had a reputation for being particularly aggressive.

Local defense attorney Lawrence Rosenberg said questions about police work in city cases is pervasive, but misconduct is harder to prove.

“It’s a very difficult line,” he said. “I’m not sure how you separate them.”

Rayam and two other officers were accused in June 2009 of stealing $11,000 in cash from a man they pulled over in a traffic stop.

The man, Gary Brown of the 1600 block of N. Smallwood St., filed a complaint with the police. Police launched an internal affairs investigation, according to documents obtained by The Sun.

Rayam failed a 2010 polygraph test, and investigators concluded that he had provided false statements. The investigation resulted in a “finding of Sustained for the allegations of Misconduct General, Misrepresentation of Facts, and False Statements,” the documents show.

But an internal trial board acquitted him of those findings in 2012, and the state’s attorney’s office declined to prosecute him criminally. It is the position of the Office of State’s Attorney that, for a variety of reasons, this information is not admissible in any case in which these officers may be involved,” prosecutors said in a document obtained by The Sun.

Prosecutors informed defense attorney William R. Buie III in January about Rayam’s previous internal affairs problems, and that he failed a polygraph test. He won a motion to be able to mention it in a client’s case.

“Much of this case bears on the truth and veracity of the officer,” Buie said in court.

The proceedings were delayed while prosecutors attempted to reach Rayam by cellphone. When they could not, the prosecutors immediately asked that the case be dismissed.

Buie said that Hersl, who was one of the arresting officers in his client’s case, served as the leader of the indicted officers and that he appeared to be a sincere, hardworking officer eager to get “guns and thugs” off the streets.

“I didn’t have any problems with him,” Buie said.