Ex-cop to serve home detention after guilty plea to selling pot
A former Baltimore Police officer accused of selling marijuana will serve one year on home detention after pleading guilty in Baltimore County Circuit Court.
Last year, a Baltimore County grand jury indicted Cejus Watson, 40, of Baltimore on one count of distributing a controlled substance. He pleaded guilty to the charge Monday.
Baltimore County Circuit Judge Dennis M. Robinson Jr. sentenced Watson on Monday to three years with all of that time suspended and ordered that he spend one year on supervised probation while on home detention.
While no one should sell illegal drugs, Robinson said, it was especially serious for “a member of law enforcement and the BPD” to do so.
Robinson said the sentence was meant to dissuade Watson from committing future crimes and to deter other people who are “similarly situated.”
Watson joined the Baltimore Police Department in 2011 and resigned in 2022, said his attorney, Nicholas Comaromi. He no longer works in law enforcement and is pursuing a degree in information technology and business management from Western Governors University, an online school.
In September 2022, Baltimore Police’s Public Integrity Unit told Baltimore County vice detectives that Watson was suspected of selling marijuana, Baltimore County Assistant State’s Attorney Daniel Trimble said in court Monday. Watson was suspended from the police department at the time, meaning he was not allowed to carry a badge or gun.
City and county detectives set up a controlled buy later that month at a Reisterstown Road tattoo shop with a confidential informant, providing the person with money to buy drugs from Watson.
Trimble said Watson sold the informant the drugs in multiple forms, including 34 vials of suspected marijuana, along with packets, gummy candy and a container of wax. The total amount sold was between 125 and 130 grams of marijuana, Comaromi said, worth about $1,100 to $1,200.
A city grand jury indicted Watson on charges of misconduct in office and stealing payroll funds earlier this year.
When Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates announced Watson’s indictment in May, he compared the case to the Gun Trace Task Force, a rogue Baltimore Police unit whose members were federally indicted in 2017, in part for stealing and selling drugs.
Watson’s next court date in the city case is Nov. 16.
Trimble told Robinson he was requesting home detention for Watson because incarcerating a former police officer would pose a risk to his safety, but that he deserved some punishment.
“He was a sworn police officer at one point in time, whether he was suspended or not. He shouldn’t have broken the law,” Trimble said.
Watson was injured at work in 2017 and was still “disabled medically” at the time of the sale, Comaromi said.
“It explains sort of the financial distress he was experiencing when he made the terribly poor decision in this case,” he said.
Comaromi said Watson’s injury had reduced his income, creating an incentive to supplement his pay, and that pain medication clouded his judgment.