Six Philadelphia narcotics
officers threatened and intimidated targets, extorting them for money, clothes
and drugs, authorities claimed in an explosive indictment this week.
Thomas Liciardello, Brian
Reynolds, Michael Spicer, Perry Betts, Linwood Norman, and John Speiser — all
members of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Narcotics Field Unit — have
pleaded not guilty, the Associated Press reports. They face several charges —
including racketeering conspiracy, robbery and extortion — and are due back in federal
court Monday.
“Words just don’t describe the
degree to which their acts have brought discredit,” Philadelphia Police
Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said at a news conference, according to the
Philadelphia Inquirer. Ramsey called the charges “one of the worst cases of
corruption I have ever heard.”
Among the accusations:
November 2007: Authorities
believe Norman lifted a man up and “leaned him over a balcony railing on the
18th floor of his apartment house.” Members of the group that’s now under indictment
also entered the man’s apartment and ordered pizza using money they had taken
from his nightstand. They are accused of stealing about $8,000 worth of items
from the man.
October 2008: Liciardello
allegedly transported a suspected drug dealer to his parents’ Philadelphia home
and threatened to seize the house unless the man opened a safe. The man did,
and the defendants then stole about $20,000.
February 2010: After
Liciardello, Reynolds, Betts and Spicer used a sledgehammer to break into an
apartment, Spicer punched a suspected drug dealer in the mouth, then held him
off a balcony to get the man to tell the group where money and drugs were in the
home. More than $200,000 was seized from the apartment, and one of the
defendants stole a Calvin Klein suit.
Defense attorneys noted that
the sources for the allegations were drug dealers and another officer who was
arrested in 2012, the AP reported. “I’m surprised the government will give them
so much deference and credence,” said Betts’s lawyer, Gregory Pagano, according
to the AP.
“That many of the victims were
drug dealers, not Boy Scouts, is irrelevant,” Edward Hanko, special agent in
charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office, said in a statement. “This corrupt
group chose to make their own rules. Now they will have to answer for it.”
U.S. Attorney Zane Memeger said
in a statement that the district attorney’s office will review old convictions
that involved the six officers, who have been suspended, according to the
Inquirer. The office had stopped relying on testimony from Liciardello,
Reynolds, Spicer, Betts and Speiser two years ago.
According to the Inquirer:
Their arrests, during predawn
raids Wednesday, threaten to throw dozens of their past cases into doubt and
reopen a pipeline of civil rights lawsuits from suspects they arrested that has
already cost the city at least $777,000.
If convicted, five of the
defendants face possible life sentences; Speiser faces a maximum 40-year term.
