This much is clear: Two V.I. police officers, one of them head of all VIPD criminal investigations, accepted a $5,000 payoff from a self-described “gangster” in exchange for evidence the officers never logged and for a pass on possible drug charges.
The FBI has that much on tape.
But whether it was a renegade investigation and sloppy police work or a case of blatant extortion and high-level police corruption will be up to a jury to decide as the trial of VIPD Capt. Enrique Saldana, Sgt. George Greene and St. Croix resident Luis Roldan wraps up on its fourth and final day Thursday.
Prosecutors brought numerous witnesses to the stand Wednesday, including VIPD Chief Rodney Querrard and former Police Commissioner James McCall, to help prove that Saldana and Greene used the power of their uniforms and confiscated drugs to extort money for their own enrichment. The defendants are charged with six federal and four local counts relating to extortion, conflict of interest and obstruction of justice.
Their defense so far has been that Saldana, who was VIPD’s chief of criminal investigations at the time, and Greene were conducting an undercover investigation and confiscated the drugs and took the $5,000 as part of an elaborate ruse to stop a murder-for-hire plot. For both sides, Roldan acted as a middle man for either an official investigation or a bribe —- depending on who the jury listens to.
Much of Wednesday’s testimony from witnesses called by federal prosecutors honed in on how the officers followed, or failed to follow, official police procedures after they discovered a kilogram of what turned out to be fake cocaine inside a parked car on Dec. 4, 2008.
According to the testimony so far, the fateful events began that night when 51-year-old Richard Motta illegally parked his employer’s rental car next to a mobile vendor in the Paul M. Pearson housing community to visit his girlfriend. He left the car’s door unlocked, the keys in the ignition and the radio on, and proceeded, by his own admission, to get stoned. Jolted awake by his girlfriend, he then watched as police searched the vehicle and a wrecker hauled it away.
The police, part of an elite intelligence unit headed by Capt. Saldana, found in the car a brick of “white powdery substance” wrapped in clear tape to look like cocaine. Motta told the court Tuesday that he and Rafael Rivera had cooked rice flour in the microwave and packaged it up like cocaine to sell to a prospective buyer for $12,000.
Saldana’s team made no report that night or the day after of either the car or the phony drugs and admitted nothing to the forensics lab or evidence room, according to VIPD officials and federal agents who have testified so far.
On Dec. 5, after retrieving the vehicle, Motta and his employer, St. Thomas realtor Rosemary Sauter, traveled to police headquarters where Sauter asked for police commissioner James McCall, seeking some belongings that had been left in the car. Not finding McCall, the two left the station but not before an officer handed Motta a phone number for Saldana, who he said would get the items back, according to Motta.
Motta and Saldana arranged a meeting but Motta didn’t show because, in his words, “I was scared.” Saldana tried once more to convince him to meet but Motta balked again.
Later that month, as Motta was walking along the St. Thomas waterfront, he was approached by defendant Luis Roldan, who Motta said told him he would have to pay the police $10,000 or else they would turn the package found in the car over to the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force because it had tested positive for heroin. According to Motta, Roldan also told him that the same police had implicated him in a $150,000 plot to kill Sauter’s husband, Jacob Frett.
Afraid that that he was being set up, Motta said he returned to Sauter and told her about the fake drugs and the extortion threat he’d received on the waterfront.
On Dec. 22, Sauter took Motta to see then V.I. Police Commissioner McCall, who testified Wednesday that he led the two to the FBI, whose local agents immediately launched an investigation.
“I took it to the FBI because I thought there was a possibility of public corruption,” McCall said Wednesday.
On Dec. 23, federal agents taped numerous phone calls between the defendants and Motta as they arranged the place and time to make a deal.
Wearing a video camera and recorder, Motta met Greene and Roldan in Frenchtown on the night of Dec. 23 and paid Greene $5,000 to get his belongings back and make the drug issue go away.
“My word is bond,” Greene said after accepting the cash, as recorded on the video tape. “Everything’s straight, daddy,” he added.
For most of the day Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nolan Paige and Kim Lindquist connected the dots in police procedure by calling to the stand each VIPD official who should have been notified or should have had records of the incidents and evidence along the way.
Acting under federal warrants last August, those officials turned up no records until they discovered one dated Dec. 13 —- nine days later after the Dec. 4 event —- when a short paragraph-long entry was inserted into the official blotter referring back to Dec. 4, including discovery of “white powdery substance found in vehicle.”
Patricia Francis, head of records for the VIPD, testified that it was not unusual for officers to report incidents as late as 10 days or even up to a month.
A basic form signed by Saldana that made its way into official records on Dec. 16 shows a recommendation for an investigation but no record of a suspect and too little detail, according to Chief Rodney Querrard, who said such a report “should be in the next day.” Querrard said the drugs —- fake or not —- should have been logged into the evidence room that night.
“Every now and then it happens,” that evidence comes in late, Querrard said Wednesday. “But not in a case like this, where there is a suspect and contraband.”
Querrard said that according to procedure, Saldana should have reported to him so that he could have notified Commissioner McCall, and that no investigation of that nature could be conducted without his “blessing.”
Special Agent James Doby, the resident agent in charge of the DEA on St. Thomas, also testified that federal agents should have been notified of the “sham” drugs immediately.
“We would want to know who was trying to pass this off” and see if they had enough to prove a conspiracy, he said.
Police witnesses and federal agents said the money Greene and Saldana accepted from Motta also never made it into evidence. An investigator for the Internal Revenue Service, however, testified that Greene made a deposit of $1,800 into his personal account the day after the payoff.
When it was their turn, defense attorneys turned repeatedly to a memo dated Dec. 16 —-from Saldana to his intelligence team members and copied to Querrard and other ranking police officials —- that vaguely referred to the team having dealt with possible fake drugs and having “uncovered and possibly deterred a possible hit on a Hospital Ground individual” —- which they say referred to the murky murder-for-hire plot Saldana and Greene say they were investigating all the while.
That memo remains the only piece of evidence presented thus far referring to such a plot.
An alleged player in that alleged plot, Rosemary Sauter, took the stand briefly Wednesday before Judge Curtis Gomez dismissed the court for the evening. She is expected back on the stand Thursday when the trial resumes at 11 a.m.
Judge Gomez said he expects the defense to finish the case Thursday.
