One of the territory’s top-ranking police officers took the stand in his own defense Thursday concluding four dramatic days of testimony in the VIPD corruption trial in federal District Court.
Capt. Enrique Saldana, VIPD chief of detectives and head of special operations, testified that his actions in December 2008 were at best part of a routine investigation into fake drugs and a murder-for-hire plot, or at worst, make-do police work within a threadbare system.
Federal prosecutors, however, say his actions and those of his two cohorts amounted to extortion and obstruction of justice.
A jury of 15 women and 3 men will decide the case Friday after closing arguments scheduled Friday for 9 a.m.
Saldana, VIPD Sgt. George Greene and St. Croix resident Luis Roldan face six federal and four local charges ranging from extortion to conflict of interest.
Prosecutors this week have presented heaps of evidence against the three, including video footage showing Greene and Roldan accepting a $5,000 payoff from a self-described “gangster” in exchange for them returning evidence they failed to report and forgetting about contraband that could have led to a federal drug rap.
On Thursday, Saldana ascribed his failure to log evidence, including cash and possible drugs, and failure to log the required reports during a drug investigation, to just matter of course at the VIPD.
The events that got him in trouble started when Saldana and members of his VIPD intelligence unit were conducting a contraband sweep of Paul M. Pearson public housing on the night of Dec. 4, 2008, when they came across an illegally parked and unsecured car that happened to have contraband stowed in the back. Greene was a part of the squad and was in on that search.
That unattended kilo of what turned out to be fake cocaine —- rice flour cooked up and wrapped in clear tape to look like drugs —- has turned out to be the unlucky find that now jeopardizes Saldana’s stellar 23-year career with the VIPD.
According to testimony this week, the bogus dope belonged to 51-year old Richard Motta, who had driven to Pearson housing in his employer’s rental car to get high at his girlfriend’s apartment. He said he and a friend had cooked the flour in a microwave to sell to an unnamed man for $12,000.
When he saw police searching the vehicle, he said he didn’t rush to claim his goods or try to stop the “Good Vibes” wrecker that towed the rental car to the police impound lot that night.
“I ain’t no angel,” he testified this week.
While Motta easily admitted that he had faults, Saldana was a little slower on the stand Thursday to admit his own indiscretions, which prosecutors repeatedly reminded him of.
Neither Saldana nor any member of his team ever logged the fake drugs into the forensics lab or evidence room and none of them bothered to make a report — not until nine days later when an entry was finally inserted out of sequence into the official police blotter.
Saldana contradicted himself many times trying to explain that to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Lindquist Thursday during cross-examination.
“Yes. It should have been” recorded as evidence, Saldana finally said under a drubbing of questions.
Some members of the jury squirmed a bit in their seats. Saldana’s wife sat up straight on the gallery bench. Then Saldana slipped back into his usual cool, reminding the prosecutor that VIPD officers sometimes report crimes and evidence as much as 30 days late.
The morning after the fake cocaine was seized and the first of many lapses in police work occurred, Motta and his boss, local realtor and businesswoman Rosemary Sauter, ventured over to police headquarters looking for some belongings that they said were in the car, carefully omitting mention of the “package” of bogus drugs.
Sauter first asked for then-VIPD Commissioner James McCall, a trusted friend, and when McCall didn’t arrive gave a statement and made a request for notebooks and a pad and other items she said were in the car.
On their way out, an officer handed Motta a piece of paper with Saldana’s number on it to call if they wanted to collect their things.
Saldana said Thursday that Motta didn’t call, so he called Motta instead.
He said that until Sauter and Motta had strolled into police headquarters, he hadn’t any suspects to connect with the sham drugs.
“I told him he would have to come into the investigation bureau and answer some questions,” Saldana said Thursday. “He was a possible suspect in a case.”
After another attempt to meet, Saldana said he let his investigation peter out and moved onto other things. By then, he said, the phony coke had been field tested for cocaine and heroin and turned up to be only flour and was promptly flushed down one of the working toilets at the VIPD.
But Motta and Saldana’s paths eventually crossed again.
On Dec. 20, a day marked by a flurry of phone calls between Saldana, Greene and Saldana’s neighborhood friend Luis Roldan, Roldan approached Motta in a pickup along the St. Thomas waterfront with a proposition that prosecutors say was the first step on a path to extortion.
According to Motta’s testimony, Roldan told him his “package” had actually tested positive for heroin and that he would have to pay his police friends $10,000 or they would turn it over the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force, otherwise known as “the feds.” Roldan also told Motta that the same police had him pegged as the prospective hit man in a plot by Sauter to killer her husband, Jacob Frett — a scheme that by Thursday’s testimony shook out to be a red herring.
Saying he was afraid he was being set up, Motta confessed all to Sauter. She again called on McCall, who listened to their tale and then led the two to the FBI.
“I took it to the FBI because I thought there was a possibility of public corruption,” McCall said when he took the stand as a hostile witness earlier this week.
That was Dec. 22, the day the FBI launched an investigation into Saldana and company and coached Motta to wear a wire and arrange with Roldan to meet his police friends in order to pay them $5,000—for the return of the sham drugs and to make the drug conspiracy threat disappear.
The next day, Dec. 23, FBI agents testified that the defendants made at least 60 phone calls between them as the first of two rendezvous approached.
Prosecuting attorney Lindquist just about broke the patience of Saldana and the jury Thursday as he tried to read each and every phone call by time, callers and duration until Judge Curtis Gomez mercifully cut him off.
“Yes, it seems we made a lot of phone calls between us on the 23rd,” Saldana said Thursday, crossing his arms in exasperation.
Claiming he wanted to meet with Motta to “obtain information in reference to a murder for hire,” Saldana and his co-defendants first met Motta near Hometown gas and grocery in Anna’s Fancy. Then, because Greene “said he thinks he could get this guy to give us the information,” Saldana said, Roldan arranged to meet Motta in Frenchtown later that night to seal the deal, not knowing Motta would be wearing an FBI camera and wire.
Saldana insisted Thursday that it was all part of an official investigation and part of a plan he developed according to his job description, which includes the command to “exercise considerable independent judgment.”
Saldana testified Thursday that he was not there that night when Roldan and Greene met Motta in Frenchtown and accepted $5,000 dollars under the watchful eye of the FBI. He said he was out to dinner with his wife and 10-year-old daughter and some friends, one of whom testified Thursday to that alibi.
Saldana said Thursday that as he left the restaurant that night, he did receive a call from Greene. “I asked him if he arrested him [Motta],” Saldana testified Thursday. “I told him, ‘you’re going to be responsible for that money. Don’t leave it in a desk or a drawer. You’re responsible for it.’”
Neither Saldana nor Greene ever reported the money or turned it in to evidence.
While Saldana testified Thursday that he never received any of the money, an investigator from the Internal Revenue Service testified earlier this week that Greene deposited $1,800 into his personal account the next day.
The money, supplied to Motta by the FBI, is still unaccounted for.
While Saldana brushed away many of the questions about his police work and the mishandling of the fake drugs, he didn’t have to ever say much about his uncouth and off-the-record investigation into the alleged scheme of murder-for-hire.
Defense attorneys, who had earlier promised that Sauter’s supposed plan would make their clients’ actions all make sense, were mostly foiled by courtroom rules on hearsay and never got to the heart of it.
Rosemary Sauter took the stand and left it Thursday no closer to being tied to the case than she was when Motta left her rental car at Pearson public housing on Dec. 4, 2008.
After the defense rested late Thursday, Judge Gomez gave instructions to the jury, in whose hands Friday rest the fates of Saldana, Greene and Roldan.
