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 News from Around the Americas | May 2007 
Corrupt Troops Get Little Time in Prison
 Carol Ann Alaimo - Arizona Daily Star
Two years ago this month, the FBI in Tucson called a news conference and announced a major cocaine and corruption sting amid a flurry of camera flashes.
There was no such fanfare recently, though, when the corrupt public officials who got generous plea deals began receiving their punishments.
Last month marked the start of federal court sentencings in the troubled Operation Lively Green sting, which caught a total of 67 local military personnel, prison guards, police and border officials taking bribes to transport cocaine in uniform.
So far, most have received far less than the maximum five years in prison and $250,000 in fines set out in the plea deals offered by prosecutors.
In a case that was billed by the FBI as a war on public corruption in the border area, those sentences may not do much to persuade Mexican cartels and government officials that the United States is serious about cleaning house on this side of the border, one expert on the narcotics trade said.
As of Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department, which normally puts out news releases announcing sentences in high-profile cases, had not mentioned the penalties handed down in the Lively Green case. On Friday, the day after the Arizona Daily Star asked why, the agency announced results only for two cases settled last week.
A total of 11 Lively Green defendants have been sentenced since mid-April. Of those, 10 drew penalties ranging from probation to 3 3/4 years in prison, along with fines of $4,000 to $10,000. Individually, they moved anywhere from 10 to 181 kilograms — 22 to 398 pounds — of cocaine.
Only one defendant, former Army National Guard recruiter Darius W. Perry of Tucson, described by the FBI as the man who touched off the sting by selling cocaine from the trunk of his recruiting vehicle, received the maximum five years.
Perry, described by the judge as "completely corrupt" also was fined $52,000 — the amount of money he made in six drug runs captured on tape by the FBI in 2002. He moved more cocaine than any other defendant — 181 kilograms in all.
Shortly afterward, Perry went to work at the Pentagon, his lawyer said. He remained there until early 2006, retiring from the military six months before he was charged.
"You're lucky I accepted your plea agreement," U.S. District Judge Cindy K. Jorgenson told Perry, 42 after he asked for lenience.
If not for the plea bargain, "I would not have hesitated to give you a much longer period of incarceration," Jorgenson said.
All the Lively Green defendants are getting breaks to some degree, according to legal experts and even some defense lawyers in the case.
"My client is very, very well aware of the huge benefit he received under the plea agreement," said Mark Williman, the Tucson lawyer who represented Bennie Perkins III, a Davis-Monthan airman at the time of the crimes.
Perkins, prosecuted as a civilian because he left the military before he was charged, wept as he was sentenced May 1 to five years' probation and a $4,000 fine. Now on staff at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., he's the only defendant so far to escape prison.
Without a plea deal, Perkins would have spent anywhere from 2 1/2 years to 4 3/4 years behind bars, his lawyer said.
The Justice Department, which oversees prosecution of the federal court cases, maintains that plea deals in the Lively Green case were appropriate for the circumstances.
The defendants, many of whom had no criminal history, were caught on tape counting out cash next to stacks of cocaine bricks. Some did it once, others, several times.
If charged with trafficking, they faced 10 or more years. Instead, they were allowed to plead to one count each of bribery and corruption for the cash they accepted in the drug deals. That meant none would get more than five years behind bars.
Legal experts say the plea bargains almost certainly are related to misconduct by FBI informants, who hired prostitutes during a drug run to Las Vegas in 2002 to have sex with men who later became defendants.
The chief FBI informant was photographed performing a lewd act over the face of a hooker who appeared to be unconscious, and he later destroyed the photos, a military court heard last year.
By avoiding public trials, the plea deals kept details of the sex spree under wraps. The little that is known came to light last June at the court-martial of a Davis-Monthan technical sergeant who forced his case to trial by pleading not guilty.
Peter Reuter, an expert on the illicit drug trade and law enforcement at the University of Maryland, said informant misconduct "absolutely" would play a role in a decision to offer plea bargains.
"It's quite a tangled tale," Reuter said of the Lively Green case, which he's read about in the news.
On the one hand, he said, it could be argued that the FBI, by setting up a fake drug ring to see who the agency could catch, was promoting the very criminal conduct it is supposed to combat. On the other, the problem of corrupt public officials conspiring with drug traffickers is a serious issue, he said.
Mexican officials often feel that the United States, quick to criticize its neighbor to the south, does little about drug-related corruption on the American side of the border, Reuter said. The Lively Green sentences, relatively light for the amounts of drugs involved, might fuel that impression, he said, although the amounts in this case were set by the FBI, not the defendants.
"I'll be curious to see how the Mexican press treats this. It could be taken as an indication that the U.S. isn't tough" on corruption, Reuter said.
Of the 67 local defendants, a dozen, all Davis-Monthan airmen, were tried in military court last year. The other 55, including Army, Marine Corps and Arizona Army National Guard personnel, are in federal court.
Eleven were assigned to the National Guard armory on Valencia Road. Ten were local military recruiters. More than a dozen worked for the Arizona Department of Corrections. Forty-four remain to be sentenced between now and September.
Many will get less than a year if the judge continues to follow recommendations in a pre-sentence report prepared by probation officers.
The report said the harshest penalties — in the four- to five-year range, the maximum possible under the plea deals — should only go to a handful of defendants, such as Perry, who were most deeply involved.
Jorgenson, the federal court judge deciding the cases, said in court that the job is especially troubling because so many of the defendants have no prior criminal history.
The fact remains, the judge said, that what they did eats at the foundations of civilization. When police, military personnel and other authority figures can't be trusted, society starts to break down, she said.
"You were supposed to be one of the good guys," Jorgenson told Eddie Rosas III, the son of a Nogales Police Department lieutenant. He made $5,000 running 10 kilograms of cocaine — 22 pounds — when he worked as a dispatcher for the department in 2002.
Rosas, 25, was sentenced May 1 to seven months in prison and a $5,000 fine as the sound of his relatives' sobbing filled the courtroom.
"When people like you commit these crimes," the judge told Rosas, "it sends an impression that law enforcers are just like all the other bad guys who will do anything for a few thousand dollars."
Click HERE to read the original story about the corruption.
Contact reporter Carol Ann Alaimo at calaimo@azstarnet.com. |
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