The investigations uncovered wide-ranging misconduct including theft, planting drugs, and conducting raids without proper search warrants. A few of the defendants faced federal convictions, but most were convicted in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. Almost all of the defendants appear to have been Black or Hispanic.

Eight officers were convicted in state and federal courts for this misconduct, which dated back to at least 1987.

The misconduct came to light slowly, beginning on February 25, 1991, when a man named Arthur Colbert went to the 39th Precinct in North Philadelphia to file a complaint. Colbert, a part-time college student from Michigan, said that two officers, Thomas Ryan and John Baird, had stopped him the night before and believed him to be a drug dealer. The officers took Colbert to an abandoned house and beat him. At one point, Colbert said, Baird cocked his service revolver and threatened to kill him. The officers then took Colbert to the precinct. While Colbert was in custody, the officers ransacked his apartment as they searched for drugs and money. They found none and let Colbert go.

During Colbert’s time in custody, the police either destroyed or lost his driver’s license. Colbert returned the next day and filed a formal complaint with the duty supervisor, Lieutenant John Gallagher. Colbert knew details about the precinct that only a person taken into custody would have known.

“He was a Black guy complaining about two white cops to a white lieutenant,” Gallagher told Time magazine. “It took some balls for him to come in.”

That initial probe widened, eventually attracting the attention of the FBI, which spent several years investigating the actions of Baird, Ryan, and other officers in the 39th Precinct. On February 28, 1995, a federal grand jury in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania brought indictments against five officers on charges of theft, conspiracy, and civil-rights violations.

The Philadelphia Police Department suspended Baird after the incident with Colbert in 1991. Ryan retired on disability around the same time. The department relieved a third indicted officer, Thomas DeGovanni, of duty in 1991, and then reinstated him. He retired on the eve of the indictments. So did Officer Steven Brown. The fifth officer facing charges, James Ryan (no relation to Thomas Ryan) was still on the job.

In announcing the indictments, U.S. Attorney Michael R. Stiles said the joint investigation started after Colbert filed his complaint. The Philadelphia Police Department brought administrative charges against several of the officers and then began working with the FBI. The indictments alleged the five officers kept illegal drugs they confiscated from drug dealers to use as evidence to justify the searches of persons they wanted to rob. The indictments also charged that the officers conducted their activities both inside and outside of the 39th precinct, and sometimes beat or threatened individuals. The officers stole more than $100,000, the indictments said, and buried their misconduct in falsified police reports.

Philadelphia County District Attorney Lynne Abraham said a week after the indictments that she would file motions to dismiss nearly 40 cases involving arrests made by these officers.

Joe Morris was one of the first defendants to get his conviction thrown out, on March 15, 1995. Officer Brown arrested Morris on November 21, 1988. The officer said that he saw a marijuana sale outside a high school and then followed the dealer back to Morris’s sandwich shop, where he watched the alleged dealer give cash to Morris and receive a brown paper bag. Brown said he then bought marijuana from the dealer.

He and other officers returned to the sandwich shop, smashed down a door, and found 13 pounds of marijuana. Morris was convicted at trial of drug trafficking and sentenced to 3½ years in prison. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Brown told investigators that he gave false testimony at the trial. Brown had not observed any drug deal prior to the raid. Federal prosecutors also said that Brown and the other officers stole $1,000 from Morris.

On March 30, 1995, Brown pled guilty to conspiracy and theft charges, and Baird pled guilty to conspiracy to violate civil rights, robbery, and obstruction of justice. A week later, Thomas Ryan pled guilty to conspiracy to violate civil rights, and DeGovanni pled guilty to robbery and obstruction of justice. James Ryan initially planned to go to trial, but he pled guilty on May 30, 1995, to conspiracy and theft from a federally funded program – the police department itself, which used money seized from drug dealers to help fund operations.

The officers later received the following sentences: Baird, 13 years; Brown, 10 years; DeGovanni, seven years; James Ryan, six years; and Thomas Ryan, 10 months.

On August 23, 1995, a federal grand jury indicted Officer Louis Meyer III on a charge of conspiring to violate the civil rights of four people, including by committing theft and planting evidence. Meyer also worked in the 39th Precinct, and investigators said that they learned about Meyer’s actions from Baird. Meyer pled guilty to the count on August 30, 1995, and later received a sentence of five years.

By the time of Meyer’s plea, more than 40 convictions had been vacated. Eventually, 168 defendants would have their convictions thrown out based on misconduct by these officers.

Betty Patterson was one of the people wrongfully convicted based on the officers’ misconduct. Baird, Brown, and Thomas Ryan raided her house on July 3, after Baird obtained a search warrant based on his affidavit that he had bought a packet of cocaine outside Patterson’s home. The officers said they found drugs during a search. Baird later admitted that the information in the warrant was a lie. He and the other officers falsely testified at Patterson’s trial, where she was convicted and later sent to prison for three to five years. Her conviction was thrown out on June 4, 1995.

Maurice Waller was not able to witness the dismissal of his case. Brown arrested Waller on drug charges on July 14, 1988. Waller was 18 and had no criminal record. He pled guilty to drug possession and related charges and was sentenced to a work release program. His conviction was vacated on October 2, 1995. Waller died in 1994, the victim of gunfire in his neighborhood. “He told me and Mom they had planted drugs on him,” a brother told the Inquirer.

Although the misconduct broke into public view in 1995, there were hints as far back as 1989 that something was amiss with the police work of Baird and other officers. According to the Inquirer, an attorney with the Public Defender’s Office asked a judge that year to investigate a disturbing pattern with drug arrests made by Baird, Brown, and the other officers.

In these cases, the attorney said, Baird repeatedly testified that dealers had delivered drugs to him through mail slots or other small holes in the doors. Often, Baird testified, the occupants inside were warned that Baird was an officer, which required the officers to beat down the doors with sledgehammer to prevent the alleged dealers from destroying evidence while the officers went to get a search warrant. The judge asked the District Attorney’s Office to investigate. “There were some questions about Baird and Brown. They did bring it to my attention,” a senior prosecutor told the Inquirer. “It really wasn't a big deal because the PDs were always making allegations.”

While the investigation began in the 39th Precinct, it spread elsewhere. On April 7, 1995, two former officers in the 19th Precinct, Derrick Mayes and Kevin Daniels, were convicted in state court of framing suspects and committing perjury. Each received a sentence of five to 10 years in prison. Judges in Philadelphia threw out 52 convictions based on misconduct by the two officers.

Separately, the investigation also ensnared the state’s Bureau of Narcotics Investigation (BNI), after its agents were found to have falsified information on requests for search warrants and testified falsely. Most of the cases dropped due to BNI misconduct had not gone to trial, but judges granted at least 10 motions to vacate convictions in state and federal court. Available documents do not state whether any BNI officers were punished for this misconduct. Many of the BNI officers were on loan from the Philadelphia Police Department.

Vacations and dismissals from these related groups continued into 1997.

Many of the defendants either wrongfully arrested or convicted based on the misconduct of the officers filed lawsuits against the city and the police department. Many of the lawsuits cited a lack of oversight by police supervisors as contributing to the corruption or allowing it to continue for so long. The city paid at least $3.5 million to settle these lawsuits.

Separately, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Police-Barrio Relations Project prepared a class-action lawsuit against the city over the civil rights abuses documented in the pleas of the officers in the 39th Precinct. The lawsuit was filed and settled on the same day, September 4, 1996, with the city agreeing to a wide range of reforms, including:

• The creation of an anti-corruption task force.
• An overhaul of the department’s internal-affairs division.
• The appointment of an Integrity and Accountability Office in the police department.
• Increasing reporting requirements for officers who use force during arrests.
• Expanding the use of computerized records for arrests and citizen complaints, allowing police to see patterns and problems earlier.

According to Philadelphia City Paper, a report published in 2003 by the Integrity and Accountability Office said the department’s disciplinary system was “fundamentally ineffective, inadequate, and unpredictable.”

Two years later, the integrity office's executive director left and was not replaced. The original settlement covered only two years, but it was extended several times until a federal judge lifted the court order in 2005. At that time, the NAACP was the only remaining plaintiff, and the president of the organization’s local chapter, told the Inquirer that the settlement had “run its course.”

– Ken Otterbourg