Detective Sean Suiter /// Part 1 /// 276 | Forensic Files

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[Music] now about a full week a full week since Sean Suiter was murdered and still the
crime scene at Schroeder invented places in West Baltimore it remains taped off at this hour ABC 2 News investigative
reporter Brian cubler has been on the story and joins us live right now from Baltimore Police Headquarters tonight
with a continued search for as soon as killer and those inside and outside the department mourning his loss Brian yeah
Jamie Sean Suiter was only in the homicide unit of the police department for about two years but in that short
time victims families became friends and Friends became families exactly a week later now in this part of
Harlan Park in West Baltimore remains a crime scene an active one as forensics were called back out just today but
while technicians Revisited suitor's scene he was more than um police officer Kevin Fenwick felt
compelled to meet us at his son's crime scene Kendall Fenwick you might recall was murdered two years ago after
erecting a fence around his Northwest Baltimore home to keep the drug dealers out a good hard-working honest family
man his killing lingers just a little longer in The Barrage of what can be Baltimore's violent crime statistics a
cold-blooded killing that would fall to a brand new homicide detective at the time Kendall Fenwick was detective Sean
suter's first ever case and first ever closure he brought Comfort to my family knowing that we had this person behind
bars and he always told me I would be there for you and he has and he has a true friend
he has but it didn't stop there through the next two family to Fenwick in all of his
relationships that was just simply the detectives ammo he was a special very very special man
my brother and I I love him forever his colleagues say much the same thing detective Eric Perez came up in the
department with suitor yesterday telling us it's all that he can do from falling
apart balancing such pain with the drive for justice I have to battle um the emotion while sticking to to the
mission which is which is fine and who who killed Sean so you have to really um know when to turn that switch on and off
so that you can stay on course and and stay focused on what needs to be done the concept of closure is
subjective it's personal but there is perhaps no one better equipped to Define it than a homicide detective and the
family member of a murder victim for Fenwick he could only hope the family of the men who worked so hard to give him
his closure is afforded the same Comfort it's terrifying it is it's it's speechless speechless just trying to
hold myself together now but it's speechless speechless meanwhile in just a few moments here the
Baltimore City Police Department is planning to brief the media of an update in this investigation that is now as you
said Jamie exactly one week old tonight we will bring this press conference to you live as it happens here from City
police headquarters for now we're live at City Police Headquarters in downtown Baltimore this evening Ryan Keebler ABC
2 News [Music] foreign on November 15 2017 detective Sean Suter is 43 years old and an 18-year veteran of the
Baltimore Police Department in Maryland sooner started out as a Beat cop and worked his way up through the ranks to
earn his detective badge he was assigned to the homicide division back in 2016. we should mention
2017 was the third straight year in which Baltimore had more than 300 killings so almost One A Day In fact the
murder rate was so out of control in 2018 City organizers began holding 72-hour cease-fire weekends a time
period when it is not okay to shoot someone busy homicide detectives in Baltimore PD
traditionally work in pairs and the detectives do not wear a uniform but rather a suit and tie I'm sure
everybody's familiar with this this seems to be the protocol most cities furthermore unlike Baltimore police
officers detectives do not wear body cameras on November 15th detective Suitor was not working with his regular
partner Suitor was paired up with a different partner for the day and the two headed out to follow up with a
possible witness on a triple killing from 2016. the area they went to was the 900 block of Bennett place and what the
Baltimore Sun called quote a notoriously violent section of the Harlem Park neighborhood of West Baltimore detective
Suitor was familiar with the Harlem Park neighborhood as he was a patrol officer
there at one time according to the Sun newspaper the facts of the event is this detective Suitor and his partner saw a
man acting suspiciously in a vacant lot the two detectives split up to cover different exits of the block and then
detective Suitor was shot ER suffered one gunshot wound to the head and was rushed to the University of
Maryland Shock Trauma Center the BPD confirmed the shooting at 5 42 PM in an email to the media stating the
police department was gathering details regarding the police involved shooting that occurred at approximately 4 30 pm
at 9 00 PM detective Suitor was in critical condition a news conference featuring Police Commissioner Kevin
Davis outlined the details of the incident without releasing the detective's name according to Davis the
detective approached a man engaged in suspicious behavior in an attempt to speak with him when he was shot
Davis described the attack as spontaneous he continued our 18-year veteran homicide detective was shot in
the head the detective was in very very grave condition and he continues to fight for his life
sadly the detective Sean Suter died the next day on November 16th in the presence of his wife and five children
doctors desperately tried to save the life of the respected officer they knew personally but they were unsuccessful
commissioner Davis released Sean suter's name to the public in a news conference
announcing his death told the media that police found evidence that the suspect was injured
but declined to elaborate on this statement he said police were searching emergency
rooms and doctors offices for anyone with any unexplained injuries the Maryland state flag was lowered to
half staff and within days a reward of two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars was offered for information on the case
in the wake of detective suitor's murder officials from all over Maryland declared that they would make it their
mission to find detective suitor's killer we will find the person responsible for this ridiculous absurd
unnecessary loss of life said commissioner Davis he described detective Suitor as a
wonderful detective husband father and friend Davis employed citizens to help the police bring this heartless ruthless
soulless killer to Justice he asked the immediate investigation so Captain for hours after Suitor was shot police
maintained a wide perimeter around the 900 block of Bennett Place while officers checked nearby homes for the
shooter police helicopters circled overhead looking for suspects the day after the shooting police fanned out
across the neighborhood knocking on doors to ask neighbors if they knew anything about the shooting or the
shooter they corridored off the whole block questioning all the residents and looked in all of the homes there
residents expressed concern that they were often detained when coming and going regardless of probable cause
required to show ID and Pat it down this aggressive zoning off of the area was later declared by the media and public
to be unconstitutional and this lasted for six days after the shooting the lockdown caused complaints from
residents to say the very least which is this is a sticky situation because you don't even these rights to be infringed
on but at the same time you have an officer that was killed in your area trying to protect and serve your area so
it's like you should be a little more Cooperative possibly with this investigation I think describing this as
a sticky situation is spot on by you Captain good job by you it is very difficult and it's difficult for me to
have an opinion on this because on one side I want to say you know what they're looking for a cop killer and we should
do everything we can to find whoever killed this police officer right but at the other hand it's it's tough because I
don't live in that neighborhood you know I've never had my neighborhood blocked off for six six days and be patted down
and asked to show ID every time I come and go from my home in my neighborhood that's infringing on your rights so I I
think you're allowed to have an opinion it sucks on both sides yeah it's yeah it's a terrible situation so who was
Sean Suiter well suitors colleagues remembered him as a Dependable investigator who was often smiling and
that's one thing that in the research here that I found time and time again everybody said how much this guy was he
was always smiling always kind of in a good you know good mannered guy good-natured guy Jonathan Jones suiter's
regular partner said Suitor loved the Dallas Cowboys he was known amongst detectives as face on the street
citizens knew him as yeah that was his his nickname but I guess citizens on the street called him scar now both of this
referred to a facial scar that uh Suiter had and when you put them together you get what Scarface yeah that would have
been the cooler name Rick Willard a retired officer said he meaning Suitor is one of the best officers I've ever
worked with and it breaks my heart former Baltimore prosecutor Jeremy Eldridge called Suitor a man with
Integrity he continues Suitor was one person you would always count on he worked tirelessly to put together very
well thought out cases Suitor was born and raised in Washington DC he enlisted in the Army After High School and served
until 1998. he joined the Baltimore Police Department in 1999 but was called back to serve in Iraq as a member of the
Army Reserves from 2005 to 2007. at the time of his death he lived in York County Pennsylvania about an hour's
commute to Baltimore he was married and had five children it seems like a more common thing lately that these cops
don't live in the areas that they work in they'll actually live an hour or more away
yeah and here's the thing is I I know that in some areas they're required to live in the areas that they serve or
within a certain mile radius of that area that area of the country DC Baltimore heavily congested and you also
have high crime rates in those cities as well and then the nicer neighborhoods extremely expensive to live in so right
I don't know that his salary would provide him a good home in a safe neighborhood in that area I just want to
warn everybody to pay attention because the information that we're going to give
you it kind of trickles out over time but you don't want to forget about the information that happened beforehand
that that's going to play a key role in this case and I'm telling you the more we dive into this case the more that
you're going to think we made this up yeah I mean this case will blow your mind well in the information coming out
in a trickle is is exactly right because from the get-go the police commissioner
he held an unprecedented number of news conferences about the shooting actually there were seven press conferences in
the first 10 days of the investigation yeah and some have wondered why so many press conferences was this an attempt to
control the narrative or the release of information about what happened so here are the details that were officially
released by the Baltimore Police Department concerning the shooting death of detective Suitor this is in the first
10 days Suitor was found in the vacant lot of Bennett Place lying face down police recovered detective suitors
service weapon at the scene it was found underneath his body Suitor had his police radio clutch in his left hand
more than one shot had been fired from suitor's gun detective Suitor had been killed with his own weapon I'll repeat
that detective Suitor had been killed with his own weapon there was evidence that a struggle occurred the detective's
killer might have been injured in the course of that struggle one strange turn of events also came to
light detective Suitor was not transported to the shock trauma center via ambulance instead officers at the
scene put him in a police vehicle and drove him to the hospital which was less than a mile away this presumably to save
time instead of waiting for an ambulance right now unbelievably while enroute this police vehicle got into an accident
colliding With a Civilian car Suter was then transferred to an ambulance at that
scene of the accident and then taken to the shock trauma center let's try to get an understanding of
exactly where detective suitor's body was found he lay on the ground in a vacant lot
between two houses from photos of the scene you can see it looks like almost an Alcove between buildings windows in
the surrounding houses Overlook the lot they appear to be boarded up so there's a lot of vacant homes in this area the
area has been described as a place where drug addicted homeless and squatters would hang out this is an L-shaped lot
that is open to Bennett Place on one side of the lot into Schroeder Street on the other end of the L-shaped lot so
there are two ways to access this vacant lot within days of the shooting a makeshift Memorial of flowers American
flags and mementos sprung up on the corner of the vacant lot in honor of Sean Suiter detective suitors autopsy
was completed within five days of the killing the autopsy officially ruled that his death was a homicide Baltimore
Police investigators returned to the scene of the shooting to investigate further based on what they learned from
the autopsy about the bullet trajectory police said they found additional significant evidence which turned out to
be the Fatal bullet it was lodged in the dirt in the vacant lot and it had detective suitor's DNA on it the
discovery of this bullet in the lot by evidence text appears to some to have been somewhat staged the discovery
happened in front of rolling TV news cameras with what seemed like deliberate displays of the bullet police disclosed
that in total three shots were fired from suter's gun and one of these was a close contact gunshot wound to suiter's
head police said they found no DNA or other evidence at the scene that might lead them to the perpetrator but earlier
reports stated police found evidence that the perp was injured at the scene okay so we have a situation
where the law enforcement officer detective shooter is shot in the head there's three bullets because there's three
shots correct the bullet that hit his head that hit the detective Shooter's head
they possibly when they find the bullet find this and the media's there so they're going to be holding this up
we found the bullet right okay well and the reason why some have stated that they believe it might be
staged is that so the autopsy it took five days they had remember they blocked off that whole area for six days total
after the shooting and what what the people in the public are going well you had this area blocked off for all this
time and you didn't find the bullet until after the autopsy five days later and then when you do find it you're kind
of like I mean it prayed in around well yeah you're almost holding it up like some
kind of trophy or something like that that's very strange yeah but the other key thing there is that they state that
no DNA or other evidence at the scene might lead them to find the perpetrator but we have an earlier statement by
police that stated they found evidence that the perp was injured at the scene so that's conflicting things but they
clean it up a little bit with what they find to be good evidence to steer them in the right direction so
what they found originally that may have led them to believe that the perpetrator
was injured at the scene this turned out to be two blood stains found in the vacant lot one of the blood samples was
determined to have been from an animal and one was from a local junkie who was interviewed and ruled out
so the theory that the suspect had been injured in the struggle turned out to be
baseless Baltimore Police Department they had no suspects in the killing of one of their own well we don't need
blood stains or puddles of blood in this alley what we do have is we do have two
bullets that did not hit detective shooter so were those bullets when we look at those bullets do they
did they hit anybody do they have any DNA evidence on them and I think this would tell us if there was somebody
injured in the attack on detective shooter yeah and you brought that up at the perfect time because the earlier
information that was coming out was just very it was a little vague stating that
there was more than one shot fired from detective suitor's gun it was later determined that three shots were fired
from suitor's own service weapon and this came about when commissioner Davis announced that three shell casings were
recovered that ballistically matched suitor's gun he pointed out that these findings did not necessarily mean that
no other gun was present or was fired but the casings were found very close to suitor's body police also pointed out
pointed to a scuffle mostly because dirt was found on suitor's suit so the conclusion was that detective Suitor was
attacked and overpowered by someone his gun taken or at least controlled and three shots fired with one hitting
Suitor fatally in the head now you were talking about that him and his partner were tracking down a guy that was
suspicious in the area and the report says that they saw someone behaving suspiciously in the area and Suitor
decided to approach this individual right so then I'm assuming at that point that this is our suspect
so do we have a any ID of this guy do we have any a description of the potential suit
shooter or someone who overpowered Sean Suiter right well see this is difficult because like you said we're going off of
probably just a description of this suspicious person there doesn't seem to be any witnesses that actually saw the
shooting or the scuffle take place right but we do have his partner that saw this
suspicious individual mm-hmm in the beginning and this is interesting we also have Baltimore Police Department
they're refusing to release the detective's name that was working with suitor that day it took a while for that
information to come out and they also refused to say what he had told investigators other than the suspect was
a black man wearing a black and white jacket well right but I'm sure that narrows it down quite a bit right but I
think what they're assuming there is hey we have one suspect right now that's probably the guy and then we have one
eyewitness and now that Suitor is dead we don't want to release this information we
don't want to release what he has told us because we don't want a hit put out on this guy you know I mean because
that's your only eyewitness well two weeks after suitor's death The Baltimore Sun released the name of the
detective working with suitor that day and this is detective David bomenka not much is known about this Detective from
what I could find in the papers but reportedly he and detective Suitor worked at least one case together
previous to this shooting this detective was a 10-year Baltimore Police Department veteran then additional
information came out commissioner Davis stated that on the day of the shooting bemenka and Suitor were canvassing the
900 block of Bennett Place while investigating a 2016 triple homicide case now this case was suitor's case
that they were working not bomenka's case they had no particular person of interest in their focus on that day for
that outing according to the commissioner bemenka was also investigating a separate murder case
that he was staffed on the way this reads to me Captain is that they are in this area and they're both
working these cases together by this point because they've now been paired up right you know detectives thank God they
get a day off like everybody else apparently it was suitor's partner's day off apparently he and bomenka were
paired up the day before as well right and when you say he you're talking about Suitor so Suitor and bobenka work
together this would be the second day in a row correct that's my understanding according to the commissioner and this
is this has to have come from bomanca this is his account of what was going on at the time of the shooting the
commissioner says that both detective Suitor and his partner meaning beaumenka saw a person behaving suspiciously there
were two observations of this suspicious person one occurred 20 minutes prior meaning the shooting prior to the
shooting and one occurred just moments before the shooting the detectives did not engage this suspicious person the
first time they saw this person now in between the two sightings the officers were in a different area but to be clear
but Mecca was not in the presence of detective Suitor when the struggle went down or when the shots took place this
case is just getting started but first a quick beer break foreign [Music] cheers mates how about a quick Captain
recap so what we have going on in this case is we have detective Suitor and his partner
go out we have a suspicious individual now we have detective Suitor dead and we have law enforcement saying hey we're
locking down this neighborhood we're going to check anybody coming in and out and we have award money for a possible
cop killer 215 000 for information leading to the perpetrator of the killer of Sean Suiter
in this case continued to be investigated as a homicide with Police pursuing All Leads but startling new
information came to light about two weeks after detective Sean Suter was killed that merged his unsolved murder
case with another high profile case rocking the city of Baltimore this new information suddenly changed the way
people were looking at things and introduced new potential theories regarding suitor's death
on November 30th so 15 days after detective Suitor was shot a Federal grand jury handed down an indictment of
a Baltimore Police sergeant and several officers on the force what was learned is that detective Suitor was scheduled
to testify in front of this grand jury on the day after he was shot so on November 16
2017 Suitor was scheduled to be a witness against Sergeant Wayne Jenkins in the Federal Criminal Case and Suitor
had multiple texts and phone calls with his lawyer in the two days before he was
shot his lawyer was seeking a meeting presumably to discuss his testimony that would never come to be
but even without Suitor the case was a slam dunk Federal prosecutors had the goods on a slew of crooked cops
including wiretapping recordings where the Crooked detectives admitted to various illegal activities including
selling drugs okay now that everything is nice and messy let's talk something through before we go any further because
even though police are looking for a cop killer those outside of the department are saying wait a minute this is a
mysterious death this detective's death is likely more of a mystery than first thought
all right so the most basic breakdown of theories and there are three is this one
Sean Suiter was murdered a suspicious random person killed him to which police gave a vague description of and per the
autopsy determination of homicide police were still pursuing the unknown gunman two
this kind of started with the media Sean Suter may have taken his own life it was
determined he was killed with his service Weapon by close contact gunshot wound and the gun was found under his
body three so then you have what some of the public were thinking Sean Suter was set
to testify against corruption inside the police force and detectives he worked with or for and he was silence and his
death was a hit he was murdered potentially by one of his own right let's look more at detective Wayne
Jenkins the one that was the sergeant who was indicted Jenkins was the supervisor in charge of the gun Trace
task force a group of Baltimore Law Enforcement Officers tasked with getting guns off of the streets
Federal authorities brought down a wide-ranging indictment that alleged members of the task force engaged in a
pattern of corruption including robbing citizens framing people stealing confiscated drugs and then reselling
them they were also falsifying Court reports and earning fraudulent overtime pay
six gun Trace Task Force officers pled guilty to these charges two others did not resulting in their trials
Wayne Jenkins the leader of the gun Trace task force was charged with racketeering conspiracy robbery illegal
use of a firearm well like we talked about on the phone a little bit this seems really when you start investigating this
aspect of the case it very much seems like the movie Training Day yes in in parts of American Gangster as well yeah
and when you watch that movie you think to yourself there is no way this would happen in real life and then you see a
case brought to light like this and you start going well maybe a movie like that hits closer to
home than we would we wish it would yeah and for those of the people listening that are not familiar with Sean suiter's
Case this is not our speculation this happened this is real life it happened we have individuals that pled guilty and
others that were later found guilty so the gun Trace task force was essentially a rogue unit comprised of corrupt
officers disguise is an Elite Force of public protectors according to Vox magazine the police officers in the unit
engaged in a year's Long pattern of criminal activities they set people up for baseless searches they robbed people
of drugs and guns among other things they clocked overtime when they weren't working at all in fact when they were on
vacation or on leave they were billing the department for overtime pay they used illegally placed GPS trackers
to locate and Rob drug dealers and others they planted evidence and filmed themselves finding it well as far as
hold on so as far as the overtime I'm assuming that this is like a task force that is run by itself meaning that if
you let's say I'm the boss right because there's no way I'm working for you but let's just say I'm the boss okay you're
Sergeant Wayne Jenkins in this portion of the story I guess okay say I'm a flaming pile of [ __ ] but
you work for me and you say I'm going on vacation but I want paid well you just submit your timesheet to
me and then I submit it to the department like the head Department yeah because you could sign off on it and
then submit it to to the department right so then if I wanted something done nobody's double checking my work either
so that's kind of how we don't know if these guys were corrupt before they joined the task force but
once they become a part of this task force they go hey we run things a little different here
you want to get paid while you're not working we can help you do that right and and while you're doing that you're
also going to turn the other way why we take drug uh we take drugs from drug dealers and sell them
or or Rob them for their money or whatever right so it's it's a separate unit and I
think that's very important it wasn't like there was a lot of checks and balances to make sure these guys weren't
doing corrupt things right if that makes any sense for the most part it it appears that what they were doing a
large part of what they were doing was stealing from people that had no recourse against the police right you
know they're going after people that are doing Petty crimes selling drugs may you
know making money off of drugs and if you're a drug dealer and I'm a an officer of the law and I go and Shake
You Down and Rob you of all your drug money I mean what are you going to do you're going to go file a police report
saying hey this officer stole my drug money right you know it just it doesn't work out they participated in some home
invasions as well what have been classified as home invasions I'm assuming that's kicking in the door of a
known drug dealer and stealing their weapons money and Drugs in total the gun Trace task force members are suspected
of stealing at least three hundred thousand dollars in cash three kilos of cocaine 43 pounds of marrow marijuana
800 grams of heroin and jewelry worth hundreds of thousands of dollars wow now the indictment of Wayne Jenkins related
among other things to an arrest he made in 2010 on a case where he was partnered
with Sean Suter the two detectives were investigating large-scale drug dealers Suitor and Jenkins became involved in an
unmarked vehicle pursuit of another car driven by one Umar Burley basically Umar Burley says he believed
that the officers were trying to rob him so he fled and now we have a car chase right Burley
crashed into another car the driver of that car was Albert Davis an 87 year old father of a Baltimore Police Officer he
was killed and his wife was seriously injured after the accident Suitor and Jenkins arrested Burley and Jenkins
directed Suitor to search burley's vehicle according to the Federal indictment documents unbeknownst to suit
her Jenkins had planted drugs in burley's car Suter found 28 grams of heroin in the vehicle so this is to
justify the car chase that sends Burley and an associate who was also in the car
to prison for federal drug offenses after suitor's death U.S attorney Stephen schenning said the federal
prosecutors did not get a chance to discuss suitor's testimony with him prior to his death Suiter was offered
limited immunity to testify about Umar Bradley's case but we don't know what else the grand jury would have asked him
about or where his testimony would have led the investigation Police Commissioner Davis held a press
conference and said quote what this indictment outlines in great detail is the fact that Sean Suter wasn't involved
in any way shape or form in any criminal misconduct whatsoever end quote however it appears that Sean Suter was
actually potentially in a lot of trouble there was a federal grand jury investigation into corrupt cops that
extended to the highest levels of the police force sooner worked closely and at length with several of the named
corrupt cops over the course of his career sudo worked extensively with at least three of the officers indicted in
connection with the corruption of the gun Trace task force I know you're speaking English but it doesn't make any
sense to me so what you're saying on one hand is that they're saying Suitor had nothing to do with this the police
commissioner says the police commissioner saying he he did nothing wrong and then but you're also saying hey he
was going to testify and we're going to offer him limited amounts of immunity right meaning well he did something
wrong where they're going to give him immunity for but are there other things that they're not going to give him
immunity for so it's that's very confusing okay so I'm kind of just dissecting this myself
and giving my uh opinion here on what that means my guess is that they spoke to him about some of his testimony what
he was going to be willing to testify towards against these officers right okay so we're going to say you have
immunity on those particular aspects of our investigation however during the course of you your testimony you could
be asked any number of questions that could go outside of the box that could go away from those particular cases
those particular aspects of their investigation yeah in the course of that we may learn new information that now we
figure out you're not completely on the up and up Mr Suitor and right we can pursue charges against you for
information later learned now what the commissioner is is saying in a lot of words based basically when you break
that down is Suter was there to rat out these other officers that his testimony wasn't he
wasn't going to be put on the stand in front of the grand jury because he was under investigation he's
simply going to be there to testify because we need witnesses to this illegal activity a lot of this illegal
activities going down and the only people witnessing it are other corrupt cops right and
criminals known criminals that they are victimizing so basically they're saying once we get you on the stand and we uh
we want the truth and I ask you can you handle the truth and then I tell you that I issued a code red that I still
might go to jail for that right he could be open he could open himself up to investigation per his testimony and
again it's not like it's not a situation where they go okay here's these 10 questions this is what we're going to
ask you and that's it and that's all no it's you are you are there and you are to give us your knowledge of anything we
ask you questions about it could be anything at all right but on top of that we have the chief of police saying hey
based on what we know and based on what we believe that he did not do any illegal criminal activity as
a law enforcement officer correct that's what the commissioner is saying now where people call that into question is
suter's lengthy career stating you know he would have worked with some of these individuals at some point in his career
now let's name a few of them we know he worked with Wayne Jenkins who was pretty
much the ringleader of this of these corrupt cops right he's the Denzel Washington in Training Day yeah he also
worked with or Josh Brolin from uh American Gangster um he also worked with detectives
Maurice ward in Mamadou gando so Ward and gondo both pled guilty to federal charges so now we have to wonder what
that leaves the public wondering about what did Sean Suter know about these illicit activities and his fellow
detectives did he know and just choose to look the other way was he in fact ratting them out like the commissioner
would have us believe or did he participate joining in with these corrupt officers and being in on the
take right or was it again like Training Day what a lot of things that happened was Denzel Washington
character would set up Ethan Hawke's character and say hey go ahead and rent me out go ahead and tell them I did this
and they're going to drug test you and guess what you got PCP in your system so again it could be one of those
situations where we don't know what Suitor is going to say because his suit are going to not say certain things
therefore not incriminating himself does that make sense oh yeah and and just to give you a little thought of
where my feelings were when researching this case right from the get-go in the very beginning I'm like oh my God this
guy was a hero he was a a veteran officer of a well-respected homicide detective out just doing a good job and
he was killed in the line of duty right and then you find out about all this corruption and you start to wonder was
he just another dirty cop in this big story here right and the thing that I had to kind of
remind myself of is what you just talked about training day where Ethan Hawke is
almost forced into a position he never thought he would be in he was he just wanted to be in that drug task force
right and he gets in there and he finds out they're doing illegal activity and Denzel Washington's like you're going to
go along with this right and they're going to force you to we're going to bully you into doing our illegal
activity right and at the end of the day you go oh well Ethan Hawke his character
good guy saves the day but if you go back through that movie there's a lot of stuff that was
incriminating or criminal activity that he took place in and so therefore he could still get in trouble for that
training day I know we're getting sidetracked here but training day is one of my favorite that's a great movie like
King Kong ain't got [ __ ] on me rarely can I go back and watch a movie multiple
times training day I've watched multiple times and here is when you for me this is when I know somebody's like of
extremely fine actor Denzel Washington who I mean I'm a big fan of I've watched many of his movies
but when an actor can become a bad guy when he's playing a bad guy and he's you're not used to him being a bad guy
and he does it so well that you want to punch him in the face that's an actor that's a damn face a
damn fine actor right there in the face I'm going on record right here I want to
punch Denzel Washington's character in the face in the face now today Captain six indicted detectives have pled guilty
and been sentenced the ringleader Wayne Jenkins got 25 years clap clap two detectives who pled not guilty were
convicted by a federal jury on several federal charges here's the other sketchy thing though
here it's unclear whether Sean Suter was ever actually part or a part of the gun
Trace task force there are reports out there that says he was early on but asked to be removed from this task right
again and again look that's a sticky situation because if you are a good cop and you see bad stuff happening
and these guys are doing really bad stuff we're talking about stealing drugs stealing money we're talking about
robbing uh gang members we're talking about robbing drug dealers we're talking about planning
evidence on those people after you arrest them I mean this is some bad stuff so if you're in that situation you
can't just go hey hey uh Sarge uh well I don't like what's going on here huh can
you uh I'm gonna have to arrest you all you know take in hmm no you can't do that you have to go hmm this is some bad
stuff going on let me get out of this department well and here's the thing too when you really
dive into what these corrupt members of the task force were doing it's almost like at some point they became
completely out of control themselves like in Training Day like in American Gangster where these Rogue cops all of a
sudden they they are like you said King Kong ain't got nothing on me there's nobody bigger than me I can do whatever
I want that at some point that is the behavior that took over there's in fact there's one story of these corrupt cops
where they are breaking up a riot okay and the rioters were looting the area and after they broke up the riot and
made some arrest these officers decided to keep and steal basically steal the looted items from
the rioters oh right so if the writers stole TVs and stuff they went yeah and we're not going to give these back well
you just go we can't find it you know we don't know what happened to this so we don't know where those TVs went and if
anybody wants to know what it's like to drink with the kernel all you have to do is watch that scene
of King Kong eight [ __ ] on me that's that I mean that's that's basically a impersonation of you one when you're at
the peak of drunkness I become bulletproof I still think you know listen up people
when you write in and say I'd love to have a beer with the captain you're making a mistake
okay because first of all I like to do the shots you're not going to be able to keep up but second of all I'm not the
party animal of the group it's the colonel he becomes the Kentucky Fried no what's the one extra
Christmas I wish I had that tan if you don't believe me come see us at crime con
uh in New Orleans this year yeah we have our uh our code yeah what's our promo code we have a promo code on our website
and we'll mention that at the end of the show you can get a discount on your crime Con tickets using that code yeah
but anyways the evidence will be at crimecon and you'll see video footage and and pictures and you will know
that the extra crispy kernel is alive and well because that's that's the one you want to party with well but just to
kind of clean this up though yeah you know from an outsider's perspective you have to wonder was you you have one of
two things either Sean Suiter was an awesome cop was very good at his job was a clean cop or you do have there is
enough stuff out there to wonder if he wasn't so on the up and up and a lot of that is a is a leap a lot of that is a
jump but what that comes from is knowing that he worked with at least three of these detectives that were later
convicted yeah but look at these guys that were convicted they got what they deserve time in
person and if detective shooter was a dirty cop he would have got we would have found evidence of this and we would
have and he would have done time and that's what he would have got what he deserved
this is not what he deserved right no matter if he was a dirty cop or not he's all he's killed in the line of duty
and we don't know why or a possible suicide I mean this is very strange well and the way that these
little the way that these gangs work whether they be cop bad cops or real you know street gangs or anything like that
most of the time the way that this works is they bust one guy they get some information from this one
guy he starts talking now they got other people to investigate they start pulling
other people in and these corrupt cops most of them gave a wealth of information about what was going on
that's what led to them pleading guilty to these charges and others being convicted who didn't plead guilty now
out of all of those officers it's my understanding that only one of them was implicating Sean Suter in having any
involvement at all with this group after the November 30th 2017 indictments against members of the gun Trace task
force the U.S attorney's Office filed a petition to vacate the federal convictions of Umar Burley and his
associate those were the two involved in the car chase and later the car accident
that led to the older man's death they vacated this because it was proved that the drugs were planted on them and
that they were not actually guilty of the crimes they were convicted of when the indictments were handed down
commissioner Davis disbanded the gun Trace task force describing the indicted officers as 1930s style gangsters now
three thousand past cases handled by the unit members have been called into question and who knows how many
convictions will be thrown out hundreds have already been vacated clearly Davis did not do a good job the commissioner
of overseeing the police department this is because obviously this Rogue unit was
allowed to run rampant for years under his watch this would eventually end Davis's career but before so
commissioner Davis stated in a press conference that he only learned of suitor's planned grand jury testimony
after suitor's death he also stated that investigating officers found no connection between
detective suitor's murder and his planned testimony he also said that Suitor was not the target of the federal
investigation which was confirmed by the U.S attorney's Office Davis said there was no information he was aware of that
indicated that detective Suitor was anything other than a stellar detective great friend loving husband and great
father commissioner Davis wrote a highly publicized letter to FBI director Christopher Wray
formally requesting that the FBI take over the shooting of detective Suitor investigation Davis said that it was
because he suspected that there was information about the murder that the feds had access to that the Baltimore
Police Department did not FBI involvement was supported by suter's Family Nicole Suter suiter's Widow
apparently told the mayor that she supported the FBI taking over the case yeah and this is because once people
start leaning towards this idea that detective Suitor took his own life this is something that she she welcomed
investigation right but also you're going to have people investigate a case where he was possibly involved in
wrongdoings with other officers and you're going to have that department how can you trust that department
to head this investigation right so okay now the FBI doesn't want to head the investigation yeah so to be clear they
agreed to assist in the investigation but they publicly stated they did not want to lead the investigation but fine
with me right if I'm if I'm a loved one fine with me at least they're involved and if they're involved I'm going to
trust the investigation a lot more this is coming from his his widow which talked to him I believe within an hour
of his death right and so she was on the phone and they were talking about some video where he was you know dancing or
something and somebody took you know caught him dancing and they're making fun of it you know and just joking
around and she just said that he seemed very normal so we have this cop that we it's it's so weird because we have so
many people saying this guy's a good cop and a good and a good dude on top of that his wife is saying he
wasn't suicidal right and then you start going well again do you get any benefits
or is his family going to get any benefits I mean it was it wasn't just him and his wife they had
a lot they had five children a lot of kids so the thing here is you know when when this came forward that this is a
possible suicide rather than a homicide suter's family has been extremely vocal saying we believe it was a homicide we
believe that there's evidence to point that would indicate that it was a homicide
and they've been extremely vocal about that and you know what commissioner Davis is obviously a flawed commissioner
we know that we have this Rogue task force that is out there doing whatever the hell they want under his watch
but I'm sure throughout his career he did do a good deal of good things along the way right now one thing will remind
you I mean there's hundreds of officers so the idea that you have one person that's responsible for all those
officers how anybody gets out of that job with a good name I don't know how it happens
you can't babysit every officer every minute of the day it's you're one person now one thing I think we should give
credit to commissioner Davis for this was before he was fired is requesting the FBI come in and take over this
investigation that to me shows a couple of things it shows smarts on his part because one he wants to be transparent
he knows that he has a police department that is under the scrutiny of the Public's eye which they should be
because they some members we need to be very clear about that some members of the police department were
very much guilty of illegal activities some members were shading that's That's a hardcore fact so commissioner Davis
bringing in the FBI is a couple of things one to be transparent and it could not hurt to have an outside agency
take a good look at this investigation to take a good look at this case and try to solve it for them yeah and then
on the other spectrum of it too you know like I said if you commit suicide I don't think you're getting
I don't think the officer's family is going to get support I don't think they're going to get certain benefits
but if he is killed on the line of duty they're taken care of and pretty well so
then one could argue are they just saying hey it's impossible that he'd kill himself
because they benefit from that and that's something that you have to look into I Believe by watching and the
interviews with his widow that she she just wants the truth to be told right I don't think she cares about the benefits
or not well after commissioner Davis was eventually fired he was replaced as police commissioner in January of 2018
by veteran Daryl D'Souza de Sousa lasted less than six months as the police commissioner he stepped down in May
after being indicted for federal tax evasion one thing desousa did before he departed he set up an independent review
board to look into the unsolved killing of detective Suitor so thanks everybody for joining us in
the garage today we'll be right back at you tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't litter
foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Detective Sean Suiter /// Part 1 /// 276

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

Veteran Police Officer and Homicide Detective Sean Suiter was shot and killed while on duty in the murder plagued inner city of Baltimore. His case remains the longest unsolved murder of a Baltimore Police Officer. But the crime scene and the events surrounding shooting raise serious questions and many in the public are demanding the truth. This week we discuss the death of Detective Sean Suiter. Beer of the Week - Captain’s Log Lager by Cameron’s Brewing Garage Grade - 4 out of 5 Bottle Caps

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Brief Summary

Detective Sean Suiter was murdered days before testifying against corrupt officers, raising questions about police corruption and the investigation into his death.

Key points

Detective Sean Suitor's Murder. Detective Suitor, a dedicated officer, was tragically shot in the line of duty.
Investigation Update. A week after Suitor's murder, the investigation is ongoing with no suspects identified.
Conflicting Evidence. Initial reports suggested the suspect was injured, but later evidence contradicted this claim.
Detective Suitor's Mysterious Death. Detective Sean Suitor was killed just before he was to testify against police corruption.
Corruption in the Police Force. A grand jury indictment reveals a pattern of corruption among Baltimore police officers.
Detectives Indicted. Six detectives have pled guilty, with ringleader Wayne Jenkins sentenced to 25 years.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's terrifying. It's speechless, just trying to hold myself together now.

5:07WatchNov 22, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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Detective Sean Suiter /// Part 1 /// 276 | Forensic Files