Calling the punishment disproportionately severe and saying the case should be appealed to the Supreme Court, a federal judge sentenced rogue Baltimore police detective William King on Friday to more than 315 years in prison.
King said before his sentence that he was being hung out to dry by a police department that once celebrated his work. He said he was driven by ongoing pressure filtering down from the mayor, to the commissioner and through the department to build bigger investigations and arrest as many people as possible.
“Yes, officers are trained to break the rules,” he said.
Nobody in the department would confirm those things now, King said in the courtroom. But he insisted, as he had previously on the stand at trial, that he was taught through superiors to break the rules. “Was it worth it? The answer is no.”
“I totally discredit the idea that what you did was pursuant to accepted” departmental policy, U.S. District Judge Frederick Motz countered. Motz said there was “something fundamentally wrong” with the consecutive, 25-year sentences.
King was convicted in April by a federal jury of conspiring with co-defendant Antonio Murray to run a criminal enterprise out of their unmarked cars, shaking down suspects they stopped and dealing drugs through their informants. Their tactics became so notorious that they were mentioned by name in the “Stop Snitchin? ” DVD.
Paul Blair, the president of the department?s union dismissed King?s defense, saying he was just seizing on current allegations against the department. Baltimore police have faced criticism recently that pressure on officers has led to thousands of illegal arrests and cases that are never pursued in court.
“There?s a difference between feeling pressure to make lockups and becoming a criminal,” Blair said, calling King?s conviction “another black mark” for the department. “I think that?s typical of a criminal, blaming everybody else.”
Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm said in a prepared statement that “justice was served.”
“People like William King have no place in the Baltimore City Police Department, and never will,” he said.
Defense attorney Edward Smith said King would file an appeal. Michael Jenson, King?s cousin and a Baltimore firefighter, described King as a good person who “felt he was doing the right thing” and was snagged by departmental politics.
