Crooked Cops: Cheers for drug deal seen on videos

Tapes played in court show 3 Hub officers; defense assails case
By Shelley Murphy and Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff
Boston Globe
Aug. 09, 2006

A grainy black and white videotape played before a packed courtroom yesterday showed Boston police Officer Carlos Pizarro sipping champagne in North Miami, celebrating what federal prosecutors say was a just-completed drug delivery. A voice that authorities identified as Officer Roberto Pulido could be heard off-camera discussing plans for the Boston officers to take on even bigger shipments of cocaine and heroin in coming weeks.

``How much can you handle?" asked an undercover FBI agent posing as a drug dealer.

``What can be brought down . . . four, five, six?" Pulido said, referring to hundreds of kilograms of cocaine.

``We can do 500 [kilograms] of coke," the agent replied.

``That's what I wanna see," Pulido said.

On another tape prosecutors played, Officer Nelson Carrasquillo, in a hotel in Coral Gables, Fla., promised that he and the other officers wouldn't get flashy with the cash they are taking in from guarding drug shipments. He didn't want to involve anybody else and attract attention, Carrasquillo said.

``My thing is, I'd rather keep it like this," he was recorded telling an undercover FBI agent. ``I don't want to bring too many people in, too many people knowing our business. Like you said, we run a chance of someone turning into Al Capone."

The tapes were played before the distraught families and supporters of the three officers, who were arrested last month in a corruption case that has rocked the Boston Police Department. All three were arrested after the Coral Gables meeting July 20 and charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 100 kilograms of cocaine.

At the outset of yesterday's bail hearing, lawyers who were retained by Pulido and Pizarro over the past few days said they were unprepared to counter the government's request to jail the officers without bail. US Magistrate Judge Joyce London Alexander agreed to continue their hearings until Aug. 18. After going forward with Carrasquillo's hearing, she took the question of bail under advisement.

All three are in federal custody, though prosecutors did not disclose where.

After the hearing, a lawyer for Pulido, 41, the alleged ringleader, denounced the case as a ``witch hunt."

Defense lawyer Rudy Miller described a witness who is cooperating with prosecutors and who was central to the 2 1/2-year investigation of the officers, as a drug dealer, a murder suspect, and ``an absolute scoundrel."

``Obviously, he is in trouble himself and looking to set up other individuals and escape whatever charges he was facing," Miller said.

Miller said reports that Pulido has cooperated with authorities since his arrest are not true.

``He maintains his innocence and looks forward to defending these charges," Miller said.

Miller also said it was ``absolute nonsense" that Pulido, as federal prosecutors allege, was paid $600 a night to protect illegal after-hours parties above a Hyde Park automotive garage and boasted that he gave money to superiors in the Boston Police Department.

Pulido came to the attention of investigators after his name surfaced in a probe of an identity theft operation in 2003, prosecutors say. A person involved in that operation cooperated with federal investigators, and the probe expanded. Investigators say they found that Pulido was involved in a range of criminal activities, including insurance fraud, the after-hours club, and planting evidence.

In court yesterday, FBI Special Agent Michael Kreizenbeck testified that, after Pulido's arrest, the 10-year veteran officer confessed that he knew he was being hired to protect shiploads of cocaine and had carried his Boston police badge, radio, and firearm while guarding the drugs. Pulido said he had done it, the FBI agent testified yesterday, because he was ``getting back at the Boston Police Department" after he tested positive for cocaine in a department-ordered drug test in 1999 that he felt was inaccurate.

As the FBI agent testified, Pulido shook his head in disagreement. His lawyer said Pulido maintains that he never used illegal narcotics and that his 1999 drug test was doctored.

All three officers were led into US District Court in Boston yesterday morning in prison uniforms, shackled and handcuffed, each of them looking grim.

The small courtroom was packed early with FBI agents, Boston police officers who had assisted the investigation, and the officers' family and friends. About two-dozen supporters of the officers waited in the hallway.

Carrasquillo's wife of 14 years, Sandra, sat in the front row with the couple's 13-year-old son, and Carrasquillo's father and brothers. She mouthed, ``I love you" to her husband.

While yesterday's testimony included evidence against all three officers, the proceedings focused on Carrasquillo, 35, because his lawyer was prepared to argue for his release on bail. The lawyer, Stephen Neyman, argued that his client is a solid member of the Dorchester community and not a flight risk. Carrasquillo's father-in-law, who is a minister, offered to give him a job at a Dorchester church if he is released, the lawyer said.

Neyman said his client had received five commendations while serving on the police force, which he joined seven years ago.

Assistant US Attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn told the judge that Carrasquillo is a flight risk because of the seriousness of the crime.

``He has a pretty good chance of spending the rest of his life in prison or a pretty good chunk of that," Auerhahn said.

Pizarro's lawyer, Jeffrey Denner, told reporters that Pizarro, 36, of Dorchester is entitled to be released and will be mounting a strong defense.

The three were arrested after each officer allegedly accepted $12,000 at the Coral Gables meeting for escorting a shipment of what they thought was 100 kilograms of cocaine from Western Massachusetts into Boston June 8. Prosecutors allege that Pulido provided his Jamaica Plain garage as a venue for the transfer of the drugs between undercover agents posing as buyer and seller.

On the videotape, the agents told the officers that their upcoming deals would bring them many more tens of thousands of dollars. They would be paid $250,000 for escorting 500 kilograms of cocaine, they were told, and $15,000 for 5 kilograms of heroin. On the video, the officers appeared enthusiastic about their new deal.

The agent urged Pulido and Pizarro not to be showy with their new wealth. ``I have stressed that already to them, to the guys," Pulido said.