THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503050048
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Second of two parts
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Long : 240 lines
Drug kingpin Fernando Blow had a plan. A federal task force investigating heroin sales in the city had just arrested his brother Antonio. He knew the feds would soon come after him and other gang members.
So he embarked on a classic scheme of diversion. He planted seeds in investigators' minds that certain policemen were corrupt, taking drugs or money for information. When it became apparent that undercover officer Patricia Larson would be the main witness against Antonio, both brothers focused on her.
It was 1988, and the task force - composed of federal, state and local narcotics agents - was dismantling a $20 million Portsmouth drug ring accounting for most of the region's heroin sales. Over the next two years, the campaign would lead to the conviction of about 15 dealers, five of them sentenced to life without parole.
While this was happening, the Blows - and other dealers under investigation - orchestrated chaos among task force investigators and within the Portsmouth Police Department. While Portsmouth officers investigated Larson, the FBI investigated Portsmouth officers. In time, then-Chief Joseph S. Koziol would say that the rumors of police corruption damaged the department's reputation and morale.
No police officer was ever charged. Yet the corruption probes turned cop against cop, friend against friend, brother against brother. Court records, police tapes and interviews reveal that the probes were apparently fueled and manipulated by the tales of dealers bent on saving themselves.
``There never was no crooked cops, never no cops on the take,'' Fernando Blow said in a recent telephone interview from prison. ``No one but Patti Larson,'' he alleged. However, though accused of corruption by Antonio Blow during testimony in his drug trial, she was never charged.
``I sat down and figured that if I could get all those parties going after each other, it'd start something,'' Fernando Blow said in the interview. ``They'd all be distrusting each other till something shook loose. . . . I was just trying to save my brother.''
If anything, the chaos engineered by the dealers highlights a flaw in the strategy federal authorities adopted since the war on drugs escalated in the late 1980s. During that time, prosecutors began dismantling entire drug rings rather than simply targeting individuals. But doing so would be impossible without help from former gang members willing to ``snitch'' on their friends.
In the Portsmouth investigation, the search for truth fell victim when informants took the lead. Snitches lied to make better deals; police officers were investigated on the strength of an informant's changing word.
Now, many of these convictions have been slashed, and others convicted of drug crimes may get new hearings in federal court because of secret conjugal visits granted to convicted drug supplier Gary Weathers, the task force's main informant. Defendants' rights to fair trials were violated when the government failed to reveal in court Weathers' trysts.
``You find out fast, in the federal system, that you're on your own,'' Weathers recently said. ``They tell you from the start, `You're getting life unless you cooperate,' and your only chance to cut your time is informing. The better your information, the better deals you make. If the truth gets bent, well. . . ?''
The Portsmouth department already was primed for scandal when drug dealers began targeting police.
In 1984, Koziol was named chief, replacing E. Ronald Boone, who had been convicted of mail fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice and sentenced to a year in federal prison. Federal authorities still believed the department had a ``systemic problem'' with corruption, agents have said.
There also were rumors on the street of at least four officers being paid off by dealers. Unable to come up with any evidence, the department asked the task force to investigate when it started targeting the Blows.
That year, the task force, headed by FBI Special Agent James L. Watters, investigated the rumors. None of the four officers was charged, but their names were made public by a task force member in Antonio Blow's trial. The four officers, who were black, later complained that the investigation was racially motivated.
These four were not the department's only problem, said Sgt. Wilbor Gavin, then Portsmouth's liaison with the task force. Information about the task force's case against the Blows was leaking onto the street, he said.
``A federal investigation is under the purview of the grand jury - they decide who is eligible to get information (about drug indictments) and who isn't,'' Gavin said. ``When we started to get information that the Portsmouth police were involved, we told Koziol. Two days later, that information came back to us from the street.''
Antonio Blow's arrest on Aug. 17, 1988, would bring this into the open. That day, task force members arrested Blow as he drove from a restaurant on Military Highway. Agents seized a plastic bag containing 7 1/2 ounces of heroin, worth $1.5 million. He had given it to Larson earlier in the week for what he thought was safekeeping. Instead, she alerted the task force, who closed in.
Larson and Antonio Blow met earlier that summer in the County Street area, the city's downtown drug market. He asked for her aid; she gained his confidence by assuming the guise of a corrupt police officer. All was done with the task force's knowledge, she later testified.
But immediately after Blow's arrest, rumors about Patti Larson began. Dealers said she slept with Blow, that she was in his pay. Larson maintained she was not corrupt, but working under task-force orders. In court, her name would be cleared by a federal judge. Gavin, her control agent, still staunchly defends her.
But the campaign of Fernando Blow forever turned many officers against her.
Fernando made his first move on Aug. 19, two days after his brother's arrest. It was the same day a Portsmouth grand jury released an indictment list of 18 suspected drug dealers. Yet when narcotics agents hit the streets to make arrests, they found only three dealers. Word had gotten out.
No one understood what happened until later that day when Fernando called a reporter and named eight people on the list but refused to identify the source.
Three days later, on Aug. 22, Fernando set up a late-night meeting with narcotics investigator Robert Smith in the mud flats off Victory Boulevard.
Smith was wired for sound. Five Portsmouth officers listened in as Fernando drove up in a Lincoln Continental with two handguns and an Uzi in the front.
Blow launched into a tale that chilled Smith and the other officers who were listening. Blow said he knew Smith was ``sweet on'' Larson, that the two worked together on drug arrests. He related a conversation in Smith's truck that only Smith, Larson and her roommate could know. All was true, Smith said.
Then Fernando said Larson and Antonio were lovers. Larson was ``taking paper,'' or accepting payoffs, he said. ``The girl is rotten to the core.''
``How do you think that grand jury list got out?'' Fernando asked.
Smith said he didn't know.
Fernando was gloating. Smith told Larson about the list over dinner, he said. Larson told Antonio, who then told Fernando.
Antonio apparently told other people the same tale. Gary Weathers said during a recent interview that Antonio told him the same story. Antonio also testified to this during his trial.
Fernando dropped two other bombs that night on the mud flats. There was a leak among the police command, he said. And the FBI was investigating Smith. Police records and interviews reveal that Fernando's information was correct.
When the narcotics officers returned to headquarters, they were stunned, interviews show. They debated among themselves what to do, then decided to make several copies of the tape for safekeeping. They also decided to play the tape for Koziol when he returned from vacation.
Koziol heard the tape on Aug. 24. It was the first time he learned that Larson worked undercover for the feds. Upset and bewildered, he told the officers to ``go ahead with the investigation'' of Larson, several investigators recalled.
Fernando's scheme had worked: Larson was under suspicion. Now there were two corruption investigations: one by the task force, one of the task force's best witnesses. The department and the feds were headed for a collision.
Soon, Larson filed a report claiming her police locker had been broken into and that some paperwork had been stolen. Smith also began calling Larson, trying to get her to talk. Each officer taped the other.
Then Smith learned Antonio Blow might own nude photos of Larson. When he went to Blow's house, his wife said the photos existed, but she refused to show them without the permission of Antonio's lawyer, Martin Bullock.
On Aug. 30, Smith and his supervisor called on Bullock. They asked for the photos, explaining that the department was investigating Larson. Smith also mentioned the taped conversations between him and Larson.
Bullock called the federal prosecutor, demanding the tapes. The prosecutor called Watters.
Schooled as a lawyer, Watters was savvy enough to know when his case was endangered. He rushed to Bullock's office and confronted the two Portsmouth investigators. He demanded the tapes, but they refused, saying they were ordered by Koziol to investigate. Watters said they could be charged with obstruction of justice. The two detectives wouldn't back down.
The next day, Watters went to Koziol. When the meeting was over, Koziol ordered his narcotics officers to hand over the tapes and halt the investigation of Patti Larson - or face suspension.
The Portsmouth Police Department's corruption probe was officially killed.
Not so the FBI's. In the months that followed, the task force's investigation intensified.
More Portsmouth police would be scrutinized. Smith would be audited by the IRS, his calls traced. He would be investigated by the task force and the department's internal affairs division. A uniformed officer who worked with Larson had his calls traced after talking to Larson about Antonio's arrest. The officer's two roommates, also police officers, also had their calls traced, as did a police lieutenant.
``James Watters was obsessed with catching a dirty cop,'' Gary Weathers recalled. ``He told me once how the thing that got him most interested in the case was the possibility of catching a dirty cop in the Portsmouth Police Department. He hated the idea. `You're either one side or the other,' he'd say. `You can't work both sides.' ''
Even Gavin, Watters' right-hand man, was not immune. At the height of the probe, Watters targeted Gavin's brother, veteran narcotics investigator Milo Gavin.
Once again, it apparently was the doing of Fernando Blow.
``It happened when we were talking to Fernando's wife,'' Wilbor Gavin said. ``Back when all the witnesses were naming people taking bribes, Milo's name didn't come up. But the day after we interviewed her, she called me back. . .
Milo Gavin learned of the investigation when a family member who worked at his bank called in a panic. He was being audited by an FBI agent named James Watters, the relative said.
In a rage, Milo called his brother. Afterwards, the two did not speak for a long time.
Ultimately, no Portsmouth officers were charged. The leak was never identified or disproved. Portsmouth officers called Watters' investigation a witch hunt. FBI officials said Watters was only doing his job.
``We take corruption investigations very seriously,'' Larry E. Torrence, special agent in charge of the Norfolk FBI office, said late last month. ``We have to be aggressive. . . . I expect an agent to be aggressive in that situation.''
Blow's trial that October was sensational. He charged that Larson was the corrupt cop she pretended to be. He gave salacious testimony about purported sexual escapades with her, and he cast suspicions on other Portsmouth officers.
It did him no good. Judge Robert G. Doumar called Blow a ``parasite,'' gave him 25 years in prison without parole and cleared Larson's name.
Yet many Portsmouth officers weren't convinced. Several agents tried unsuccessfully to transfer when they learned that Larson was coming to work with them in the narcotics squad. One former friend quit the force when told he had to work with her or resign.
``I think morale is certainly hurt,'' Koziol said the day after Blow's conviction. ``We've worked hard to keep our department clean. I would hate to think this . . . would have any significant impact in the long run.''
Reminders of the case still spring up almost every day, Larson said recently. Many Portsmouth officers still believe she was corrupt. Even Larson acknowledges that if the Portsmouth investigation had been allowed to run its course, questions of her guilt or innocence might have been put to rest. Maybe the leak near the top would have been discovered or disproved.
``The one thing I learned was who my friends were,'' she said. ``But there's one thing I always thought was funny: Why were people readier to believe a drug dealer than a police officer?''
Many people still wonder. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
Photos
Since the late 1980s, federal authorities have targeted entire
criminal rings rather than individuals in their continuing War on
Drugs. To do this, they needed help from gang members willing to
snitch on their friends. Yet this created a strange co-dependency
between cops and criminals. The search for truth fell victim when
drug dealers took the lead.
Antonio Blow's drug arrest on Aug. 17, 1988, prompted his brother
to embark on a scheme of diversion, planting seeds in investigators'
minds that some policemen were corrupt, taking drugs or money for
information.
Patricia Larson, an undercover police officer in Portsmouth and
the key witness against Antonio Blow, became the main object of the
Blow brothers' campaign to confuse federal, state and local
narcotics agents.
KEYWORDS: DRUG RINGS DRUG ARREST HEROIN
POLICE CORRUPTION PORTSMOUTH POLICE DEPARTMENT by CNB