BALTIMORE — A federal jury found former Baltimore Police Detective Robert Hankard guilty on corruption and conspiracy charges Monday, including allegations he conspired with others to plant a BB gun on a man in 2014 after another officer had run over them with their car.
Hankard’s conviction ends the criminal portion of the gun planting incident. A civil suit against Hankard and others involved is still pending. Hankard’s prosecution spun out of the larger federal investigation in the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force.
Hankard was hired to the Baltimore Police Department in 2007 and spent the second half of his career as a detective in specialized drug investigation squads. Hankard made $107,411.97 in fiscal year 2019, his last full year of employment, on a base salary of $81,464, according to city employment records.
He did not testify in his trial and remains out of custody until his sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.
Hankard’s Attorney David Benowitz spent most of his closing argument trying to cast doubt on the testimony from former Baltimore police Sgt. Keith Gladstone. Gladstone, who was Hankard’s supervisor, took a plea deal in 2019 for his role in the gun planting plot — Gladstone is the one who actually planted the gun — and has yet to be sentenced.
Gladstone’s deal included a cooperation agreement that could lessen his eventual sentence if he told prosecutors what he knew and testified on the stand about his involvement in crime and corruption inside the Baltimore Police Department.
Gladstone admitted to a number of serious crimes on the stand, including robbing suspects and selling drugs, but was protected from self-incrimination with an immunity agreement. He provided key testimony in the case against Hankard, saying Hankard gave Gladstone and another officer, Carmine Vignola, the BB gun Gladstone would eventually plant.
The man police ran over, Demetric Simon, has filed a civil complaint against Hankard, the other Baltimore Police Department officers involved in framing him and the department as a whole.
The officers were looking to help Wayne Jenkins after he ran down Simon. Jenkins headed the GTTF and pleaded guilty to crimes similar to the ones Gladstone admitted to.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise said in his rebuttal to Benowitz that jurors knew they did not have to solely rely on Gladstone in order to convict Hankard because each of the government’s allegations is supported either by other testimony or by corroborating evidence.
Subpoenaed to testify, Vignola said Hankard did give them the BB gun but that he did not want to be there testifying.
Vignola pleaded guilty in 2019 to lying to the grand jury about his and Hankard’s involvement in the gun planting scheme. As part of his plea agreement, Vignola had to agree to certain facts in the case, including where the BB gun came from. Prosecutors claimed Vignola called Hankard to request the gun and Hankard agreed because they were partners.
“In the twisted logic at the Baltimore Police Department, that’s what these cops do for each other,” Wise said.
In addition to the gun planting incident, Hankard was accused of lying in 2015 on search warrant affidavits and police reports to cover up times he violated people’s constitutional protections against unwarranted searches and seizures.
In both instances, Hankard filed police reports and affidavits stating officers had not entered a residence, when in both occasions they had. Benowitz acknowledged to jurors the inaccuracies in the reports but said they didn’t amount to a crime because they didn’t make a material difference in the substance of the reports. In both instances, the suspects arrested did have large amounts of drugs in the residences and had been the subject of lengthy Baltimore police investigations Hankard was directing.
In one of the reports, Hankard appeared to have forged a sergeant’s signature. Recently retired police Sgt. Joseph Landsman testified he didn’t sign the report in question and wouldn’t have because it was inaccurate. Vignola testified it was common practice for BPD officers to sign off on each other’s reports in place of their sergeants.
In the other search warrant issue, prosecutors focused on whether Hankard knew drugs had been planted in a suspect’s truck to help justify their arrest and subsequent search of their motel room. Gladstone admitted to planting the drugs during his testimony and said Hankard knew he had planted them.
Hankard’s lawyers denied that was the case and pointed to Gladstone’s previous statements to prosecutors where he told them no one knew he planted the drugs.
The suspect, Douglas Brooks, testified in court he didn’t have any heroin in his truck, only in the motel room, the inside of which officers had not seen.
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