Successful plainclothes policing is dependent on an officer being taken at his word. After the death of Freddie Gray in 2015 and the U.S. Justice Department report that found widespread civil rights abuses by Baltimore police, trust in the police department seemed at an all-time low.

But an investigation by The Baltimore Sun found that the officers of the Gun Trace Task Force still had trust where it mattered most: within the police department, among the prosecutors who took their cases and with the judges who presided over the outcomes.

Jenkins had arrested Stevenson just before he was made head of the Gun Trace Task Force in the summer of 2016. Under Jenkins’ leadership, he and six members of his squad of Baltimore police officers operated as a criminal enterprise raking in tens of thousands of dollars from the monster dealers they targeted.

It was the perfect crime. No one would believe a suspect who said he’d been robbed by the cops. And there was no gain in admitting that you had possessed drugs and cash — a lot more, in fact, before the officers took some.