Herald Article

An undercover Miami police officer who faced prison time is turning on his former boss, as the FBI investigates alleged drug-dealing and corruption by plainclothes cops.

BY JAY WEAVER
JWEAVER@MIAMIHERALD.COM
When FBI agents questioned Miami undercover cop Roberto Asanza on May 25, 2010, they found a dozen bags of cocaine and marijuana stashed in a CD box in the cabin of his truck.
Asanza, an ex-Marine, admitted he kept the drugs after seizing them from a dealer he and his boss had busted at a window-tinting shop in Allapattah weeks earlier.
Rather than arrest Asanza for not turning in and reporting the evidence, the agents flipped him. He agreed to wear a wire to help them go after a much bigger fish — the boss, Miami Police Sgt. Raul Iglesias — in a rare instance of cop turning on fellow cop.
The recorded meeting that same day between a half-hearted Asanza and his veteran supervisor produced nothing of real value. A year later, the feds finally popped Asanza on felony drug-trafficking charges.
Flash forward to last week: Facing trial, Asanza, 32, pleaded guilty in Miami federal court to a much-less serious misdemeanor charge of possessing small amounts of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. The Coral Park High graduate, who had served six years on the force, has to resign, turn over all police certifications and faces up to one year in prison.
But he is expected to serve limited time because he has again agreed to cooperate with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in the investigation of 39-year-old Sgt. Iglesias, according to his plea agreement.
The sergeant, an 18-year Miami police veteran who ran the Central District’s Crime Suppression Unit targeting drug-trafficking, was suspended with pay in 2010. Iglesias, like Asanza, is suspected of confiscating drugs and money from street dealers, and using some of those illegal proceeds to pay off confidential informants. They also are suspected of selling the drugs.
Iglesias’ attorney William Matthewman called the allegations “ludicrous,” pointing out that the sergeant and his undercover unit worked part of the time on a joint task force with FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration undercover agents.
“In fact, his day-to-day partner in this undercover investigation was an FBI agent who rode in the same car with him,” Matthewman said. “It would make no sense to allege that Raul Iglesias committed any wrongdoing while he was partnered with the FBI agent.”
He added: “He has done absolutely nothing wrong and welcomes any fair investigation because it will exonerate him.”
Details of the FBI’s investigation into Iglesias, who also is the target of a Miami Police Internal Affairs probe, surfaced in the parallel federal case against Asanza.
After Asanza’s arrest in early June of last year, the officer was at first defiant toward the FBI and seemingly loyal to his former boss, Iglesias, court documents show.
“You guys are only arresting me because you couldn’t do your job right and get enough on Sarge,” according to a summary of Asanza’s statement to the FBI on June 2, 2011. “You tried to flip me, and I wouldn’t. That’s the only reason you’re arresting me.”
The one-time undercover cop recently changed his tune, however, because if convicted at trial later this month he would have faced up to 20 years in prison. He cut his plea deal on Wednesday. His attorney, Brandine Powell, declined to comment.
Just days before that decision, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ricardo Del Toro issued a not-so-subtle warning to Asanza and his lawyer about his plans for trial: “The government intends to introduce evidence of various allegations of police corruption against Sgt. Raul Iglesias to provide a context for the FBI’s initiation of the investigation of this case, including an anonymous letter to Miami Police Department’s Internal Affairs,” he said in a court document.
The anonymous letter cited by Del Toro was written by other undercover Miami police officers who worked in Iglesias’ unit and complained about him, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
Miami police officials declined to comment about the internal investigation, which is still open.
The first public hint of scandal in Iglesias’ Crime Suppression Unit, an undercover squad that targets drug dealers and other violent criminals, surfaced when Asanza was arrested in June 2011 — a full year after he had been stopped by FBI agents.
According to a criminal complaint and affidavit, Asanza and another police officer identified only as “R.I.” had recruited a confidential informant to work with the squad in January 2010. R.I is Raul Iglesias.
The confidential informant tipped off R.I. and Asanza about a dealer who sold drugs at the window-tinting shop at 3233 NW Seventh Ave. in Allapattah.
On May 5, 2010, R.I., Asanza and other undercover officers arrested a man identified as “L.R.” at the tint shop and confiscated cocaine and marijuana along with cash. Court records show his name is Luis Roman.
Almost three weeks later, FBI agents questioned Asanza. On May 25, 2010, Asanza let them search his truck, where agents found 10 bags of cocaine and two bags of marijuana. Asanza admitted to the agents that the drugs were taken from the tint shop dealer.
Separately, Asanza also admitted he had two bags of heroin seized from another suspect whom he had stopped but not arrested.
In October 2010, Asanza admitted to FBI agents that both he and R.I. “took custody of the drugs and money” from the tint-shop dealer, according to the affidavit. Asanza also admitted that on the day of the dealer’s arrest, he “paid” the informant with one or two bags of cocaine seized from the suspect. Asanza said the payoff went down in his truck, with him in the driver’s seat, R.I. in the passenger seat and the informant in the back seat.
“Asanza admitted that he knew it was wrong to give drugs to the CI, but that he was trying to build a rapport with the CI,” FBI special agent Ivonne Alduende wrote in the affidavit.
In a sworn statement last year, the informant told Miami police investigators that after the arrest of the tint-shop dealer, both Asanza and R.I. gave him the two bags of cocaine and $80 cash.
As part of his cooperation deal with the feds, Asanza is expected to testify about Iglesias’ alleged involvement in that illegal payoff to the informant.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/04/2 ... rylink=cpy

these guys screwed up, but they're no river cops.

seems to me all they were doing was using the drugs and money to help make other/better arrest. they didn't pocket the cash or sell the drugs themselves, they used the stuff to pay off CI's and such....such a big deal out of nothing.

these guys screwed up, but they're no river cops.

seems to me all they were doing was using the drugs and money to help make other/better arrest. they didn't pocket the cash or sell the drugs themselves, they used the stuff to pay off CI's and such....such a big deal out of nothing.

Pal your moral and professional compasses are seriously skewed! Recalibrate them or get out of the vocation before you too succumb to the dark side.

these guys screwed up, but they're no river cops.

seems to me all they were doing was using the drugs and money to help make other/better arrest. they didn't pocket the cash or sell the drugs themselves, they used the stuff to pay off CI's and such....such a big deal out of nothing.

Your rationale equates to "Noble Cause Corruption." If it is as you say, "such a big deal out of nothing," you go out and do it and let's see if you don't head to the pokey...

Politicians steal millions if not billions from taxpayers in Miami and the feds are taking 2-3 years trying to figure out what to do in this sorry case. How much is this costing taxpayers. I dont condone criminal activity or paying off informants with drugs but come on with all the corruption in Miami??

Time is ticking . Soon the rat or rats that wrote the so-called anonymous letter will be named During the trial phase.
Don't think that many of us don't already know who you are.
I.A. also has loose lips !
Once the name or names are public you will be scarred and black listed. for the rest of you careers.
Yea yea yea you deem me corrupt too. Yada yada yada.
I'm straight as an arrow, but hate rats.

Its incredible the lies one will come up with to keep their weekends off and a rental car. This is shocking and unreal, what have we come down to. I bet the lying rats are the few that were in the process of getting kicked out of the unit by the sarge for no productivity and borderline cowardice in the field. How can you look at your self in the mirror each day.

Time is ticking . Soon the rat or rats that wrote the so-called anonymous letter will be named During the trial phase.
Don't think that many of us don't already know who you are.
I.A. also has loose lips !
Once the name or names are public you will be scarred and black listed. for the rest of you careers.
Yea yea yea you deem me corrupt too. Yada yada yada.
I'm straight as an arrow, but hate rats.

Rats!? I hope I never to have to work with you.

Time is ticking . Soon the rat or rats that wrote the so-called anonymous letter will be named During the trial phase.
Don't think that many of us don't already know who you are.
I.A. also has loose lips !
Once the name or names are public you will be scarred and black listed. for the rest of you careers.
Yea yea yea you deem me corrupt too. Yada yada yada.
I'm straight as an arrow, but hate rats.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In 1959, Frank Serpico joined the NYPD. He was assigned to work plainclothes later during his career where he met with widespread corruption. Serpico's career as a plainclothes police officer working in Brooklyn and the Bronx to expose vice racketeering was short-lived because he consistently avoided taking part in the corruption. To expose those who did, Serpico risked his own life and safety. In 1967, he reported credible evidence of widespread systematic police corruption. However, the bureaucracy slowed down his efforts, until he connected with another officer, David Durk, who helped him in his anti-corruption efforts. Serpico believed that his fellow partners knew about secret meetings that took place with police investigators. With no place left to go, Serpico contributed to an April 25, 1970, New York Times front-page story on widespread corruption in the New York City Police Department. This forced Mayor John V. Lindsay to take action by appointing a five-member panel to investigate police corruption. This panel ultimately became the Knapp Commission, named for its chairperson, Whitman Knapp.

In October, and again in December 1971, Serpico testified before the Knapp Commission:
“Through my appearance here today...I hope that police officers in the future will not experience...the same frustration and anxiety that I was subjected to...for the past five years at the hands of my superiors...because of my attempt to report corruption. I was made to feel that I had burdened them with an unwanted task. The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist...in which an honest police officer can act...without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers. Police corruption cannot exist unless it is at least tolerated...at higher levels In the department. Therefore, the most important result that can come from these hearings...is a conviction by police officers that the department will change. In order to ensure this...an independent, permanent investigative body...dealing with police corruption, like this commission, is essential.”

?Frank Serpico was the first police officer in the history of the New York Police Department to step forward to report and subsequently testify openly about widespread, systemic corruption payoffs amounting to millions of dollars.

When it was decided to make the movie about his life called Serpico, Al Pacino invited Serpico to stay with him at a house that Pacino had rented in Montauk, New York. When Pacino asked why he had stepped forward, Serpico replied: “Well, Al, I don't know. I guess I would have to say it would be because ... if I didn't, who would I be when I listened to a piece of music?”

He returned to New York City quietly in 1980 and now resides in the mountains of Upstate New York, studying and lecturing on occasion to students at universities and police academies and sharing experiences with police officers who are currently in similar situations. While living in upstate New York, Serpico was introduced to Officer Joseph Trimboli by New York Post reporter Mike McAlary. Trimboli himself was a police officer who had a very hard time after he witnessed and tried to stop widespread police corruption in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Serpico still speaks out against police corruption and brutality. He continues to speak out against both the weakening of civil liberties and corrupt practices in law enforcement, such as the alleged cover-ups following Abner Louima's torture in 1997 and Amadou Diallo shooting in 1999.

He provides support for "individuals who seek truth and justice even in the face of great personal risk.” He calls them "lamp lighters", a term he prefers to the more common "whistleblowers", which refers to alerting the public to danger, just as Paul Revere was responsible for having lamps lit in the Old North Church to warn the public in Charlestown, Massachusetts, of the British Regulars' movements during the American Revolutionary War - LIGHT UP THE DARK.

SERPICO IS MY HERO...

According to the article a sweet deal was offered to Robert Asanza to avoid a sentence of 20 years. Its funny how they calling others rat when they are ratting on each other to save their own skin. Karma is a mother ****** look what happened to Martinez .