Posted on 02/19/2003 2:07:05 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Jury sees video of ex-police chief allegedly accepting bribe
02/19/2003
By LYNN BREZOSKY / The Associated Press
McALLEN, Texas — The grainy surveillance tape shows two friends, one a boisterous drug dealer boasting about his girlfriends, the other a mild-mannered policeman counting out $500 he made using his patrol car to protect the other's apparent narcotics haul.
"Easiest five hundred bucks you ever made," Rigoberto Quintanilla says in the video.
"Too easy," then-Donna police officer Marco Abel Partida responds. "I'm in the wrong business, dude."
The video is part of the prosecution's case in a federal jury trial that goes into its second day Wednesday.
Under a five-count grand jury indictment unsealed in November, Partida and fellow officer Gerardo Vigil are charged with aiding and abetting marijuana traffickers and face up to 40 years in prison and a $2 million fine.
Vigil is charged in three counts of the indictment.
Partida was acting as chief at the time it was handed down.
Defense attorneys said they would argue that the government manufactured the crime, entrapping the officers.
The video was taken in April 2001, in the sparsely decorated living room of Quintanilla, a convicted drug dealer acting as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Months later, Partida, who had been named acting chief, would allegedly accept a bigger, $3,000 payment, for arranging a patrol car decoy for a second 300-pound load.
This time, he would have enlisted the aid of police officer Gerardo Vigil, who allegedly took $800 for providing a patrol car escort to a second vehicle he believed to be carrying marijuana.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Rodriguez said that the patrol cars' presence apparently protected the vehicles from traffic stops or other drug dealers.
Two more prosecution videos show Partida four days before, driving his patrol car behind a sport utility vehicle that he believed to be carrying hundreds of pounds of marijuana.
Marella Ruelas, an FBI agent, testified for the prosecution that Partida would also fly to Florida with Quintanilla on "money runs."
Asked why he would do that, she explained: "If a police officer is stopped anywhere and shows a badge, it has some clout."
Court papers show the case began in April 1999, when the U.S. Border Patrol stopped Quintanilla trying to drive a tractor trailer with almost 6,000 pounds of marijuana through an immigration checkpoint at Falfurrias.
After a two-count federal grand jury indictment that following December, Quintanilla agreed to work as an informant with the DEA.
According to DEA Special Agent Gregory Kurtz, who testified for the prosecution Tuesday, Quintanilla said he knew of a patrolman who assisted in transporting marijuana.
The DEA and the FBI decided to conduct an investigation, and put Quintanilla under audio and video surveillance as he worked the deals with Partida.
0n cross-examination, Kurtz said did not know of any former drug trafficking actions by Partida.
"The crux of our case relies on government misconduct and entrapment," added defense attorney Luis Singleterry. "The government sponsored the crime and the government manufactured the crime. There's no denying he did it. But if he was entrapped, he's not breaking the law."
(ap.state.online.tx 0628 02/19/2003 04:33:33 )
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