October 27, 2011, Joe Crystal, a detective with the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) violent crimes section, was just wrapping up his shift when he was told that he had to assist in one more arrest. It was a drug bust.
Joe Crystal was a good cop . . .
Crystal, Detective Keith Tiedemann, and Sargent Mariano Gialamas headed out towards Prentiss Place, which was an area known for drug deals. The cops approached a group of suspected dealers by car. They noticed one of the men, Antoine Green, toss what appeared to be drugs on to the ground, and then began to run. The other officers took off on foot after Green, but Crystal stayed back unable to run due to a bad ankle.
Green ran down a row of mostly vacant houses, but then made a huge mistake. In an attempt to get away he kicked in one of the doors, and ran inside the apartment. It’s unknown if Green thought the apartment was vacant, but it’s clear that his luck went from bad to worse. Because the apartment he invaded belonged to the girlfriend of off-duty officer Anthony Williams; his? girlfriend also happened to be home during the invasion.
Fortunately, William’s girlfriend was not hurt by the suspect. Gialamas and Tiedemann quickly took Green into custody and loaded him into the back of the police vehicle. This was around the time when Crystal had made it to the scene just outside of the apartment.
After the police van drove off to take Green to jail, Williams arrived to the scene and began talking to Gialamas. Just a few minutes later, Gialamas radioed the officer driving the van and asked him to turn around. Green was driven back to the apartment and brought inside. Crystal recalls that Green had begun shouting as he was lead back inside the apartment,
“They gonna fuck me up.”
Cyrstal stood guard at the door just inside of the apartment, he said he was unsure what was going on. He later said that there were some cops he did not trust; however, Gialamas wasn’t one of those cops. Crystal said that he had never seen the sergant do anything illegal or even morally dubious.
Just out of view, Crystal said he heard Gialamas and Williams throw Green to the ground. For several minutes, Crystal heard the handcuffed suspect grunting and moaning as the police officers kicked and punched him. In a statement, Crystal said:
?They bring [Green] back and his shirt’s ripped like he’s fucking Hulk Hogan. He’s limping on his ankle, which I later found out was broken. I honestly mean it when I say this: I never in a million years thought something like this would happen.?
Ever since Crystal was a kid growing up in New Jersey, he always knew he wanted to be a cop. Crystal’s parents met while working for the NYPD. His father was forced to retire after suffering a serious head injury by a suspect during a bodega robbery attempt.
When Crystal was 18 he joined the Coast Guard, where he would serve his country for the next six years.
The day after the 9/11 attacks in 2011, Crystal was one of the volunteers on the “bucket brigade” helping sift through the rubble.
In 2008, Crystal applied and was accepted into the Baltimore police academy where he would graduate with top scores. In 2009, he received the commissioner’s award, which is only given to the trainee who shows top leadership skills. Mayor Sheila Dixon was there to hand him the award.
After only a year on the force, Crystal was made a detective in the Violent Crimes Impact Section. His job was to get guns and drugs off of the street. An anonymous Baltimore policeman described Crystal,?saying:
?He was a really good detective when he was here,? one BPD officer, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of Crystal’s case, told The Huffington Post. ?He had a lot of passion, a lot of drive. He was a natural fit.?
For Crystal, he took pride in his ability to talk to suspects, treating them with dignity and respect. Something he learned long ago from watching his mother.
?I remember the first time I went to work with my mom and saw groups of homeless people. As a kid, it broke my heart,” he said. “I went home that night and tried to give my mom my Donald Duck piggy bank to help them out.?
Crystal specifically wanted to work in Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods because he felt he could make a real difference impacting peoples lives in a positive way. What Crystal never imagined was the hell that awaited him after witnessing what he saw that night.
The day after the incident, Crystal approached one of his superiors, Sgt. Robert Amador — who was later named a defendant in Crystal’s lawsuit — to report what happened. According to Crystal, Amador told him to keep a lid on it and not tell internal affairs.
The detective was even more dismayed when he saw the police report Tiedemann had written about the incident.
?Once inside the wagon, [Green] calmed down and expressed a desire to apologize to [the victim] for breaking into her home,? the report said. After he was taken back into the house, Green ?attempted to charge and head-butt off-duty officer Williams.?
Crystal decided to meet with Assistant State’s Attorney Ana Mantega over a brunch. At this time, filled with guilt, Crystal started to tell the Attorney what he had witnessed.
?She looks at me and goes ?Joe, ethically, if you continue to talk, I’m going to have to tell somebody,?? Crystal recalled. ?She told me to tell her everything, or shut up and eat my goddamn pancakes. That’s when I told her, and everything went to shit after that.?
Crystal decided to continue, and that’s when everything started going downhill, fast.
Mantega reported what Crystal told her to the State Attorney’s Police Integrity Unit, and they promptly opened an investigation.
Over the next 2 years, Crystal documented multiple incidents of harassment at the hands of other police officers. He had more than 50 pages of handwritten journal entries. Here’s one entry, he shared with the Huffpost.
?Do you want some cheese?? one sergeant asked Crystal, offering him a hand-drawn picture of a block of cheese, according to an entry dated Nov. 7, 2011. In another incident, an officer pulled up to Crystal and yelled out of his window: ?Hey, are you guys having a cheese party? I know rats like cheese!?
Just under a year after the incident, in October 2012, Williams and Gialamas were formally charged, and Crystal planned to testify against them. The abuse got worse. He faced mounting pressure from superiors not to testify, akin to how many police officers pressure suspects. According to Crystal one supervisor said this,
?You are going to get charged with perjury when you testify,? Lt. Tracey Geho told Crystal, according to the pending lawsuit. ?Your story better not change even a little bit.?
Sgt. Amador seemed to echo those sentiments, according to Cyrstal, Amador told him;
?You better pray to God you are not the star witness, because your career is already fucked,? Amador told Crystal, according to the suit. ?If you’re the star witness, you may as well just resign.?
On November 14, 2012 Crystal addressed his concerns with Bob Cherry, the then president of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police. Crystal told Cherry that he was scared for his safety, and asked Cherry if he’d look at the journal he had been keeping, documenting the abuse and threats he had received from his fellow officers. Crystal said that Cherry declined to look at the journal, telling him?that the other officers were angry with him because it’s
“Blood in, Blood out.”
Crystal was crushed to hear this from such a high ranking officer. His disillusionment was at an all time high.
?Cherry was basically saying that once you’re in here, you die here,? Crystal said. ?What happens in the family stays in the family. They’re mad at me because I went against that rule. I remember saying to him: ?Are we fucking cops, or are we in a gang? Which one is it? You can’t have it both ways.?”
According to Crystal, Cherry told him that he should look for work in another department.
Crystal discovered a dead rat on his windshield one night while he was at his home. He tried to play it off as a joke to his wife, but inside he felt deep betrayal. A feeling he was growing more accustomed to. Crystal would go on to testify against?Williams and Gialamas. Williams testified?that he was only concerned for his girlfriend’s safety and conducted himself appropriately.
?I don’t feel as though I did anything wrong,? Williams told the jury.
The Jury did not believe Williams or Gialamas. Williams was convicted of assault and obstruction of justice. He received just 45 days in jail. Gialamas was convicted of misconduct and put on probation. Six months after the sentences, both cops decided to leave the force. Williams resigned, and Gialamas retired with a full pension. The state decided to drop the drug, burglary, and assault charges against Green.
Crystal would go on to resign from the BPD in September of 2014, after facing years of harassment from inside the department. Crystal is currently working for a small police department in Florida. So far, Crystal’s attempts at joining a large police force have been unsuccessful. According to Crystal, he ranked fifth on a written exam to join the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department; they still rejected him, however. When asked by the Huffington Post why they rejected Crystal, the LVPD?told them?that he passed his written, oral, and physical exams, but he failed a “background check.” The department declined to elaborate.
Once, a BPD officer?anonymously?said this about Crystal,
?Crystal has always been good to his word,? one officer told HuffPost. ?He screwed up his whole career over it.?
Some people wonder why so many people, like myself, are often so critical of law enforcement. They often say things like, “It’s just one bad apple, most cops are good and honorable.”? After reading so many stories very similar to Joe Crystal’s experiences, I find myself wondering how those people can be so willfully ignorant. The good?cop suffered the worst sentence out of all those involved in the incident. To paraphrase Cenk from the Young Turks:
“It’s not just one bad apple, it’s the whole damned Orchard!”
America, we deserve and should demand better! Here’s a video by the Young Turks on this story.
