By Phil Corso
A Brooklyn federal grand jury indicted a 111th Precinct officer from Bayside after he was accused of supplying inside information to a drug dealer from Jamaica.
Officer Devon Daniels, 30, was indicted Friday by a grand jury in the Eastern District and was charged with four counts of making false statements to federal agents and four counts of accessing a computer database without permission, according to the criminal complaint filed in the case.
Daniels, who worked within the 111th Precinct, was accused of feeding police information on license plates and narcotics probes to Jamaica heroin dealer Guy Curtis, head of the drug-dealing organization Pov City, prosecutors said. He was arrested in May, when prosecutors said a wiretap from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration found he was providing Curtis with police information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and NYPD databases.
According to police, Curtis had already pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to deal heroin in January. Daniels was released on bail and suspended without pay, facing department sanctions, including possible termination, regardless of the case’s outcome, police said.
The criminal complaint obtained by the U.S. attorney’s office against Daniels outlined several instances in which the officer responded promptly to the calls fromCurtis and his drug ring. Officials said Daniels allegedly helped Curtis by running license plate information, providing an official police parking placard and tipping him off with inside information on narcotics investigations.
The court documents revealed Curtis had corresponded with the 111th officer on various occasions to ask for advice or sensitive police information about his associates. In one instance, Curtis had asked Daniels how to get “gunshot residue off your hands” and if he could “clap a felon” for him, the complaint said.
The criminal complaint said Daniels also asked Curtis for favors of his own ranging from money to borrowing Curtis’ vehicles. The wiretap showed Daniels asking Curtis to help him in acquiring “any working revolver,” the court papers said.
Prosecutors said Daniels once drove one of Curtis’ vehicles to the scene where a fellow associate was arrested, The officer identified himself as a cop and asked information of the arresting officer, then relayed what he had learned back to Curtis, the complaint said.
According to federal authorities, the investigation had also found that Daniels allowed Curtis to use his bank account to transfer money with Jermaine Ward, a suspected drug dealer in Wichita, Kan. In one instance, Ward wired $3,500 to Daniels’ account before the officer withdrew the funds for Curtis, according to court papers.
Whenever Curtis had requested, Daniels would run criminal background checks for the drug dealer to gather license plate information, prosecutors said. Though investigators did not specify a motive, a source told the New York Post that Daniels and Curtis were old friends.
“Yo do them plates real quick,” Curtis texted to Daniels, to which the officer replied, “What u need I got it,” the complaint said.
According to the documents, Daniels would respond to Curtis’ inquiries using the password for his partner.
The DEA had been investigating Pov City, the heroin trafficking organization out of Wichita, since October 2008 with the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service, officials said, which led federal investigators to Curtis.
