- In the criminal justice system,
the people are represented
by two separate, yet equally important groups:
the police, who investigate crime,
and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders.
These are their stories.
[dramatic music]
♪
- [speaks indistinctly]
- Go. Move.
- Hey, Jordy, we got this, all right?
Stay aware. Stay alive.
- [exhales]
[indistinct shouting]
- NYPD! Hands up! - Show me your hands!
- Watch out! They got weapons.
[rapid gunfire]
- Show me your hands!
- Jordy, I got these guys. Go clear that back room.
- I'm on it.
NYPD!
Stop. [grunts]
Freeze!
♪
[door opens]
♪
No way out.
♪
Give it up. Show yourself.
[both grunting]
[groans, grunts]
No! No!
[door bangs]
- Hey! Drop it!
Stop!
- Grant! Grant, help!
Over here.
Help me up. Come on.
- Jordy, give me your arm, buddy.
Give me your arm. Come on.
Come on, Jord.
♪
Hey, you good?
- [panting]
- I thought I told you to stay alive.
- [laughs]
[sirens whoop]
- Cause of death appears to be a single gunshot to the back.
Based on body temp, I'd say he's only been dead
five or six hours.
- So somebody killed him around midnight.
- Mm-hmm. - It's not the smartest time
to be walking through the park.
Cell phone.
He's got his wallet, too.
- So, not a robbery?
[car horn honking]
- Oh, Christ.
Vic's a cop.
Sergeant Jordan Harrison,
Major Case Narcotics.
We'd better call Brady.
- Why? - He's out of the 2-9.
It's her former precinct.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- Did you know him well? - Yeah.
I was the one that recommended he transfer
to the Major Narcotics department.
He was a great cop.
I hate this.
What do we know? - Found him early this morning.
So far, no witnesses, no cameras in the area.
- Killer used a 9 millimeter.
Found a shell casing near the body.
- Didn't even see it coming.
His service weapon was still holstered.
- Incoming, Lou.
- Jess, thanks for calling.
- Captain.
- You OK?
- When we find the guy who did this, I will be, yeah.
- He has two little boys at home.
He shares custody with his ex.
- We'll notify the family.
- You got any idea what he might have been doing out here
last night around midnight?
- All I know is that his unit executed a raid
on a stash house last night.
It was a good bust. They got four collars
and seized 10 kilos of pure fentanyl.
♪
He was good police.
His teammates respected the hell out of him.
♪
- He was killed sometime around midnight, shot from behind.
- Brandt.
Easy, buddy.
- Oh, don't tell me about easy, Melcher.
He wasn't your partner.
- Miles, we get it.
We all want to catch this son of a bitch that did this.
But look at me.
Miles, look at me.
You know me.
You all know me.
I'm gonna do right by Harrison.
We're gonna find out who did it,
and we're gonna make him pay.
- Yeah. - Just to be clear,
Lieutenant Brady is leading this investigation.
And it's on all of us to do everything we can to help her.
- OK, let's start from the beginning.
Anybody know why Harrison was in the park last night?
- Well, we all went out for drinks after the bust.
It was a place in the East Village,
so he must have been walking home.
- Anybody catch what time he left the bar?
- Pretty sure we all did. - What does that mean?
- It was a whole scene.
He was chasing after Mimi again.
- Mimi?
- He's got a new girlfriend, Maureen.
She met up with us.
She can kind of be a lot to deal with.
- And he was chasing her?
- They got into a fight around 11:30.
- But it got heated.
She stormed out, and he ran after her.
- [voice breaking] I can't believe Jordy is really...
- Unfortunately, he is.
And we heard that you two got in a fight last night.
- His cop buddies tell you that?
They hate anyone
that interferes with their little boys club.
- So you guys weren't in a fight last night?
- We had an argument.
- About what?
- Jordan was in a really bad mood.
- How come?
- He wouldn't tell me.
He'd have so much going on inside.
But he never let me in.
- Yeah, the job can do that to you.
Not easy being a cop.
- Neither is loving one.
- So you guys did get into it last night, right?
- I was drunk. I got in a taxi,
and I told him I couldn't do this anymore,
and I left.
- You know anybody that might have had a problem
with Jordan?
- The only person I can think of is his brother.
- His brother? - They don't get along.
They barely speak.
But for some reason,
they had lunch yesterday afternoon.
When I asked him how it went,
he said he didn't want to talk about it.
- Tracked down the taxi driver.
He backed up the girlfriend's story.
- Yeah, I looked at her phone records, too.
She sent 27 drunk texts last night after they parted ways.
Last one was at 3:12 AM,
hours after Harrison was already shot.
- So either she's a criminal mastermind
trying to throw us off the scent--
- Or she had no idea he was dead.
What about the brother?
- Yeah, we looked into him, too,
got a pretty good idea why he and Harrison didn't get along.
He's a social worker in Red Hook
and a very vocal member of an organization
called Abolish Now.
- I'm guessing he's not talking about ending slavery.
- No, his group believes that the police force
should be done away with entirely.
- Well, you ain't kidding about vocal.
He posted this four days ago.
"The only good cop is a dead cop."
- As compassionate as he is original.
- Track the idiot down.
[tense music]
- OK, that does it for today.
Thank you, everyone, for sharing.
♪
- Tyler Harrison.
- I knew you'd find me.
And I'm not sorry.
I did what I had to do.
- That was easy.
- You're coming with us.
- Get your hands off of me! - Hey, do we have a problem?
- Yeah, we do, it's called an excessive use of force.
- Oh, that's interesting.
You're the one who killed your brother.
We're the ones guilty of excessive force?
- Jordan's dead?
- Just like you wanted, right?
"Only good cop is a dead cop"?
- Wait, wait. I-I didn't kill him.
I-I didn't know he--
- Oh, yeah? Where were you last night around midnight?
- I want a lawyer.
- My client had nothing to do with
what happened to his brother.
- Then why won't he tell us where he was
the night Detective Harrison was killed?
We know they had lunch earlier that day and fought.
We know how he feels about the cops.
"I'm not sorry. I did what I had to do."
It's a pretty cold way to describe killing your brother.
- I wasn't talking about Jordan.
- What were you talking about?
- I vandalized a cop car in my neighborhood.
- Vandalism?
That's what you're worried about?
- The officers it belonged to kept hanging around my block,
harassing young Black kids for no reason.
- And you thought that was the best solution?
- When the detective showed up, I thought it was about that.
Jordan and I argued, but I would never hurt him.
I loved him.
That's why I didn't want him to be part of
such a corrupt institution.
- I don't get it.
I mean, yeah, sure, there are some bad apples.
Of course there are.
But your brother wasn't one of them.
I knew him.
He was exactly the kind of person you want to be a cop.
- There's no such thing as a few bad apples.
They spoil the whole bunch.
- The point is, my client was in Brooklyn
when Jordan Harrison was murdered.
♪
- We found street cam footage of Tyler Harrison
slashing the cop car tires, just like he said.
There's no way he could have made it
back into Manhattan by then.
He's not our guy.
- All right, cut him loose.
- We don't want to roll him up for vandalizing the car?
- Not this time.
- Hey, Lou.
Ballistics just came back.
Striation marks on the 9 millimeter bullet
that killed Harrison matched those in the bullet pool
from a shooting victim six months ago.
- Who was the previous victim?
- Apparently, some low level drug dealer
got shot in the leg over some turf war situation.
- Police arrest anybody?
- No, there was not enough evidence,
but they had a suspect, Edward White.
- Seriously?
- That name mean something to you?
- Yeah.
White is the dealer whose stash house
was raided by the Narcotics unit
the night Harrison was murdered.
- So you think White killed Harrison?
- [sighs] I didn't say that.
- Then why are you looking for him?
- Because the gun that killed Harrison came back to White.
- You think that White
somehow tracked down Harrison after the raid and shot him?
- It's one theory.
- Or maybe Harrison tracked him down.
He blamed himself for letting White get away.
He kept going on about it at the bar.
He wouldn't drop it.
- OK, any idea where Eddie White might be?
- We got surveillance up on all his usual locations--
his apartment, the club he uses as an office.
No sightings so far.
- The texts are a fun read. - [whistles]
- [scoffs] You mean the sexts?
- Yeah.
Guy's into some pretty wild stuff.
Any idea who the lucky lady is?
- Yeah, Hailey Vonn.
She's a hairstylist he's been dating on and off
for the last few months.
Got someone posted up at her apartment,
but no sign of White.
- OK. Let's tail her instead.
If he's not coming to her, she's going to him.
[dramatic music]
♪
- No, man. I respect my colon.
- [laughs]
- Thanks.
You guys lucked out getting Brady transferred.
She's solid.
- Yeah, I guess so.
- You guess so? What's that supposed to mean?
- She plays her cards pretty close to the vest.
- But she's one of the guys, you know?
Shoots straight.
If you're not getting answers,
you're just not asking the right questions.
- There's our girl.
- Yeah. Melcher's got her on foot.
- All right. [engine turns over]
- I'm gonna square the block so she doesn't make me.
♪
- Yeah, it's all right. We got eyes on her.
- She's grabbing some lunch for lover boy?
- Ooh, spicy tuna rolls. Talk to me.
- Man, you just had, like, 15 beef sticks.
- I had 11. You can't count.
- How long you two been partners?
♪
- Little over a year.
- Feels like 10, though.
- Eh. - [chuckles]
- Where the hell is Vonn?
- I've been watching the front. She didn't exit.
- Yeah, this isn't right.
♪
- Melcher.
- No, no, no. Don't touch that.
[alarm blaring] - It's an alarm.
♪
- Hey.
- [screams] - Do not move, all right?
Do you hear me? Don't move.
- Hands. Hands. - Door! Runner!
- You got her? - Go. I've got her.
- Keep your hands up.
♪
- I'll go around. - Yep.
♪
- Freeze!
Yo, drop your weapon!
Drop it! Drop your weapon!
- I surrender.
- Drop your weapon! - I said I surrender, man.
It's on the ground already. - Drop it!
- He's unarmed. Put it down.
He's unarmed.
- Turn around. - Get your man.
- Turn your ass around!
Ed White, you're under arrest.
Anything you say can and will be used against you.
Do you understand? - I ain't do nothing.
- [panting] Thank you. I'm sorry, I just got--
I got caught up in the moment of everything.
- I get it.
That piece of trash shot your partner.
But we do this right, yeah?
- Yeah.
[sirens wailing]
- We're giving you a chance here, Eddie.
So let's try this again, this time with some honesty.
How about that?
- I'm telling you, I had nothing
to do with whatever happened to this cop
you keep talking about, man.
I don't even know who he is.
- All right, then how do you explain that the gun that
was used to kill Officer Harrison
wound up in your little hideout?
- Don't know.
Someone else must have put it there.
- So someone else has sprinkled your fingerprints
across it too, is that it?
- It's my gun, aight? But I lost it.
- [chuckles]
- If you're gonna lie to us, at least make it sound good.
- It was in my duffel.
The blue duffel I had when the cops raided my place,
it was in there. - Here we go.
We already checked on this, Eddie.
There was no record of a blue duffel bag
being recovered from the raid!
- [scoffs] So I guess that means there's no record
of the 50K in cash that was in there either, huh?
Or the 300K worth of product?
- There's not. - Well, there you go.
- Oh, well, there you go. There you go.
What's that even mean, smart ass?
- Mean I want my lawyer.
- I think that's a good decision
because you're being charged with the murder
of Jordan Harrison.
- And he takes the perp down.
He must have covered 20 feet in one jump.
Yeah, I told him, you're showing off.
And he goes,
if you got it, flaunt it.
[laughter]
And he had it.
To Harrison.
all: To Harrison.
- And to Brady,
who caught the son of a bitch who killed him.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Hey. - Yeah.
[fists pounding on table]
- [sighs]
[sighs]
I've been to too many of these.
- Well, they don't get any easier, that's for sure.
- Yeah, I know.
- Hey, Linda and I bought a condo in Arizona.
We're thinking about retiring there.
- Yeah, I'll drink to that.
- Down the road. Tonight, we drink to Harrison.
[glasses clink]
I really admired that kid. He did it right.
- Do you remember that time a while back
before I transferred,
when he came to me with that complaint?
- Oh, you're talking about that time
he wanted to report a fellow officer to IAB
for pocketing a little cash?
[chuckles]
I had to teach him that there are certain things
you don't see, even if you do.
- He ever make any noise like that again?
- What do you mean about?
[tense music]
You caught his killer, Jess. That's all that matters.
- I'm just-- - Leave it alone.
♪
- Can you get me the body cam footage
from the night of the raid?
- What for?
- I think we arrested the wrong guy.
♪
- What exactly is it we're looking for?
- A blue duffel bag.
White said he left it when he took off.
He said the gun that killed Harrison was in the bag.
- Yeah, well, of course he's gonna say that.
He's toast.
He's already setting up his defense.
- Maybe.
The truth is gonna come out eventually.
We might as well get in front of it.
- Jess,
you got to let this go.
You already got your killer. It's over.
- There.
Right there.
This is Harrison's body cam
after White had already escaped.
- Blue duffel bag, just like White said.
- Mm-hmm.
But it was never entered into evidence.
- Right.
So now what?
- So whoever took that bag is most likely the killer.
- Wait, so you're saying you think a cop's involved.
- Sure looks like it.
Not including Brandt,
there were nine officers there that night.
Realistically, any one of them could have grabbed that bag
and taken it without anyone noticing.
- Yeah, but only one of them could have planted it
in the sushi joint.
- Melcher. - Yep.
When we chased White down, Melcher stayed behind.
It would have given him ample time to put the gun
under the mattress where we found it.
- [sighs]
I don't buy it.
I--I worked with Melch for 10 years.
He wouldn't do this.
- Well, there's only one way to be sure.
I mean, we have to find out if he's in possession of the bag.
And if he is-- - He's a cop.
He's not gonna keep it at his house.
- A few years ago, his wife kicked him out,
and me and a few of the guys helped him move.
And we put a bunch of his stuff in a storage unit in Queens,
on, um, Woodside,
off of Northern.
It had kind of a dumb ass name.
- Don Jon Self-Storage?
- That's it.
- I'll call the facility and get the unit number.
- I'll get a warrant.
I mean, it might take a minute,
but I think I know a few judges who'll play ball.
Good to go. - Let's open it up.
[lock clicks]
[soft dramatic music]
♪
- OK, here we go.
Blue duffel.
♪
- [chuckles] Whoa.
I'm no expert, but that looks like fentanyl to me.
- Yeah, it is.
God.
You were right. It's Melcher.
- Miles Brandt-- - Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- You're under arrest for the murder of Jordan Harrison.
- What the hell are you doing? Shaw.
- Melcher doesn't own this storage unit.
He never did.
- You got played, bro.
- You stole the money. You stole the drugs.
And when Harrison threatened to report you,
you killed him.
♪
Your own partner.
- What the hell are you talking about?
- Get this piece of trash out of my sight.
- With pleasure. Move.
- Nice work. - Mm.
- How'd you know it was Brandt, though?
♪
- Let's call it a hunch.
- Brady worked with Internal Affairs to set a trap,
and Brandt walked right into it.
So Brady had hidden cameras all over the facility
and inside the unit.
We have video, clear as day,
Brandt breaking into it with the duffel.
- Impressive.
But that only proves that Brandt was in possession
of the stolen cash and fentanyl,
not that he murdered Jordan Harrison.
- But having the duffel also means he had the murder weapon.
The gun was in the bag.
- According to Eddie White,
a career criminal with his own motive to commit the murder.
We're gonna need a lot more than that to convince a jury.
- And we have it.
Police executed a search warrant at Brandt's home.
Harrison's blood was found on the shoes Brandt was wearing
on the night of the murder.
- Then let's charge the son of a bitch with murder one.
- This is a clear case of political grandstanding
from the district attorney's office.
They're trying to win points with their liberal base
by railroading a decorated officer of the NYPD
at the expense of prosecuting the actual criminal
of this heinous murder.
- And we're the ones grandstanding.
- I'll hear you on bail, Ms. Maroun.
- The people seek remand.
- Your Honor, given that prison is a notoriously
unsafe place for police officers,
we are asking for a reasonable bail.
- Bail is set at $2 million. [gavel bangs]
- Greg.
Tell me the truth.
Did you know?
- I knew the same thing you did,
that he wasn't afraid to pocket a little drug money
here and there.
But as far as I knew, that was it.
It didn't go any further.
♪
He was a damn good cop.
He closed more cases than any other officer in our precinct.
- Yeah, got results.
So all of us looked the other way.
- Look, if you're expecting an apology from me,
it's not gonna happen.
It breaks my heart, but he did what he did,
and now he's gonna pay the price.
♪
- We need you to testify about what time
Brandt left the bar on the night Harrison was killed.
- We need to establish a timeline for the jury
and show them that Brandt had opportunity
to commit the murder. - Well, he did.
He left a little after Harrison, around 11:45.
- That's great. That is all we need you to say.
- That may be the case, but, um, it's not gonna happen.
I won't testify against another officer.
♪
- Seriously?
Brandt tried to frame you for the murder.
- I know.
He's scum.
But a few years from now,
nobody will remember the details.
All that'll stick in people's minds
is that I took the stand and sold out a fellow cop.
- You know we can subpoena you, right?
- Go ahead.
You won't like the result.
Look, I got a lot of years left.
I can't be known as the cop who testified against another cop.
I just can't.
♪
And I doubt anyone else in my unit will, either.
♪
- Well, none of Brandt's squad members
are willing to testify against him.
- Which is gonna make it hard to put Brandt
near Harrison at the time of the murder,
among other things.
- You've hit the blue wall.
We need to bury Brandt one way or another, so...
- Are--are you suggesting we offer a deal?
- I'm suggesting you do whatever the hell is necessary
to put Brandt behind bars.
And if that means cutting a deal, so be it.
Like it or not, Nolan, the defendant
is a decorated police officer,
and our star witness is a drug dealer with 27 convictions.
- I still think we can win.
- Then proceed.
But the defense is going to attack
Eddie White's credibility.
Make sure you get out in front of it.
- But the gun that killed Officer Harrison
was found in the sushi restaurant
where you were hiding.
- That may be true, but I ain't put it there.
- Wasn't the defendant present
when detectives searched the room?
- Yes.
- So he could have planted it?
- Objection. Calls for speculation.
- Sustained.
- Mr. White,
you're a convicted felon.
You have been found guilty of shooting people in the past.
Why on earth should we believe you?
- Because I'm telling the truth, for real.
Ain't no way I could have shot that guy.
First off, I ain't even know him.
He was just a random white cop who busted in my door
with a bunch of other white cops.
And second, I was hiding from the police when he got killed,
not out on the streets looking to hunt him down.
- Thank you. Nothing further.
- Mr. White, during the raid of your stash house,
police confiscated over half a million dollars
worth of fentanyl, which you were planning to distribute.
I'd like to circle back to what Mr. Price alluded to earlier,
that you shot people in the past.
And in each case, the motive was retribution.
- I don't know what that means.
- It means you were looking to get revenge.
- Oh, yeah, that's true.
I had problems with those guys.
- So when people wrong you, you shoot them, correct?
- It just depends on how bad they wronged me, I suppose.
- Well, in this case,
the police wronged you pretty damn bad.
They confiscated your drugs and your money,
which means you wanted revenge.
- Objection, Your Honor. She is badgering the witness.
- Sustained.
- I'll leave it there.
Nothing further.
- Detective Riley, can you explain for us
what the defendant is doing here in this video?
- He's breaking into a storage unit
that he knew we were gonna search the next day
and planting the stolen duffel bag.
- And what was in that bag?
- Exactly what Edward White told us would be,
$50,000 in cash and a significant amount of fentanyl.
We then executed a search of the defendant's home,
where we recovered a pair of shoes
that were later determined to be the shoes he was wearing
the night that Harrison was killed.
- Did you find anything on those shoes?
- We found trace elements of blood.
DNA tests later confirmed that it was, in fact, Harrison's.
- Thank you. No further questions.
- Detective Riley, you were present
when the murder weapon was found in the room
where Eddie White was hiding out from police, weren't you?
- I was, yes.
- Did you see my client plant the gun
under Eddie White's mattress, as Mr. Price has suggested?
- No.
- And he's not the one who found the gun.
- No.
- In fact, he never touched the gun at any point, did he?
- Not that I'm aware of.
- You said tests showed
that Jordan Harrison's blood was on my client's shoe.
Were those tests able to determine
how long the blood was there?
- I don't believe so, no.
- You're a police officer yourself.
Isn't it possible in the almost two years
that they worked together, Jordan Harrison sustained
some cut or injury that resulted in
some of his blood getting on my client's shoe?
- It's possible, yeah.
- Thank you.
Nothing further.
- Ms. Paymore, you may call your first witness.
- The defense calls Officer Miles Brandt to the stand.
- Jordan Harrison was my partner.
Of course I didn't kill him.
I would do anything to protect him.
And that's how I ended up with the stolen fentanyl.
- I don't understand.
- I didn't steal the duffel bag.
Harrison did.
[indistinct chatter]
So that night after the raid,
I came out and I caught Jordy
stuffing the duffel up into the spare tire well of our vehicle.
There was too many people around to say anything,
so I waited till later
and I followed him out of the bar
and I confronted him about it.
- What'd he say?
- Said he worked out a deal with Eddie White.
He even offered to cut me in on it.
- Did you take him up on it?
- No.
And I didn't want to see Jordan go down that path either.
But I wanted to help, so I took the duffel bag from him,
and I was gonna sneak it into the evidence locker
the next day.
But then, uh...
Then Jordan was killed.
And then Lieutenant Brady told me that
she knew someone from my unit had stolen the duffel bag,
and I panicked.
I was worried that I was gonna take the rap for this thing.
And that's when I...
broke into the storage locker.
I should have done better.
I should have intervened earlier.
And if I had...
then he'd still be alive.
But I didn't kill him.
- Thank you.
No further questions.
- You didn't come forward after Harrison was murdered.
You didn't notify the police, correct?
- Because I wanted to protect his reputation.
Didn't want his family to know, his kids.
- But according to you,
you knew who his killer was-- Edward White.
- And I busted my ass from minute one to track him down.
I worked with Homicide, too.
White was already the chief suspect,
so I tarnished Jordan's memory,
not to mention that would have just fed into
the public's misconceptions about cops being corrupt.
And make no mistake, those misconceptions
are the reason that I'm on trial right now
for my partner's murder,
instead of the drug dealer that actually killed him.
- You claim to be a noble champion of the police,
yet you framed your fellow officer,
Travis Melcher,
his squad leader-- completely innocent--
yet you were willing to let him go down for the whole thing.
- I was all turned around.
I wasn't sleeping.
And I was a mess over Jordan being gone.
And I knew how bad that it would look
if I got caught with that bag.
- You're just making this whole thing up, aren't you?
There's no proof that anything
you're saying is true.
- You want proof?
How about my Distinguished Service Medal
and my Combat Cross
and 14 other commendations in 25 years
without so much as one complaint
or violation in my file?
You can't ask for better proof than that.
♪
- This guy murders Harrison,
and now he's destroying his memories,
putting his corruption on a good cop.
- You just have to hope the jury is smart enough
to see through all of that.
- Good news is,
people don't trust the police like they used to.
It might help them realize he's lying.
- If you ask me, a badge still means something
to a few people,
especially against the word of a punk like Edward White.
- And Brandt's spotless record doesn't help either.
- Well, yeah, he looks like a perfect cop.
The guy's been corrupt since day one.
His record's clear because cops don't report other cops.
- If you know someone who can impeach Brandt's testimony
that he has an unblemished record...
[laughs] I'm all ears.
- You want me to testify against Brandt?
- We knew about the accusations.
Everybody knew he was stealing money.
Hell, we knew.
- Are you really asking me to torch my career for this?
- For Harrison and his children.
- [sighs] That's not fair, Jess.
- Sure it is.
I mean, if you and I had done what we were supposed to do,
Brandt would have been kicked off the force years ago,
and Harrison would still be alive.
- Well, if I could go back and change that, I would.
- We could change it right now.
- No, we can't.
Me getting up on the stand and testifying against Brandt
is not gonna bring Harrison back to life.
What's important now is that
we take care of his family, his children,
make sure they got enough money to live a good life.
- Do you hear yourself right now?
- I sound the same as I always have.
- Yeah, that's the problem.
- What the hell is that supposed to mean?
- Things have changed.
This blue wall
has just got to stop.
The man is dead.
- I understand that,
but I'm putting in my papers next week, Jess.
I'm retiring.
And if I get on that stand, they're gonna fire me for
knowing what I did about Brandt and looking the other way.
And then what happens?
My reputation? My pension?
After 40 years on the force, I'm gonna lose my pension?
No, I'm not doing it.
And I'm asking you as a friend just to--
just stay out of it.
[tense music]
♪
[door slams]
[knocking]
- You OK?
You knew that Brandt was dirty, didn't you?
- Way back,
when I was just a uni,
there was a sergeant in my precinct
that would take "tips" from the local business owners.
You know, he'd look out for them.
And my partner told me not to say anything.
And I remember thinking,
but that's so...
wrong.
And now, 20 plus years later,
when Harrison comes to me upset
that Brandt is skimming off the busts, I say to him,
I think it would be better
if you just didn't worry about that stuff.
And I didn't even think about the fact that it was...
wrong.
[soft dramatic music]
♪
- I mean, we all let things slide from time to time.
And I know it's an unpopular opinion,
but I do think there's something to be said about
cops looking out for one another,
having each other's back, you know?
It's not always bad,
within reason.
- What is reasonable?
Where does this damn wall begin and where does it end?
- Yeah, yeah. That's a tough one.
- Where's your line, Vince?
When do you talk and when do you stay quiet?
- Well, if you really want to know, I--
I think about my kids,
trying to describe the situation to them.
You know, if I don't like how it sounds
or how I feel trying to rationalize it,
then that's how I know I'm doing the wrong thing.
♪
- Good night. - Night.
[door shuts]
- During your time as his lieutenant,
were you ever aware of accusations
of misconduct made against the defendant?
- Yes, I received several complaints about him
failing to accurately record the amount of cash
or other valuable items recovered during raids.
- So he stole money seized from criminal operations
and pocketed it for himself.
- Yes.
Those were the accusations, yes.
- Did Jordan Harrison ever come to you with such a complaint?
- Yes. Harrison was very upset.
- And did you report these complaints
to your commanding officer, Captain Greg Stockwell?
- Yes.
- But no formal citation was ever issued.
Brandt was never investigated or sanctioned.
Why?
- I take full responsibility for that.
I'm the one that talked Harrison out of
pursuing the matter.
- Is that what Captain Stockwell instructed you to do?
- The truth is, is everybody knew Brandt took liberties.
Nobody thought it would go this far.
- So what you're saying
is that everyone knew the defendant was corrupt.
- There's an understanding amongst officers.
- The blue wall?
- Harrison couldn't stomach it.
He thought that being a good cop
meant making sure the cops you were working with
were good too.
And, um,
I now realize he was right.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- In the charge of murder in the first degree,
we find the defendant, Miles Brandt,
guilty.
- Members of the jury, thank you for your service.
You are excused.
♪
[handcuffs clicking]
[knocking]
- Greg-- - Save it.
You made your choice.
Don't come around here looking for forgiveness.
[low dramatic music]
♪
- Got a visitor, Jess.
- Lieutenant Brady?
Detective Jason Cassidy, Internal Affairs.
We need to talk about Miles Brandt.
[dramatic music]
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[wolf howls]