Baltimore officer charged with lying to feds on drug deal

BALTIMORE (AP) - Federal authorities charged a 15th Baltimore police officer in connection with allegations of corruption by a rogue police unit.

Victor Rivera was charged with lying to federal investigators about selling a portion of cocaine he helped seize in 2009, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland said in a news release Wednesday. Prosecutors said Rivera, who retired in March, was paid $20,000 after selling three kilograms of cocaine to an informant who then sold the drug within Baltimore.

The charges against him are part of the fallout from a probe into the city’s Gun Trace Task Force which began in 2015 when police started investigating an officer’s involvement with drug dealers in the city, The Baltimore Sun reported.

The group was supposed to take illegal guns off the streets of Baltimore, but members of the now-disbanded unit have been accused of extortion and robberies, falsifying evidence and defrauding the police department with false overtime claims.

Prosecutors said Rivera shared the money he got from the cocaine deal with two other detectives from the task force who were with him during the drug seizure.

One of the officers, Ivo Louvado, was charged with lying to the FBI in this same case last month. Another, Keith Gladstone, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy in June 2019 for planting a pellet gun at the scene of an arrest and telling another officer to lie to investigators about it. He has not been charged in connection with this case.

Authorities said Rivera could face up to 10 years in prison.