This Is Why We Will Never Have “Good Cops”

A key witness in a case against two Baltimore City police officers is the target of an incident involving a dead rat left on the windshield of his car, harassment, and personal threats.

The witness is himself a Baltimore city police officer. He was the whistle-blower providing key testimony against Sgt. Marinos Gialamas and Officer Anthony Williams, who told jurors what really happened, he said, after a drug suspect was caught.

According to prosecutors, the sergeant and officer took the drug suspect out of a police van after he had been arrested, and then assaulted him inside a house on Prentiss Place in east Baltimore. The house belonged to the girlfriend of Williams, who showed up off-duty and took part in the assault. The key witness in the case, Officer Joe Crystal, was also on the scene that night.

Crystal told the county officer that “officers within the Baltimore City Police Department are not happy with him … think he is the person responsible for talking to the State’s Attorney’s Office.”

The rat incident happened just after Gialamas and Williams were indicted in 2012.

Crystal was then labeled a snitch and targeted by others in the department, including 4 different supervisors.

According to WBAL-TV, Crystal didn’t keep quiet. He became a witness in the investigation of Gialamas and Williams, and word apparently spread fast.

“I remember a sergeant drawing pictures of cheese on Post-Its and writing ‘Crystal is cheese’ and telling me that people are saying I snitched on Sgt. Gialamas,” Crystal said.

Crystal kept a private journal detailing the taunting and harassment that he said came from four different supervisors and other officers.

“The detective pulls up and says, ‘Hey, are you guys having a cheese party?’” Crystal said. “I didn’t want any problems, and he said, ‘What? I’m just asking whether you are having a cheese party. I know rats like cheese.’”

Crystal said he missed out on a new assignment to a different squad. He said a lieutenant told him why: “I have done big enough cases, good enough cases. For all intents and purposes, I should go to the squad, but it was perceived that I snitched on Sgt. Gialamas, and since I snitched on Sgt. Gialamas, I couldn’t go. To be on that squad, you had to do things in the gray area, and this was going to follow me for my entire career.”

The workplace wasn’t the only place the corrupt cops targeted Crystal.

Crystal said the pressure mounted, and a sergeant called him at home.

“I was home with my wife, and he started screaming at me, telling me Gialamas is saying I am snitching and I am the star witness,” Crystal said. “The punch line of it all: ‘You better pray to God you’re not the star witness.’ He said it multiple times. When I hung up the phone, I said to my wife, ‘I think he basically just threatened me.’”

Also, according to Crystal, the department tried to set him up. A few days after the phone call at his home he was asked by a supervisor to change the date on a police voucher.