By Robert Patrick
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Leo Liston can tell you exactly when he went from good cop to bad cop.
It was June 11, 2008. He and other officers from the St. Louis police crime suppression unit had seized $12,000 in suspected drug money, a .44-caliber revolver and 5 ounces of marijuana at a beauty shop near Forest Park.
Liston was the lead officer, the one responsible for writing the report and logging the evidence. And for turning in the cash.
“I had no intention of taking it,” he said in a recent interview after being sentenced to federal prison for doing just that.
Liston said that for weeks, he had been under increasing pressure from one of his partners, Officer Bobby Lee Garrett.
By the end of 2008, Garrett would be indicted in federal court, accused of stealing more than $28,000 and splitting it with another officer earlier that year. He also would be accused of stealing $3,500 in drug money in August 2007, and $2,000 the next month.
After Garrett’s indictment, some attorneys who regularly defend accused street criminals told the Post-Dispatch that their clients had been complaining for years about being robbed by him.
In the interview, Liston said he had hoped after the beauty shop raid that a supervisor would spot him with the seized cash and take the decision - the decision to steal - out of his hands.
Instead, he said, Garrett reached him first and pulled him into a private room.
“Look, man, we ain’t turning that in,” Liston recalls Garrett saying.
Wary of partner
Since December, Liston, Garrett and seven other current or former St. Louis police officers have been charged with job-related crimes that involved lying, planting evidence and stealing from drug dealers and thieves.
Two more have been accused by the department and defense lawyers of lying in search warrant affidavits, triggering a wider review. One officer was fired and another suspended after a surveillance video contradicted their claim of an assault.
The incidents triggered the dismissal of dozens of prosecutions that depended on the officers’ credibility, and the review of hundreds more.
Liston pleaded guilty in May of misapplication of government funds. After being sentenced later to three months in prison - flanked by his wife and sitting across from his lawyer, Neil Bruntrager - he offered a rare interview and an opportunity to try to explain what makes an honest officer toss away his career.
In a small conference room in the federal courthouse, Liston was, by all appearances, the earnest, eager cop he portrayed himself to be. The onetime 6th District “officer of the year,” tall and slim in a pinstripe black suit with suspenders, stressed that he was not trying to make excuses.
He emphasized that bad cops are “not common.”
In the crime suppression unit, he and Garrett often worked in plain clothes, driving plain cars, with a mandate to aggressively pursue chronic criminals.
Liston said he had tried for months to obtain a transfer, concerned about gossip that Garrett was dishonest.
“I heard it from the streets first,” he said.
“BG. BG. Bobby Garrett. You’d think he (was) a giant the way they talk about him,” Liston said.
Friends would approach Liston in a club, he said, with a warning: “Get away from him. He ain’t right.”
Liston said he felt that “the streets” were looking out for his interests “more so than the Police Department.” He said it was because “the streets knew what kind of person I was.”
Liston said he was always fair and the type of cop who could wade into a tinderbox of gang members or drug dealers and calm things down. He said he grew up among those same drug dealers in the Ville neighborhood, and made it out to get a good job and help his mother and siblings.
“I understood the streets. I grew up in the streets, but I knew enough to separate myself from the streets,” he told a reporter.
Liston said he ignored the early warnings about Garrett. “Then I started seeing things,” he said. Liston said there was nothing obvious: no pocketing of drug cash in plain view or spoken deals to share the spoils. No hard evidence. Just suspicions.
Liston said the department is like the streets, with a “no-snitch atmosphere.”
“What do you do?” he said. Tell a supervisor, “Hey I think something happened?”
Liston said he tried many times to get transferred and even spoke to a “colonel” whom he would not name.
Garrett made light of his partner’s concern for his reputation, Liston said. “He would always, you know, mess with me,” asking, “What? You scared or something?”
And then it was Liston’s turn to steal.
After Garrett suggested taking the money that June 11, Liston said he remembered thinking, “Let me do this and get out of Dodge - step up my efforts to get away.”
But he also heard another voice in his head: “At the time, I knew it would probably come back and bite me.”
Liston took $3,000. He said Garrett took $2,000. Liston won’t say who got the remaining $3,000, although the lawyer for another of Garrett’s partners sentenced to prison - Vincent T. Carr - mentioned in court that his client got $500.
“I can’t even tell you what I spent it on,” Liston said. But in retrospect, he said, “I spent nine years on the line for $3,000.”
As part of his sentence, he has to pay it back to the department.
Liston expects to finish barber school before he heads off to prison. A shop frequented by his former colleagues has offered him a job.
In August, Garrett pleaded guilty of theft and other felonies in a deal for 28 months in prison.
Questions on story
The department turned down a reporter’s request for copies of Liston’s transfer requests, saying they were personnel records and not subject to Missouri’s Sunshine Act.
His lawyer, Bruntrager, said Liston had copies of five e-mails requesting a move but did not produce them for a reporter.
A department spokeswoman, Erica Van Ross, said, “There is no way he would have been forced to stay where he was uncomfortable with officers’ behavior.”
She also said, “We don’t know who that colonel was, and no one is ever held in a unit if they want to get out, especially these specialized units.”
In an interview with Post-Dispatch reporters and editors last week, Police Chief Dan Isom said 98 percent of officers are hardworking, and the actions of a few were creating a mistrust of all.
He acknowledged a perception that a “blue wall of silence” sometimes protects corrupt officers but said he is trying to change the culture to make “the outsider” the one who doesn’t tell the truth and cooperate with internal affairs investigators.
Garrett’s lawyer, Chet Pleban, declined to make a detailed response to Liston’s claims while Garrett’s sentencing is pending.
“If he’s making comments like that, then the record needs to be disputed with some factual accuracy,” Pleban said. But, he added, “Now is not the time.”
The lawyer for Carr declined to speak without consulting his client. Carr has pleaded guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and other felonies and has been sentenced to one year in prison.
With Garrett’s sentencing pending, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith said he could not comment on Liston’s case.
At Liston’s sentencing in federal court last month, however, Goldsmith said that he was “in some way, torn.” “This defendant was an officer who got thrown into the same car, as it were,” he said.
Investigators viewed Liston as a potential witness to Garrett’s and Carr’s crimes and approached him in that way, Goldsmith said, and Liston agreed to cooperate, to break the police culture of “Don’t talk about it.”
But Liston never volunteered that he also had stolen money, Goldsmith said.
Liston was caught after investigators pulled files in every case where officers seized money, and began asking questions, Bruntrager said.
He also said Liston would probably not have been caught if he had kept quiet.
Copyright 2009 St. Louis Post-Dispatch