By Denise Lavoie
The Associated Press
BOSTON — Unlike two of his friends on the Boston police force, Officer Roberto Pulido refused to plead guilty to drug trafficking charges and decided to take his chances with a jury.
But after two days of hearing himself on secret tape recordings talking about partying with drug dealers, selling Social Security numbers and trading fraudulent store gift cards, Pulido changed his mind Thursday and ended the police corruption scandal.
Pulido, 42, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges for protecting truckloads of cocaine during an FBI sting operation.
Authorities said Pulido was the ringleader of a group of three officers who received thousands of dollars from men they believed were drug dealers -- but were actually undercover FBI agents -- for escorting two truckloads of cocaine into Boston in 2006.
They were arrested in July 2006 in Miami, where they went to collect $35,000 for protecting a shipment of 100 kilograms of cocaine a month earlier.
Nelson Carrasquillo, 36, and Carlos Pizarro, 37, pleaded guilty in the last two months to drug trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Pulido, who was suspended from the Boston Police Department after his arrest, submitted his resignation during the plea hearing Thursday.
Police Commissioner Edward Davis called Pulido’s crimes “despicable.”
“I will not allow the loathsome actions of the likes of Roberto Pulido to define the men and women of the Boston Police Department, who serve our city faithfully and courageously every single day,” Davis said in a statement.
Pulido’s attorney, Rudolph Miller, did not immediately return two messages left Thursday by The Associated Press. He told The Boston Globe that Pulido wanted to spare his family, particularly his elderly mother, from having to endure a trial.
In opening statements at the trial, Miller told the jury that Pulido had been entrapped by the agents, who used a career criminal who was Pulido’s boyhood friend to lure him into a phony drug operation.
But during two days of testimony, prosecutors played numerous tape recordings in which Pulido could be heard discussing his participation in the drug protection operation as well as an identity theft ring, the sale of steroids and the guarding of after-hours parties frequented by drug dealers, prostitutes and police officers.
Pulido was not charged in any of those activities, but prosecutors were allowed to present the evidence to try to demonstrate that Pulido was not entrapped into the drug protection operation, but was instead predisposed to commit a crime.
FBI agent Kevin Constantine testified the investigation began in 2003 after Troy Lozano, the childhood friend, was arrested in Philadelphia and began providing authorities with information about Pulido’s suspected role in the fraudulent gift card operation.
Lozano wore a wire to record his conversations with Pulido.
Authorities said Pulido threatened to kill the children of associates who betrayed other members of the group.
“And if something goes bad, and they’re at fault, somebody is going to pay, either with their life or their children’s lives,” Pulido said, according to a transcript of the recorded conversation.
Pulido pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine and more than one kilogram of heroin and two counts of attempting to aid and abet the distribution of more than five kilograms of cocaine. He pleaded no contest to a charge of carrying a firearm during a drug trafficking crime.
He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum of life in prison when he is sentenced on Feb. 6.