Busted

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis sat in a small hotel room at the Sheraton in Revere, surrounded by FBI agents and police officers assigned to the BPD's anti-corruption unit. The room, dubbed the OP, for "operation post," was cramped and sweltering, and made only hotter by the high-tech audio and video equipment running in it. Davis, a hulking man, tugged at his blue button-down shirt, loosened his tie, and anxiously settled in. The OP was mostly quiet, save for the occasional crackle of a police radio with a transmission from the surveillance team. For eight months, its members had been following one of their own, a Boston cop named Jose Ortiz, and today, May 2, 2007, the department was going to move.

On the roof of the Sheraton, FBI sharpshooters covered an informant who was waiting for Ortiz to pull into the parking lot to take control of a cache of drugs and money. But it wasn't just the informant the cops were concerned about. Sometimes dirty cops eat their guns when they're captured, and everyone assembled at the hotel that afternoon wanted to see Ortiz in handcuffs, not a body bag.

"There he is," said an agent. Davis looked out the window and saw Ortiz, a 20-year BPD veteran, swagger across the parking lot. Just off working a paid detail, he was wearing a black fleece over his uniform shirt, but the navy blue pants with the light blue stripe were easily recognizable as standard department garb. Anyone passing by might have wondered what a Boston cop was doing at this Revere hotel, but not the crew manning the OP: They knew he was looking for the four kilograms of cocaine and $4,000 in large bills that were stashed in the trunk of a blue sedan.

The case against Ortiz had begun on August 30, 2006, when the cop was caught on a security tape coming into the Boston business of the informant, who the feds now call "Victim A." According to the FBI's account of the meeting, later filed in court, Ortiz announced he worked for "Colombian people" who wanted Victim A to pay off an alleged drug debt of $265,000. I'll kill you and your family myself, Ortiz said. He said he knew where Victim A lived, who his family was, who his friends were. Then, the FBI says, Ortiz gave Victim A his Boston Police Department business card. On the front was the phone number to his station house, District 4 in the South End. On the back he scrawled his nickname: El Flaco ("The Skinny One"). As Ortiz prepared to leave the store, he said the man should ask for him by that name when he called.

Victim A decided to report the incident to the authorities. The following day, he handed over the business card to Boston police officers in the anti-corruption unit, a small, elite group charged with investigating major crimes within the department. The cops put together a photo lineup of eight men; after Victim A immediately pointed to Ortiz, the FBI and BPD used him to set up a sting. For the next few months, Victim A would meet Ortiz at detail sites, several times pressing thousands of dollars into the hands of the cop, who always wore his BPD uniform. During one phone call recorded by the feds, Ortiz warned Victim A that if he did not pay the full amount the Colombians said they were owed, they might "become very aggressive." "[If they] can't get their money back," Ortiz told the man in Spanish on another call, as investigators listened in, "they are going to have to resolve the problem themselves. You understand me? And that, that is what we are trying to avoid."

Not surprisingly, Victim A was nervous as he waited in the parking lot of the Sheraton, even with the sharpshooters overhead. Davis watched as the pair talked. His Spanish wasn't good enough to make out what was being said, but he had been at enough narcotics buys to know what was about to happen. Victim A opened the trunk. Ortiz saw the drugs and cash that together were to pay off the last of Victim A's debt, and nodded and smiled. "It was nauseating to see this guy show up in a uniform with a jacket over it to participate in what was a drug deal," Davis says. "It was sickening to see somebody who would sell his badge like that." Victim A handed Ortiz the keys to the car. Within moments the FBI SWAT team swarmed from their hidden positions and surrounded him.

"I'm a cop!" Ortiz screamed, as he was forced to his knees, his hands in the air. The FBI agents cuffed him and pushed him down onto the pavement. Ortiz tried again: "I'm a cop!" But this time, for the first time, that would not be enough to help him get off easy.