Within minutes, Riley described the “horrendous” admissions of criminal conduct made by many of the 80 police officers who submitted to the required polygraph (lie detector) tests to fill 13 positions in the department’s elite Organized Crime Squad.
“Selling dope, robbery, burglary, theft,” Riley noted. “I went home and I literally physically got sick. I mean I could not believe not only did it happen but that policemen were willing to go in and sit and they saw nothing wrong with it.”
“After ... the first several polygraphs, the results were so bad — so horrendous that the department agreed to only consider crimes committed by the applicants within the past five years,” Riley said.
Former Deputy Police Director Tyree Broomfield had appointed Baker to investigate claims of police wrongdoing and to provide any evidence of this to appointed Montgomery County special prosecutor Jose Lopez.
The investigation led to a grand jury in 1985 approving criminal charges against nearly 20 then-current and former law enforcement officers. The charges ranged from tampering with evidence, dereliction of duty, eavesdropping and interfering with civil rights to perjury and involuntary manslaughter.
In a 1980s interview, Baker expressed annoyance that the Dayton Daily News had obtained a copy of his interview with Riley.
“As you indicated to me from the transcript that you apparently have, I did encounter resistance from all areas of law enforcement as we proceeded through the investigation — federal, state and local,” Baker said. “I did ask for cooperation from the U.S. Attorney’s office, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), when allegations involved their operations on significant issues. They refused to cooperate.”
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District and FBI declined to comment.
‘Compromised absolutely every level’
During his interview with Riley, Baker cited an FBI prostitute-informant who “worked for” William E. Stepp, the head of the notorious Stepp gang.
Stepp was the target of area, state and federal law enforcement organizations for decades. A trail of missing records, forgetful witness and other snafus led to him avoiding convictions on any substantive charges.
Stepp “put (the prostitute-informant) in business ... for the express purpose of getting stuff on cops for compromising (them),” Baker told Riley in the interview. “Control. Not only cops but Secret Service, ATF (federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), FBI Intelligence, the police Organized Crime Unit. And it worked. In fact a story we heard that they would accommodate the entire Secret Service protection ... when the president came to town ... They compromised absolutely every level ... in this whole county and that’s no (expletive) there.”
Baker asked Riley about how the Organized Crime Unit was often used “to develop information on people with a political standing the community” that did not “necessarily” involve criminal activity.
“The first I knew about it was when Chief Broomfield said that he saw pictures of (a prominent City Hall executive) allegedly leaving his mistress’ house or words to that effect,” Riley said. “I was totally shocked.”
Riley said Broomfield was “dealing with a whole bunch of stuff and he shredded it.”
‘Total power’
Baker explained in 1985 why he agreed to undertake this painful probe.
“I felt an overwhelming obligation to review methods used to drop or compromise cases,” Baker said. “These incidents caused good cases and hard work by young officers to be washed away for questionable reasons and one of our goals was to stabilize procedures so that officers coming up through the ranks would never be subjected to that again.”
“I have nothing new to comment about regarding this matter,” Baker said when asked about it this year.
Baker in the 1980s cited Detective Sgt. Dennis K. Haller’s response to being told not to arrest the prostitute-informant. He said Haller left “notes all over the (woman’s) walls” that read, “One of these days I’ll bust you.”
Following the suicide of his son in 1979, Haller authored the “Anonymous Memo” , an exhaustive list of allegations against his fellow officers shared internally and with the media that eventually led to the investigations by Baker and Lopez.
Haller knew about the illegal wiretapping and many of the damning admissions by police officers while conducting polygraph tests as well as installing illegal wiretaps.
“The information that was obtained by admissions on the polygraph tests was total power,” Haller noted in his anonymous memo. “It was known if any officer was unfaithful to his wife, who his girlfriend was and everything else that could be used to control him.”
‘Fall guy’
After resigning from the Dayton Police Department, Riley had a successful career as an investigator for the Montgomery County Public Defender’s Office. Riley died in 2001.
Former Dayton Mayor Paul R. Leonard described him as the “fall guy” in the investigation into illegal wiretapping. “I can assure you that Bill Riley was an honest and honorable man. There’s no question he came on the force when things were done differently than today, when rules were bent in the interest of justice.”
Ironically, Haller said Leonard was among politicians whose phones were illegally wiretapped for reasons that had nothing to do with any suspected misconduct or illegal behavior on their part.
As a brash young rookie in 1961, Riley said in an interview, “This is a lifetime job for me. And I’m going to be chief someday.” The enthusiasm of he and his partner, J.R. Walley, led to them being dubbed, “Batman and Robin.”
This wasn’t always a friendly moniker. After riots broke out in West Dayton in September 1966, one of the demands of Black leaders was the removal of “Batman and Robin” from the West Dayton beat.
“They’re rotten,” said one West Side resident in a report published hours after one of the worst race riots in Dayton history. “They think they own the West Side.”
Former Dayton Police Officer Bob Barnard praised Riley for creating the first integrated detective teams and the promotion of Black officers in his department.
Lopez joined in the praise of Riley.
He described the Marine Corp veteran as “a very bright, dedicated police officer who found himself in circumstances where the times required good police officers to engage in somewhat unconventional police work. There was a system in place that Riley wasn’t able to overpower.”
Equipment disappears
In the 1980s, Riley eventually conceded illegal wiretapping was prevalent by police in the 1960s while targeting drug dealers and underground organizations like the Weathermen and Black Panthers.
Riley told Baker that he urged Dayton Police Chief Grover O’Connor to take the wiretapping equipment “out of inventory” in 1974 and he didn’t do that. This was in response to the Watergate scandal.
“So, they remained in Chief O’Connor’s desk or in his office at least to ’74 to what?” Baker asked.
“I don’t know,” Riley replied.
“Don’t we know that in 1983 they were taken from the chief’s office...” Baker started saying.
“...office and put in the property room at the request of myself and Chief Broomfield,” Riley said, completing Baker’s comment.
“And they were marked sealed at that time?” Baker asked.
“I thought they were sealed,” Riley said. Later, however, he said he heard “when they opened the trunk there wasn’t an inventory” report.
Haller alleged in his “Anonymous Memo” that one member of the Organized Crime Unit “gathered up all the equipment” and kept it “for insurance in case Riley tried to transfer him from the squad.”
Many of the nearly 20 local, state and federal law enforcement officials charged with criminal offenses in the Lopez investigation received light sentences because of the police department’s own negligence and City Hall’s lack of oversight.
Riley eventually pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of dereliction of duty and interfering with civil rights in connection with the illegal wiretapping. He was fined $500 and placed on unsupervised release.
“I’m not making any excuses,” Riley said. “It was against the law.”
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