Just like those cheatin' patriots*, a dirty thieving crook.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/05/boston_officer_5.ht
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Roberto "Kiko'' Pulido, the rogue Boston police officer who
enlisted two fellow patrolman in a brazen scheme to escort
trucks bringing cocaine into the city, was sentenced today
to 26 years in federal prison by a judge who said the defendant
had disgraced his badge.
"The people who wear that badge have a sense of honor,'' US District
Judge William G. Young said, staring at Pulido, the ringleader of one of
the most notorious police corruption scandals in recent Boston history.
"You are ... dead to that sense of honor.''
The sentence was what a federal prosecutor had sought and six years
longer than that recommended by Pulido's public defender, who said her
client's abuse of steroids contributed to his crimes.
Pulido, who pleaded guilty in the middle of his trial in November to
drug trafficking charges, apologized to both the Boston Police
Department and the MBTA Transit Police, of which he had previously been
a member.
"It was my lifelong goal to be a Boston police officer,'' said Pulido,
wearing a khaki-colored jumpsuit and white sneakers. "No one is more
disappointed than myself.''
Two rows of the courtroom were filled with sup****ters and relatives of
Pulido. Most of them wore white T-****rts emblazoned with a photograph of
a smiling Pulido beneath the words "Kiko We Love You.''
Michael K. Loucks, the first assistant US attorney in Massachusetts, who
watched another federal prosecutor argue for the harsh punishment, said
afterward that Pulido "deserves every second of that sentence.''
Pulido's guilty plea came on the fourth day of his trial in US District
Court in Boston, capping an extraordinary police corruption scandal
whose reverberations are still being felt.
In the previous two days, jurors heard a swaggering, expletive-spewing
Pulido in two dozen conversations secretly recorded by the FBI as part
of a carefully constructed sting that began in late 2003 and culminated
with the arrests of Pulido and fellow officers Carlos Pizarro and Nelson
Carrasquillo in July 2006. All three officers belonged to a police
motorcycle unit.
Pulido and the two officers plotted an audacious scheme with men they
thought were drug dealers to protect trucks that brought 140 kilograms
of cocaine to Boston. The three officers did not know that the drug
dealers were undercover FBI agents and that the cocaine had previously
been seized by the government.
On April 23, 2006, Pulido and Carrasquillo monitored Police Department
radio channels while a transfer of 40 kilograms of cocaine took place at
a garage on Wa****ngton Street with the undercover FBI agents, according
to prosecutors.
Then on June 8, 2006, the three police officers guided a truck
containing about 100 kilograms of cocaine with an estimated wholesale
value of more than $2 million from Western Massachusetts to the city,
prosecutors said. The officers were paid a total of $51,000 by FBI
agents posing as drug dealers.
The three officers were arrested in Miami in July 2006 by federal agent.
Shortly before the arrests, the officers had arranged a deal to protect
another ****pment of 1,000 kilograms of cocaine and five kilograms of
heroin.
The secret tape-recordings also featured Pulido allegedly running
numerous other rackets involving identity fraud, fraudulently obtained
store gift cards, steroid sales, and prostitution. Pulido was never
charged in those schemes.
Jurors also saw a surveillance photograph of Pulido in a congratulatory
embrace of an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer called Big Manny
in an Atlantic City casino. Pulido hugged the phony drug dealer after
receiving a softball-sized wad of $15,000 that bulged in his pocket.
Although the government had only presented part of its case against
Pulido, the tapes and photographs had already made the defendant seem
more like a grade B movie crime boss than a crimefighter.
Pulido pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute
more than 5 kilograms of cocaine and 1 kilogram of heroin and two counts
of attempting to aid and abet the distribution of the cocaine. He
pleaded no contest to a fourth charge of carrying a gun in a
drug-trafficking crime.
In a Globe interview from a New Hamp****re jail shortly after his plea,
Pulido said he was pumped full of steroids when he suggested to
undercover agents in Atlantic City that he knew a good way to trans****t
cocaine into Boston.
He said a steroid addiction made him exaggerate many of the statements
he made on the surveillance tapes and called many of his comments pure
fantasy. In his mind at the time, he said, he was playing a role in a
Hollywood movie. He even recited lines from "Training Day,'' the film
about a corrupt officer.
"Anyone who knows me knows that I was acting,'' he said. "It was pure
puffery.''
Pulido's co-defendants, Carrasquillo and Pizarro, were recently
sentenced to 18 years and 13 years, respectively, after pleading guilty
last year.
Authorities in March also charged an acquaintance of Pulido with helping
to plant drugs and a gun on an innocent man and then breaking into his
apartment to steal a safe containing $18,000 as part of a conspiracy
with the rogue officer.
In addition, as many as a dozen Boston police officers have been
summoned before a federal grand jury investigating steroid use and
after-hours parties -- an offshoot of the probe that led to the
convictions of the three officers, three law enforcement officials
familiar with the case told the Globe in March.
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