Anatomy of a Racist Frame-Up
The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Appendix No. 5: Affidavit of Donald Hersing
10 May 1999
DONALD HERSING, being duly sworn, deposes and says:
1. My name is Donald Hersing. From May 1981 through November 1982
I was employed as a confidential source of information (CSI) for the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), within an investigation relative to the
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Police Department, which involved among other things
police extortion of payoffs for the purpose of allowing prostitution and other
vice-related activities to take place in Philadelphias Center City area.
2. In February 1983, based largely on my testimony consequent to
my work as a CSI, the Federal Grand Jury indicted former Central Division
inspector John DeBenedetto and six other, former officers; John Smith, Abe
Schwartz, Vincent McBride, and Larry Molloy, on charges relating to conspiracy,
bribery and the extortion of money, and other considerations, to protect
prostitution and vice activities. James Carlini, the former Headquarters
Inspector in charge of the homicide division, was named as an unindicted
co-conspirator. In May 1983 the five indicted men were tried and I was a
central prosecution witness against them. All five were convicted. The
investigation in which I participated led to further, additional corruption
indictments and to the convictions of about two dozen other Philadelphia police
officers, including former Deputy Commissioner John Martin, and former
Inspector Alphonso Giordano, for corruption during the early 1980s.
3. Before assisting the FBI in Philadelphia in the police
corruption investigation, I previously had worked as a private investigator,
and had served in an investigative and CSI capacity for law enforcement
agencies in other areas, and relative to other matters. I also worked with
sophisticated police equipment and was very familiar with sophisticated
eavesdropping and countermeasures (de-bugging) equipment. For many years I sold
sophisticated eavesdropping and countermeasures equipment to governments in the
Caribbean region and in Latin America.
4. In the time frame from 1981 through 1982 I was involved with
the FBI in the operation of modeling studios at 1245 Vine Street
and 2209 Walnut Street in Philadelphia, which were in reality houses of
prostitution. I was also involved in the operation of an after-hours club
called the Morning Glory on 1437 Vine Street in Philadelphia.
During the course of the investigation, the FBI set up cameras outside the
Morning Glory in order to video all those who entered the club. Central
Division police, including Inspector DeBenedetto, his Lieutenant John Smith,
vice officers and uniformed officers received monetary payments and other
considerations from me for protection of these activities and operations.
Central Division police officers also sought and received free sexual favors
from the prostitutes. It was known to me that Central Division police collected
similar payoffs and received similar considerations throughout the Center City
from prostitutes, pimps, and owners of heterosexual and homosexual clubs and
bars.
5. In May 1981 I offered to provide services as a CSI to the FBI,
with regard to payoffs to Philadelphia police personnel. I began working as an
FBI CSI, under the direction of the United States Attorneys Office. Working for
the FBI from June 1981 to July 1982, I provided monetary payments and other
considerations to various Philadelphia police officers in order to protect the
prostitution and other vice activities at the studios and
after-hours club I operated. With my cooperation, the FBI made audio and video
recordings of conversations between myself and corrupt police officers,
documenting payoffs which I made to the corrupt police officers. I also
provided source information and was debriefed on a frequent and regular basis
by FBI agents concerning all aspects of my contacts and communications with
Philadelphia police personnel. The primary FBI agents I reported to were Mike
Thompson and Andy Lash. Other FBI agents also worked on the case including
George Sherwood.
6. During this time frame I further became aware that there were
also, at minimum, two other ongoing investigations of Philadelphia police
personnel concurrent to the investigation I was involved in, one of which
focused on police extortion of payoffs from homosexual, gay bars in
Philadelphias Center City area. The other investigation focused on police
extortion of payoffs from video gambling machines in bars and clubs.
7. Inspector John DeBenedetto took over as Commanding Officer of
the Central Division of the Philadelphia Police Department on about June 1,
1981. I first met DeBenedetto in August 1981. At that meeting DeBenedetto
personally told me that when he took over the Central Division in June he had
gathered his officers together and informed them that from that point on all
payoff money was to be passed up to him (DeBenedetto) whereupon he would return
to each vice squad member a sum of money, about $50. During this conversation,
DeBenedetto asked me if I had been making payments to any of his officers. When
I informed him that I had been paying $500 a month to a vice officer, George
Woods, DeBenedetto became outraged because Woods had not been delivering that
money to him (DeBenedetto), and DeBenedetto said he would take care
of Woods because he (Woods) had been disloyal. A few days later
DeBenedetto told me he had demoted Woods to the status of a uniformed officer
and had transferred him to another district. I continued making payments to
DeBenedetto during the fall of 1981 and the spring of 1982 via his Lieutenant,
John Smith. The payments stopped on July 27, 1982 when Lt. Smith came to my
apartment and told me that the police personnel would not be doing business
with me any more.
8. I was introduced to DeBenedetto through an East Division
detective named Abe Schwartz and through the headquarters inspector in charge
of the homicide division (and other divisions), James Carlini. I had met
Schwartz independently of the FBI investigation, through my personal
accountant. I became friendly with Schwartz and provided him with favors of
various types, and had the manager of my Vine Street modeling
studio arrange a private party with prostitutes for Schwartz and his
friends, including Carlini. It was Inspector Carlini who vouched for me to
DeBenedetto and helped me form my relationship with DeBenedetto.
9. In the course of running my business and my direct contact with
Inspector DeBenedetto, I learned that the individual street prostitutes were
also run and controlled by the police who demanded money, sexual favors and
information from them in order for them to continue to work the streets with
less frequent arrests. I heard about a prostitute called Cynthia White, known
as Lucky, who worked the street and also went into a rival studio run by a
woman named Tracy.
10. Prior to meeting DeBenedetto, during the summer of 1981, I had
been making payments of $500 or more per month to a Central Division vice
officer named George Woods. Despite my payments to George Woods, he demanded
that I allow vice officers to make periodic arrests at the Vine Street studio
in order to keep up the appearance of law enforcement. Woods would provide me
advance warning of the planned arrests. I would offer a prostitute up to be
arrested. Woods further demanded a payment of $75 to speed up the booking of
the prostitutes, telling me he would use this money to bribe the booking
officer and court personnel to expedite the process and shorten the time the
prostitute would spend in jail.
11. Although Philadelphia prosecutors rarely prosecuted
prostitutes seriously, the mere fact of the arrest and booking procedure was a
serious harassment for the prostitute because it interfered with the
prostitutes ability to make money, having been removed from the
opportunity to do so for a period of time. I made payments to the police to
speed up the booking process. While the owners of the brothels provided cash
protection payments, the individual girls were expected not only to have sex
but to provide information about individuals. If individual girls didnt
pay up, they would be run into jail. These women had to pay and when the police
needed a human sacrifice for a particular club, they got a human sacrifice.
12. In addition to these regular payments to high-ranking Central
Division officials and the vice officers, we also made payments of $75 per week
to uniformed Central Division police officers to let the Morning Glory continue
serving alcohol after 3:00 a.m., which was the mandatory termination time for
the sale of alcohol by state law. Uniformed officers would perform routine
club checks at the Morning Glory and other after-hours clubs to
count the number of people at the clubs. The purpose of collecting this
information was to help them determine how much of a payoff they should demand.
Officers would also park outside of my Vine Street modeling studio
to count the number of customers entering the establishment, so they could
determine whether business was good or bad. On occasion when I complained to
DeBenedetto and other Central Division officers that my business was slow, they
informed me that they knew this was not true, because they were surveilling my
businesses.
13. Throughout my work as a CSI, the officers who were receiving
payoffs expressed concern about possible FBI wiretaps and surveillance
regarding their activities. It was clear they suspected that FBI investigations
were being conducted. The officers were sometimes reluctant to physically enter
my apartment or to discuss the payoffs and related business there, and often
insisted on meeting in restaurants or in their own cars in order to conceal
their activities. Once, during a meeting with George Woods in June 1981, I
mentioned that I had been to a bar called the Waiting Room and Woods got very
upset and told me that the Feds had the Waiting Room so
f-cking wired it ain't funny. Woods told me to stay away from that bar.
The police often accused me of talking about their taking of payoff money and
other favors. At a meeting with DeBenedetto in March 1982 he accused me of
mentioning his name in three city bars and stated I had a big
mouth. In this same discussion he told me that he was not going to leave
messages on my answering machine. On several occasions when the FBI wanted me
to wear a recording device (a wire) to meetings with Central
Division police, I did not do so because I was afraid I would be searched. In
fact, I was searched on one occasion by vice Officer Larry Molloy prior to a
meeting with Lt. John Smith in March 1982. Present during this meeting also
were John Smith and DeBenedetto, and I was physically searched by Smith prior
to this March 1982 meeting. It was clear to me I would be in serious physical
danger, possibly even killed, if my role as an FBI CSI was revealed.
14. At the beginning of December 1981 the FBI agents instructed me
to stop making my monthly payment to the Central Division police. They wanted
to step up the investigation to get more evidence directly linking John
DeBenedetto to the corruption and were frustrated that DeBenedetto was using a
middleman, Lt. John Smith, to pick up the payments. The agents thought that if
I stopped making payments it would lure DeBenedetto into approaching me
directly and incriminating himself. I was also upset that despite my payments
the morals squad had actually made arrests at my studio.
15. On about January 13, 1982, Abe Schwartz told me that the
problems of the recent arrests stemmed from a recent murder in the center city
area. On approximately January 29, 1982, Schwartz told me that he was concerned
that the FBI was tapping (placing listening devices on) public
phones. He told me that two FBI agents had been spotted by police in the
vicinity of 19th and Market Streets. Schwartz told me that everyone
was worried about the federal officers and their investigations.
16. Schwartz asked me to help him conduct a
sweep (a countermeasure or debugging inspection) of the
East Division for bugs. I went to the East Division headquarters
and while there saw a police Inspector named Alphonso Giordano. I knew Giordano
personally because he often went to the Morning Glory after-hours club. He was
part of a group of police officers who were all dirtyengaged
in corruption activities. When Giordano saw me at the East Division, he became
upset and told Schwartz that he (Schwartz) shouldnt have brought me
there, that he [I] probably works for the f-cking FBI.
17. I began making payments to the police again the spring of 1982
after a meeting with DeBenedetto, in which he made very incriminating
statements, which the FBI agents and I recorded. In July 1982, Lt. John Smith
told me the police wanted to stop doing business with me and I stopped making
the payments.
18. I reported all my conversations and activities with
Philadelphia police officers during this period of time to the FBI agents who
ran the investigation.
(signed)
DONALD HERSING
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