D.A.'s Office announces probe of narcotics officer

Fourteen years ago, five rogue police officers in Northwest Philadelphia's 39th Police District were charged with preying on drug suspects, stealing their money, and covering up the busts with bogus arrest and search warrants. Within five years, what began as a probe into 40 questionable arrests resulted in the release from prison of almost 500 people.

The City of Philadelphia - and its taxpayers - subsequently paid more than $4 million to settle federal civil-rights suits filed by people wrongly arrested and jailed through the police actions.

Yesterday, in what some court system officials said could be another "tip of the iceberg," the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office announced it would investigate the case of a police narcotics officer whom a former confidential informant has accused of falsifying evidence to build his cases against suspected drug dealers.

Cathie Abookire, spokeswoman for District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, confirmed the investigation into Officer Jeffrey Cujdik, 34, a veteran of nearly 12 years with the department.

Abookire also confirmed that prosecutors will be looking at pending criminal cases involving Cujdik that could be compromised if the allegations are true.

The announcement came the same day the Philadelphia Daily News published an article based in part on an interview with Ventura Martinez, 47, a onetime drug dealer who became Cujdik's confidential informant.

Cujdik's attorney, veteran Center City litigator George Bochetto, yesterday called the article a "disgrace" and said Cujdik had requested police protection now that his name has been publicly circulated.

"To take the word of this Martinez character with not one hard fact or credible witness to corroborate him," Bochetto said. "He's an admitted liar, an admitted drug dealer, and has a felony record as long as your arm."

Several officials said yesterday that the investigation of Cujdik was under way long before yesterday's Daily News article.

Chief Inspector Anthony DiLacqua of the Internal Affairs Unit said Cujdik was transferred last month to the Differential Police Response Unit, which takes police reports by phone, after authorities began investigating allegations about his role in narcotics investigations.

DiLacqua said he could not comment on the substance of the complaints against Cujdik. He said Cujdik surrendered his service weapon pending the probe's outcome.

In addition to Internal Affairs and, now, the District Attorney's Office, the FBI is also reportedly involved.

Bradley S. Bridge, a lawyer with the city's Defender Association, which represents poor people charged with crimes, said yesterday he would likely seek the release of some imprisoned defendants within the next week.

Bridge said he is now looking at a dozen cases that "are clearly problematic."

Bridge, who led the defender's investigation in the 39th District cases, said: "My first priority is to get people who were wrongly imprisoned out of jail."

"There are a number of cases going to court regularly that involved this police officer," Bridge added. "It's important for all parties in the justice system to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible."

The reason such cases expand so rapidly is that any arrest rarely involves just one officer.

In this case, the probe will start with cases in which Cujdik and Martinez were involved. If the name of another officer partnered with Cujdik shows up on one of these cases, the probe expands to other cases in which the partner was involved.

In that way, the probe of the five officers in the 39th District case spread quickly to the 25th District and then to the state Attorney General's Bureau of Narcotics Investigation.

The Daily News article says Cujdik began using Martinez as an informant in 2003, paying him $150 to $200 for each drug or gun case he helped develop.

But two years later, the Daily News article continues, the relationship between Cujdik and Martinez allegedly moved into shadowy terrain.

Martinez alleges that Cujdik sometimes began lying about evidence, using drugs bought elsewhere to justify a search warrant for a suspected dealer from whom Martinez was unable to make a buy.

Martinez also began living in a Kensington rowhouse owned by Cujdik and leased to a woman the article describes as Martinez's common-law wife and mother of their two young children.

Bochetto declined to discuss Martinez's allegations in detail. The lawyer confirmed that Martinez had worked as Cujdik's paid informant.

Bochetto also confirmed that Martinez had lived in the officer's Kensington house but said Cujdik rented it to a woman, identified in the Daily News as Sonia Naome Durecout, and did not learn until later that Martinez had moved in.

The violation of police policy requiring an arm's-length relationship between police officer and informant appears to have come to light last year when defense attorney Stephen P. Patrizio was representing alleged drug dealer Raul Nieves.

Martinez and Cujdik had investigated Nieves, 30, a probe that resulted in charges against him in 2006.

Though Nieves was charged with two drug sales to "Confidential Information No. 103," Patrizio said yesterday his client insisted there had been only one drug buy.

Suspicious of the similarity of other search warrants involving CI 103 and Cujdik, Patrizio hired a private investigator who ultimately located CI 103 - Martinez - and photographed him leaving a house owned by Cujdik.

Cujdik was confronted with the photos by Patrizio at a hearing last October at which the officer acknowledged that he owned the house. That, in turn, led to the disclosure of Martinez's identity.

Cujdik ended Martinez's role as a paid informant last December and told Martinez last month that he had to vacate the Kensington house.

Patrizio said neither he nor Nieves had yet been contacted by investigators looking into the Cujdik-Martinez cases.