Detective planted gun and drugs, wrote fake warrant to justify arrests in MD, feds say
A detective helped plant fake evidence, including a gun and drugs, on suspects to justify their arrests during his time at the Baltimore Police Department, federal officials said.
Now, he faces up to decades in federal prison.
On April 11, Robert Hankard, 45, from Baltimore, was convicted on charges of conspiracy to deprive civil rights, conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, falsifying records in contemplation of a federal investigation and false declarations before a grand jury, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.
“While we respect the jury’s verdict, we wholeheartedly disagree with it, particularly to the extent that it relies upon the testimony of former BPD Officer Keith Gladstone. We’ll continue to fight on behalf of Robert Hankard in order to see that justice is done,” Hankard’s defense attorney, David Benowitz, told McClatchy News in an April 13 statement.
Hankard joined the police department in 2007 and was promoted to detective by 2014, court documents obtained by McClatchy show.
On March 26, 2014, Hankard, who was not on duty that day, got a phone call from his partner, C.V., who told him a sergeant had been “hemmed up” in something, prosecutors said.
C.V. asked Hankard if he had any “toys” or “replicas,” which authorities say meant his partner was asking for a BB gun so “it could be planted on a suspect.”
Hankard gave his partner the BB gun, which was later planted at the scene of the suspect’s arrest, prosecutors said.
Though no drugs or guns were found on the man at the time of his arrest, he was later charged with multiple drug offenses as well as possession, use and discharge of a gas or pellet gun for the BB gun that had been put on him, court documents show.
The suspect was detained because of these charges until at least April 2, 2014, prosecutors said, and the charges were dismissed in January 2015.
During a Feb. 13, 2019, testimony in front of a federal grand jury, prosecutors asked Hankard about the BB gun planting. Hankard told jurors that when his partner asked him for a gun, he replied “absolutely not” and hung up.
“I tried to block it out of my mind. I’m just one of those cops that I do everything by the book and I just didn’t even want to think about it,” Hankard said during his testimony.
On Sept. 24, 2015, during a separate case, Hankard and two other detectives were conducting an investigation at a motel in Baltimore City.
Hankard and his partner arrested a suspect after they saw him sitting in his pickup truck in the motel parking lot, prosecutors said. When they found no drugs inside the vehicle, a detective entered the suspect’s hotel room without a warrant, grabbed some cocaine that was in the room and put it in the truck to justify the arrest, court documents show.
Prosecutors said the detective asked Hankard if he was “okay” with planting the cocaine, to which Hankard agreed.
The next day, Hankard wrote a false search warrant for the motel room in which he claimed detectives observed cocaine “in plain view” in the pickup truck and saw the suspect throw a “package of suspected cocaine” to the floorboard, court documents show.
In the sworn warrant, Hankard also claimed detectives went to the motel room to confirm the key card was still active and to secure the door pending a search warrant — but failed to include that detectives had already entered the room.
Hankard added that he believed there were additional large quantities of drugs inside the room based on his “training, experience, prior investigations and recent information obtained,” again omitting detectives saw the drugs when they entered the room, prosecutors said.
“As evidenced by the jury’s guilty verdict, the actions of Mr. Hankard were not only harmful to the individuals he swore under oath to protect, but they also undermined public trust and confidence in law enforcement,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Sobocinski said in the release.
As of April 13, a date for sentencing had not been scheduled yet.
This story was originally published April 13, 2022 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Detective planted gun and drugs, wrote fake warrant to justify arrests in MD, feds say."
