A federal judge had harsh words Wednesday for a former Chicago police sergeant as she sentenced him to 22 months in prison for stealing thousands of dollars from a drug courier who turned out to be an FBI informant involved in an undercover sting.
The sentence for Ronald Watts exceeded the 10- to 16-month range called for under federal guidelines but fell short of the three years in prison prosecutors sought.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman called the African-American officer's actions an unconscionable betrayal of his community and other police officers. She said the misconduct by Watts, who worked in the Ida B. Wells public housing development, was particularly egregious because he took advantage of a vulnerable population wracked by poverty and crime.
"You were a sergeant operating in a community that should hold you up as an example," said the judge, who is black. "You needed to protect those people, and you didn't."
Watts, at the time a Wentworth District tactical sergeant, and Officer Kallatt Mohammed were arrested in early 2012 after they were caught stealing drug proceeds with the help of the courier secretly working for the FBI, authorities said.
In pleading guilty in summer 2012, Mohammed admitted he and Watts had demanded protection payoffs for years from drug dealers at the now-shuttered South Side housing complex. Mohammed was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
On the eve of his trial in July, Watts pleaded guilty to one count of theft of government funds. The 19-year police veteran resigned before his plea of guilty.
Watts chose not to make a statement in court Wednesday and left the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse without comment.
Authorities said Watts had known the informant for years and approached him in 2011 at a time he was already working undercover.
As part of the FBI ruse, the informant led Watts to believe he would be carrying backpacks full of drug proceeds in October 2011, the charges alleged. In an exchange FBI agents caught on surveillance, the informant handed over a bag with $5,200 in cash to Mohammed. The police officers thought the informant would lead the drug dealer to think he had been robbed of the money, authorities said.
Later that same day, the informant, wearing a hidden recorder, met Watts at a South Side Walgreens parking lot and was given $400, his cut of the scheme, according to the charges.
"Who always takes care of you?" authorities quoted Watts as telling the informant.
After Watts' arrest, two police officers filed a federal whistle-blower suit alleging that they told supervisors Watts had been shaking down drug dealers and framing people for more than a decade. The pending suit alleged high-ranking police officials later labeled them "rats" for going to the FBI and retaliated by putting them in do-nothing jobs.
In her remarks Wednesday, Coleman said children who see corrupt cops like Watts operating on the street grow up with a negative opinion of the entire criminal justice system.
"They're taught not to respect anything," she said. "What else are they supposed to think?"
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McClatchy-Tribune News Service
