Detective: D.A. Tampered With Wallace Probe To Set Up Cops

By Ralph Cipriano

for BigTrial.net

In an ongoing whistleblower's lawsuit in U.S. District Court, a former Philadelphia police detective charges that the D.A.'s office tampered with an investigation into the police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., by trying to force another detective to falsify an affidavit of probable cause.

According to an amended complaint filed April 8th by former Detective Derrick "Jake" Jacobs, Assistant District Attorney Vincent Corrigan wanted Detective Daphne Smith to rewrite the affidavit to eliminate Wallace's aggressive actions toward police on the day they shot him 14 times.

On Oct. 26, 2020, a next-door neighbor and Wallace's sister called 911, frantically seeking help because the knife-wielding Wallace was attacking his mother and father. 

When the cops got there, Wallace came at two officers with the knife. Within the next minute, despite being told ten times by the cops, who were in retreat, to drop the knife, Wallace kept pursuing the cops out in the street and kept brandishing the knife. So the cops opened fire and killed him.

When Detective Smith refused to rewrite the affidavit, Jacobs wrote, ADA Corrigan went to Detective Smith's superior, Lt. Jason Hendershot, and the result was that Hendershot "altered and falsified" the affidavit to remove any of Wallace's aggressive actions, thereby removing any legal justification for the cops to shoot Wallace.

In his federal lawsuit seeking $50 million in damages, Jacobs, acting as his own attorney, has charged District Attorney Larry Krasner and Assistant D.A. Tracy Tripp with conspiring to maliciously prosecute him because he similarly refused to change his testimony about his investigation into another racially-charged officer-involved shooting.

Last October, U.S. Judge Harvey Bartle III granted the city's request to dismiss Jacobs' lawsuit for allegedly not properly following the federal rules for civil procedure. But Jacobs filed an appeal that prevailed last Dec. 1st with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and his lawsuit was reinstated. 

What does the D.A.'s office have to say in response to these allegations? As they have for the past 20 months, Larry "Stonewall" Krasner and his official spokesperson, Jane 'The Mute" Roh, did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Jacobs, a decorated veteran detective of more than 20 years formerly assigned to the homicide unit, was one of the detectives who investigated the 2017 fatal police shooting of dirt biker David Jones.

The victim was black; Ryan Pownall, the cop who pulled the trigger, was white. Jacobs, who was the only black member of the police department's Officer Involved Shooting Investigation Unit, says that race played no part in his investigation that exonerated the officer; neither did any supposed loyalty to his fellow cops.

In Jacobs' view, Pownall did nothing wrong.

"Jones was armed," Jacobs previously told Big Trial. And during the fight between the two men, "Pownall believed he was shooting Jones to protect himself," as well as a witness that Pownall was transporting, along with the witness's two kids.

But Jacobs' findings put him on a collision course with the D.A.'s office, where Krasner was intent on indicting Officer Pownall for murder. When Jacobs got in the way, the detective claimed in his lawsuit, the D.A.'s office, in the person of Assistant District Attorney Tracy Tripp, who is white, threatened to arrest Jacobs, initiated a grand jury investigation against him, and then tried to intimidate the detective into remaining silent until Pownall's trial was over. 

In his latest legal brief, Jacobs claims that the D.A.'s office employed the same corrupt methods they used against him to try and persuade another detective to falsify the facts in the officer-involved shooting death of Walter Wallace Jr., which set off two days of riots and looting in the city.

At the time the 27-year-old Wallace was killed, he'd been arrested 17 times and had three outstanding protection orders filed against him by the mother of his children, as well as his own mother.

His rap sheet included a 2019 arrest for stabbing the mother of his children in the leg, but she declined to press charges. In 2016, during a robbery, Wallace allegedly grabbed a woman by the neck, and according to the victim, held a gun to her head. In 2013, he violated a protection order filed by his mother by throwing water in her face, punching her in the face, and threatening to shoot her, according to court records aired by NBC10.

Wallace was also an amateur rapper. On video, he was seen cavorting with guns that as a convicted felon, he was barred from possessing, while rapping about "niggers" and "bitches." But thanks to the work of The Philadelphia Inquirer, which mythologized Wallace, the single dad with nine kids, as a "family man," the mentally-ill, knife wielding career criminal was transformed into a civil rights martyr. 

After Wallace was killed, Krasner announced he would not rely on the police department's investigation of the case, but instead would have the D.A.'s office conduct its own investigation. 

Detective Smith was the only Latino member of the Officer Involved Shooting Investigation Unit. After she wrote an affidavit of probable cause for a search warrant, ADA Corrigan, who is white, informed her he would not "approve her affidavit unless she falsifies the facts known to her," Jacobs wrote.

What ADA Corrigan wanted was to have "Walter Wallace’s aggressive actions removed from the affidavit," Jacobs wrote, because "This would bring into question the justification of the use of deadly force by the officers."

When Detective Smith refused, Jacobs wrote, Lt. Hendershot "had Detective Smith’s factual affidavit voided." Then Hendershot "authored a separate affidavit without Detective Smith’s knowledge."

"The affidavit was altered and falsified to remove Walter Wallace’s aggressive actions," Jacobs wrote. "Defendant Hendershot created an affidavit to Assistant District Attorney Vincent Corrigan’s specifications and satisfaction."

In his legal brief, Jacobs noted that the lawyer for the Wallace family is Shaka Johnson. 

"This would not be the first time District Attorney Krasner has colluded with Shaka Johnson in an Officer Involved Shooting," Jacobs wrote. 

On Aug. 14, 2019, during a nationally-televised standoff with police that lasted more than seven hours, Maurice Hill, armed with an AR-15, shot and wounded six cops. More than 200 shots were fired during the standoff that forced the evacuation of a nearby daycare, and a lockdown on part of the Temple University campus.

During the standoff, a SWAT team had to rescue two cops trapped inside the building while Hill was still firing away at officers that had him surrounded.

Meanwhile, Larry Krasner, a rank amateur at hostage negotiations, was on the phone with Hill and his lawyer playing let's make a deal. Except, according to Krasner, it was a "phony baloney" deal that he had no intention of  honoring.

"Early on, I said 25 [years], then he said 20 and I said OK," Krasner told The Philadelphia Inquirer. When Hill asked for the deal in writing, Krasner told the newspaper he started a draft, but didn't finish it.

In his interview with the Inquirer, Krasner claimed Shaka Johnson was in on the con, but that's not what lawyers are ethically supposed to do.

According to the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Responsibility, Rule 8.4,  "It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to . . . engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation."

At the time Krasner offered his "phony baloney" deal to Hill and his lawyer, former Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham told Big Trial, "When a prosecutor offers a defendant a plea deal the prosecutor is stuck with it."

"He [Krasner] started to write a deal out on a piece of paper," Abraham said. "It's just outrageous. Everything about that is wrong."

For the past two years since the standoff, Krasner has refused to be interviewed by police regarding his role as a fact witness in the case of Maurice Hill.

Meanwhile, Jacobs contended that since he came forward as a whistleblower, the police department's reaction has been to conspire against him to falsely charge him with misconduct, and threaten to fire him, which forced the veteran detective to retire.

Regarding Derrick Jacobs's most recent 82-page legal opus, the funniest part was when the former detective turned media critic and ripped a few reporters at the Inquirer. 

"Chris Palmer and Mensah Dean the so called 'reporters' for the Philadelphia Inquirer also could have provided the citizens of Philadelphia with quality information" about Jacobs' lawsuit, and his serious allegations of corruption in the D.A.'s office, Jacobs wrote.

"Palmer contacted Jacobs immediately after Jacobs’ filed his civil complaint," Jacobs wrote. But Jacobs responded by doing his own investigation of Palmer, and it "revealed he was Krasner’s publicist and not an actual reporter," the former detective wrote.

In his legal brief, Jacobs also ripped Dean.

"Mensah Dean sat in the courtroom when Pownall’s attorney told the courtroom of the DAO’s nefarious actions," the former detective wrote. "Jacobs was inches (pre covid) away standing directly over Dean’s left shoulder as he took notes."

"This 'reporter' refused to 'report' on what happened in the courtroom that day," the former detective wrote. "Jacobs has watched Dean sit in on numerous homicide court cases, where the victims are almost always African American."

"Dean chooses to tow Krasner’s 'white savior' of black people anthem," the former detective wrote. "Jacobs will not tow that line, nor will he 'kneel' like some have done before him," the former detective wrote, referring to the Inquirer reporters.

"I guess selling the Inquirer is worth selling out."

More on Derrick Jacobs's lonely crusade against corruption in Larry Krasner's D.A.'s office: A. Benjamin Mannes writing the cover story this week for Philadelphia Weekly.