Ward’s testimony suggests a police unit that acted as a criminal gang, but with the advantage of legal guns, badges, and the state’s monopoly on the use of force. Some of the offenses are appalling but nonviolent: Seizing money from suspects, the cops would simply pocket part of it. In one case, prosecutors played a tape in which the force opens a safe, and its leader, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, is heard instructing them not to touch anything, to give the appearance of careful propriety. In fact, Ward testified, the crew had already removed $100,000 of the $200,000 they found in the safe, then reenacted the event for the camera after splitting the first 100 grand among themselves. (Jenkins has also pleaded guilty.)

But other behavior is more shocking. The unit would find groups of men, drive toward them at high speed, and throw the doors open, to see who would run. Then they’d chase and detain those who fled—even though it’s easy to imagine anyone who had just had a car drive at them might split. According to Ward, officers might do this between 10 and 50 times a night.

Officers also sought out “dope-boy cars”—Honda Accords, Acura TLs, and others—and would pull them over for pretextual reasons like overly tinted windows or seat-belt violations. Any man over 18 carrying a book bag might be stopped as inherently suspicious. Ward also said the unit used illegal GPS trackers, and kept BB guns on hand if they needed to plant them in a pinch. He testified that Jenkins claimed to be a federal agent when seizing money.

Ward also said that Jenkins would ask suspected drug dealers who they would target if they could put together a crew to rob a drug dealer. That became a way for the task force to pick targets. The group appears to have operated on the assumption that they wouldn’t raise hackles since the victims of their criminal behavior, especially the thefts, were often drug dealers.

That doesn’t even get into the overtime fraud; that the then-lieutenant who approved the fraudulent hours as reward for seizing guns is, in a potent symbol of how institutions rot, now head of the Baltimore Police Department’s internal-affairs division, which deals with misconduct by members of the force.

As this trial goes on in federal court, another Baltimore officer was charged this week with fabricating evidence. In July, a public defender released a bodycam video made by Officer Richard Pinheiro Jr. In the video, Pinheiro flips on his bodycam, walks down an alley, and announces that he has found a baggie of pills. But the department’s bodycams are set to record 30 seconds prior to being manually turned on, and that 30 seconds showed Pinheiro first placing the pills, then leaving the alley. (His defense attorney contends he was reenacting a discovery that had already occurred but was not taped.)