By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A Harlem police officer was charged with trying to steal $900,000 in cash he believed was stashed under a floorboard in an Inwood apartment formerly used by a drug dealer, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Manhattan police officer Shawn Jenkins, 43, pleaded not guilty to attempted burglary and conspiracy charges, both felonies, at his Manhattan Supreme Court arraignment on Tuesday.
Jenkins was suspended from his 23rd Precinct highway safety patrol assignment last year when federal investigators accused of him of making repeated trips to an apartment at 5008 Broadway between May 2008 and May 2009 to search for cash there.
He was allegedly caught trying to break into the apartment, using surveillance equipment and enlisting the help of another officer — who was actually an informant against Jenkins. Jenkins even purchased Tasers that he planned to use on the apartment's new tenants once he got inside, prosecutors said.
The case was ultimately turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office because federal authorities did not have sufficient jurisdiction in the New York-based investigation, officials said.
Assistant District Attorney Julio Cuevas said Jenkins plotted to steal the cash he believed was hidden in the apartment by a prior tenant who was a drug dealer.
Jenkins had been planning to enter the apartment "through the use of a fictitious search warrant or other fictitious means, while he wore a police raid jacket," prosecutors said in a press release.
Jenkins apparently told police he used to "work as a bodyguard" for the drug dealer, Eugenio Perez, who was convicted of federal drug charges in 2000 and deported after serving prison time. Jenkins believed Perez had hidden the cash somewhere inside the Inwood apartment.
"This indictment demonstrates a serious abuse of the public trust by someone sworn to uphold our laws and protect public safety," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a statement.
The cash was never found in the apartment, prosecutors said.
The suspended officer faces up to seven years in prison if convicted. He was ordered held on $25,000 bail.
A lawyer who represented Jenkins at Tuesday's brief proceeding asked that he be placed in protective custody in jail.
