Yogi Berra, who was famous as a baseball catcher, manager and butcher
of the English language, once said, “I’m not going to buy my kids an
encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.” He also said, “You can
observe a lot by watching.”
Rick Wershe, Jr. observed a lot by watching the rapidly
escalating crack cocaine trade in Detroit in the last half of the 1980s,
starting when he was 14 years old. The FBI paid him to do it. Rick Wershe also
did a lot of talking. And that was a problem. Truth be told, in his teen years
Richard Wershe, Jr. was often his own worst enemy, due to his mouth, mostly. He
said things. He said things to the FBI. He said things to the Wayne County
prosecutor’s office. He said things to reporters. Some of the things were
better left unsaid because they contributed to his White Boy Rick reputation
and the erroneous impression that he was a key player in Detroit’s drug
underworld who knew more than he actually did.
 |
| Rick Wershe in his teen years |
There’s another side to this. That is, there were so many
dirty cops in Detroit in that era, so many with badges tarnished by drug
corruption, that many of them assumed Rick Wershe knew about their dirty
deeds, even if he didn’t. This is worth noting because it may be a factor in
the never-ending Detroit/Wayne County law enforcement establishment vendetta
that has kept him in prison since 1988 for a single non-violent drug conviction.
Some cops feared Richard J. Wershe, Jr. because they
feared what he might know—about them. The fact is, Wershe knew a few important things
about Detroit police corruption, but it appears some corrupt cops he never met
or heard of thought he knew about them, too. He didn’t.
All of this fits with the argument put forth on Informant America in numerous posts that
Rick Wershe has remained in prison all these years after others convicted of
the same crime as juveniles have been set free because of a law enforcement
vendetta; retribution for daring to help the FBI put dirty cops in jail. How
the vendetta has lasted this long and who has the political horsepower to keep
it going at the local and state level is an enduring mystery in the Wershe
saga.
For those who doubt this scenario, let’s review some news
coverage of the late 1980s about Detroit police corruption.
 |
| Detroit News headline, May, 1988 |
In May, 1988, a few months after Wershe was convicted and
sentenced to prison, the Detroit News
reported on suspected widespread drug corruption in the Detroit police department.
“100 cops investigated for drug ties or use,” read the headline. The
copyrighted article reported on the scope of the scandal.
“Among
the allegations:
- Police officers, in and out of uniform, have robbed drug dealers of money and narcotics. The drugs were then sold by other dealers who split the money with the officers.
- Officers have sold weapons and protection to drug dealers.
- Police officers have bought and sold narcotics”
The article quoted one unnamed officer who described what
life was like on the streets in 1988. "'Some
nights it's like the Wild West out there, but our guys (police) are the ones
doing the robbing,' one veteran investigator said."
A recent Informant
America post (Rick Wershe and the
Police Culture of Lying) noted the business-as-usual attitude about Detroit
cops on the take by describing a transfer party for one DPD narc known as
Popeye. His going-away gift from his fellow narcs was a shirt with lots of
extra pockets sewn all over it. The joke signified Popeye’s reputation among
his fellow officers for stealing wads of cash during raids on crack houses.
Raid teams are supposed to turn in any cash they find in a dope house. Popeye
did turn in drug raid cash, but frequently only after he helped himself to a
stack of bills found in the raid location.
The newspaper stories about a widespread investigation of
Detroit police corruption were attention grabbers. Imagine what a paranoid crooked
cop fearing exposure and prosecution must have thought when reading another
headline in that same month.
 |
| Detroit News headline, May, 1988 |
“Wershe
to meet with police,” the headline read. The subhead said: “Focus will be on alleged protection bribe”
The meeting went nowhere. Assistant Wayne County
prosecutor Pat Foley told Wershe he wanted the imprisoned young man to tell all
about a Detroit police sergeant he had allegedly bribed to protect a stash
house from being raided. Foley said if Wershe testified and helped convict the
corrupt sergeant, the prosecutor’s office might
consider asking Wershe’s trial judge to consider a reduction in his life
sentence. Rick Wershe told Foley if “might” and “maybe” was the best he could
do, he could forget any cooperation.
About a year after Rick Wershe went to prison another Detroit News front page story reported police
in Detroit in the late ‘80s were accused of committing crimes more often than
officers in the nation’s other 10 most populous cities.
"...in
the past two years Detroit officers have been accused of rape, hiring an arsonist
to set fire to an occupied apartment building, car theft, insurance fraud,
cocaine and heroin possession, armed robbery, selling gun permits, concealing
stolen property and hiring a contract killer," the
newspaper reported.
Other Informant
America posts have recounted how Rick Wershe, Jr. later played a pivotal
role, from prison, in helping the FBI prosecute 11 police officers in a sting
operation that netted one of Detroit Mayor Coleman Young’s police bodyguards
and Young’s brother-in-law, the late Willie Volsan.
As part of that sting investigation, the FBI targeted one
of Detroit’s top cops, Gil Hill. He was a local celebrity due to his role as
Eddie Murphy’s boss in the Beverly Hills
Cop movies of the mid-1980s. It was Rick Wershe who put Hill on the FBI’s
radar in 1985 for possibly obstructing justice in the investigation of the
murder of 13-year old Damion Lucas. The young Detroit boy was inadvertently
killed in a drive-by shooting by members of the Johnny Curry drug ring. They
were trying to intimidate the boy’s uncle and ended up murdering the little
boy. Curry, who was married to Mayor Young’s niece, allegedly paid a bribe to
Hill to keep the investigation away from the Curry organization.
 |
| Gil Hill, left, meets with Willie Volsan, center with back to camera and Sgt. James Harris, right (FBI surveillance photo) |
Hill has repeatedly denied to reporters that he accepted
a bribe from Johnny Curry. The murder, however, has never been prosecuted even though
the killer is known to the Wayne County prosecutor’s office.
Rick Wershe’s one and only parole hearing in 2003 was a
kangaroo court charade with witnesses giving dubious testimony and shaky
evidence to support the claim that Wershe was and is a menace to society who needs
to remain in prison his entire life. One witness has since signed a sworn
affidavit stating Gil Hill was involved in arranging the witnesses to testify
against Wershe’s release on parole.
There is good reason to suspect Coleman Young may have
let it be known that he wanted Wershe to rot in prison. It was no secret Young
hated the FBI which had been after him since the congressional Commie hearings
of the early 1950s. Young also hated FBI informants;“stool pigeons” to use
Young’s phrase.
When it came to Rick Wershe, here was an FBI “stool
pigeon” who slept with Young’s niece while secretly working with federal agents
to send his niece’s husband, Johnny Curry, to prison for drug dealing. After
Wershe went to prison, he helped the FBI again, this time in the
successful prosecution of one of the mayor’s bodyguards and his brother-in-law,
Willie Volsan, who was his niece’s father. If Coleman Young had an enemies
list, Richard J.
Wershe, Jr. would easily make the top ten.
In addition to the enmity of Hill and Young, there are
untold numbers of Detroit cops who may fear and despise Wershe to this day for what they
think he knows about their own corruption. It all adds up to a fetid stew of
revenge which is still simmering and keeping Richard J. Wershe, Jr. in prison.
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