BALTIMORE _ A former Baltimore police sergeant who ran the department's corrupt Gun Trace Task Force was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison on Friday.
Thomas Allers, 49, pleaded guilty to nine robberies carried out while on duty between 2014 and 2016.
Allers was not part of the original group of seven detectives charged in early 2017. He had been reassigned in June 2016 to a Drug Enforcement Administration task force as the federal investigation of the gun trace unit was ramping up, but officers on the task force who became government cooperators told prosecutors they had stolen money with Allers.
In all, eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force were convicted of federal racketeering charges.
Allers is not among the officers cooperating. In dozens of letters sent to U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Blake, supporters said they couldn't square the crimes Allers admitted to with the man and officer they knew.
Two of the letters came from officers who worked on the Gun Trace Task Force who were not accused of crimes. Elizabeth Geiselman, a retired detective who described herself as a "founding member" of the GTTF and who continued to work with the unit as a contract specialist, said that Allers had "voiced concerns" about Detectives Momodu Gondo and Jemell Rayam.
"On four separate occasions Sgt. Allers spoke to me in confidence that he had requested Gondo and Rayam be removed from the unit and was told no," Geiselman wrote in a letter to Blake.
But Allers' plea agreement says he stole with the officers multiple times over a period of two years. In March 2014, Allers, Gondo and Rayam executed a search warrant on a home in Baltimore County, and found more than $415,000. Allers' told the officers that the homeowner "wouldn't miss a stack" of money, and they helped themselves to bundles of more than $8,000, the plea agreement says.
In another instance, in July 2015, the officers found $10,000 while executing a warrant in Anne Arundel County and stole $8,900, the plea agreement says.
