FBI Asked To Investigate Murder Of Baltimore Detective

BALTIMORE, MD — Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis has asked the FBI to investigate the death of Detective Sean Suiter. The 43-year homicide detective was gunned down the day before he was to appear before a grand jury related to the investigation of another officer.

Suiter was shot in the head Nov. 15 while investigating a triple homicide from 2016 in west Baltimore, and his killer remains at large. There were signs of a struggle, police said, but the search for a suspect continues.

More than two weeks after Suiter's death, Davis said he was asking the FBI to take over the investigation.

"The circumstances surrounding Detective Suiter's killing are significantly complicated by the fact that he was to appear before a grand jury the day after he was killed pursuant to knowledge of facts regarding a 2010 crime indicted just yesterday..." Davis said in a letter dated Friday, Dec. 1.

Sgt. Wayne Jenkins was indicted on Thursday, Nov. 30, for allegedly planting heroin in a vehicle in 2010 that Suiter found. Suiter was "clueless" about the fact that he was set up to find the drugs in the case, according to the indictment.

Davis said that he suspended an officer Friday morning who had been involved in the 2010 case and may have had knowledge of Jenkins' actions, based upon the indictment.

The case involving Jenkins is part of a larger probe that the FBI has been handling into corruption within the Baltimore Police Department. The investigation centered around an elite gun task force whose members robbed innocent people and in the case made public on Thursday, resulted in false drug distribution charges being lodged against two citizens who spent years in federal prison despite the fact that they were innocent.

"They've got to have all the pieces" to investigate the case, Davis said of those who conduct the investigation into Suiter's murder, and he said that he believed Baltimore homicide detectives were not privy to all the data that their federal counterparts had.

These incidents from eight years ago "are haunting us now," Davis said of the racketeering scandal on the gun task force. "It speaks to an issue, a culture that we have to ensure just does not exist anymore in this police department."

Davis said it was an "ultimate violation of this profession" that Jenkins filed "trumped-up charges" that put two people in federal prison.

An 18-year member of the Baltimore Police Department and veteran of the U.S. Army, Suiter leaves behind a wife and five children. He was hailed as a "hero" by both Davis and Gov. Larry Hogan at his funeral earlier this week.

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Photo courtesy of Baltimore Police Department.