Columnist Jeff German: Cop’s fall from grace has upside

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 | 11:25 a.m.

When a cop goes bad, it's embarrassing and demoralizing to everyone who works around him.

Those feelings are widespread today within the district attorney's office, which is struggling to deal with the bribery arrest and resignation of one of its own, Pete Baldonado, a well-liked and highly regarded veteran investigator.

"Pete was the best investigator by far in the office," said one shocked prosecutor who worked closely with him. "He would find (witnesses) no one else could find. When you needed something he would get it done. He was a hustler."

But Baldonado, who was hired in 1991, apparently was just as good at using his job to hustle women for sex outside the office.

On Wednesday he was arrested where he worked -- at the DA's elite Major Violators Unit -- following an FBI-police sting that allegedly caught him soliciting sex from a female FBI informant in return for helping her quash some warrants.

"It's sad that we had to go after one of our own, but we will regroup and move forward," a shaken District Attorney David Roger said. "What was important to me was that we recognized that there was a bad apple, and we moved quickly to investigate and terminate that individual."

Defense lawyers in several high-profile murder cases involving Baldonado are eager to exploit his personal misfortune and sudden decline in credibility as they seek to overturn the convictions of their clients.

And there is courthouse chatter that Baldonado may have tried to fix warrants for other women, which means there's a good chance that more embarrassment could lie ahead for the district attorney's office.

But I prefer to see the upside to Baldonado's fall from grace -- the side that shows that our justice system, despite this kind of a setback, is in good hands.

What we have learned is that we have a district attorney who understands the value of maintaining the integrity of his office. Though Roger has been on the job for only a year, he handled this sensitive matter with the poise of a seasoned officeholder. He could not have been more straightforward.

When FBI agents came to him last month with the bad news that Baldonado might be corrupt, Roger encouraged them to wire up their informant and get the goods on his investigator.

And when agents allegedly got the goods, Roger himself drew up the criminal complaint charging Baldonado with bribery, and he made sure the popular investigator was taken into custody at the office.

Then Roger turned the case over to the attorney general's office for prosecution to avoid any future conflict of interest for his office as the case proceeds to court.

At every opportunity the rookie district attorney did the right thing.

Sure, the justice system may see fallout over Baldonado's arrest in the coming weeks. But as long as we have people of Roger's caliber in the trenches looking out for our interests, the system will survive.