Ex-narcotics cops get jobs back
Six former Philly narcotics officers won their jobs back through arbitration on Friday.
GUESS WHO'S back?
Six former Philadelphia police officers who last summer were the subject of a stunning, 26-count federal indictment got their old jobs back yesterday, law-enforcement sources told the Daily News.
Just two months ago, a jury acquitted the officers - Thomas Liciardello, Michael Spicer, Brian Reynolds, Perry Betts, Linwood Norman and John Speiser - on a host of charges, including robbery, racketeering, conspiracy and falsifying police reports.
Neither Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey nor John McNesby, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 5, could be reached for comment.
The cops will not work in narcotics, the sources said.
An arbitrator ruled to reinstate the six men and award them a year's worth of back pay. The ruling did not call for the men to be paid lost overtime, sources said.
When the longtime narcotics cops were locked up last July, Ramsey vowed to melt their badges, describing their alleged misdeeds as some of the worst corruption he'd seen in his 40-plus years in law enforcement.
In the indictment, federal investigators described Liciardello, Spicer, Reynolds, Betts, Norman and Speiser as ruthless rogues who regularly robbed and beat drug dealers, altering paperwork to cover their tracks over the course of six years.
All told, the officers were accused of stealing nearly $500,000 worth of cash, belongings and narcotics.
But jurors didn't buy the stories told by the squad's alleged victims - many of whom were admitted drug dealers - or their former colleague, ex-cop Jeffrey Walker, who agreed to testify against the officers after he was arrested as part of a separate federal sting.
The cops' former supervisors, meanwhile, described them in testimony as exemplary officers and investigators.
After the squad was acquitted, defense attorney Jimmy Binns, who represented Spicer, called for the six men and their families to be driven in convertibles down Broad Street as part of the annual Hero Thrill Show, an event that raises money for the children of fallen police officers and firefighters.
He later nixed the idea.
The squad's downfall has led to more than 400 drug convictions being overturned, with possibly more to come.