Fellow Officers Defend Tulsa Police Officers In Corruption Trial

Tara Vreeland, News On 6

TULSA, Oklahoma -- Attorneys for Tulsa police officer Jeff Henderson called a fellow police officer to the witness stand Tuesday in his federal corruption trial.

The officer told jurors Jeff Henderson and Bill Yelton, who are on trial on corruption charges, that both officers are impeccable and all of the fed's witnesses are liars.

8/15/2011 Related Story: Judge Drops One Charge In Tulsa Police Corruption Trial

The jury had heard the names of both witnesses, Officer Frank Khalil and Sergeant Sean Larkin, before they testified. That's because former ATF agent and admitted dirty cop Brandon McFadden, testified he had seen both Khalil and Larkin do illegal things.

Both Khalil and Larkin both denied any wrongdoing and neither man has been charged with a crime.

One the one hand, you have Officers Henderson, Yelton and others they worked with, like Sergeant Sean Larkin and Officer Frank Khalil, saying an informant pointed out a drug house and saying they'd been inside and seen a drug deal.

Those officers say they used that information to get search warrants and, in all but one case of the searches in question, actually did find drugs.

On the other hand, you have the informant testifying they were not the informant on those particular warrants and you have the drug dealers testifying the informant was never in their house to witness a drug deal.

So, as in many cases, this one will come down to who the jury believes.

Defense attorneys took the two witnesses through the search warrants one at a time and asked them if they had done or seen anything illegal.

They answered no.

On cross examination, prosecutors asked them if the informants, the drug dealers and former ATF agent Brandon McFadden who had testified differently, had been lying, that everyone else was lying.

They answered yes.

One of the charges against Henderson involves witness intimidation. That witness is one of Henderson's former informants.

Sergeant Larkin testified when they learned that informant's boyfriend who was in prison, was planning to lie about Henderson, the chain of command decided Henderson should take a recorder to the informant so she could catch her boyfriend on tape, talking about his plans to lie.

Defense attorneys said if you were trying to intimidate that witness, would you have gotten permission from your bosses and Sergeant Larkin said no.