Joe Merchant had a violent temper, but that didn't keep him from getting on the Virgin Islands police force. The 26-year-old former officer, paroled last month after serving two years of a three-year sentence for rape and oppression, was a man with serious problems long before he became a cop, say friends and former co-workers.

But St. Croix police say that Merchant passed the routine background check before he was hired.

Now there is evidence that the background check was far from thorough and that once he was on the force his supervisors failed to notice the telltale signs of a cop in trouble.

OFFICER
JOE MERCHANT

Convicted:
Rape and oppression
Sentenced:
Three years
Status
Out on parole

Merchant's former co-workers at Carambola Resorts, where he worked as a security guard before joining the police force, say his temper got him into trouble several times on the job. And Kenneth Christian, Merchant's supervisor at the time, says the Police Department never asked him for a reference.

Police counter that when they called Carambola about Merchant, the officials would only say that Merchant worked there and would not answer questions about his performance. The questionnaire that the police sent the hotel, now under new ownership and management, was returned with questions about Merchant's performance and character unanswered, according to Joan Felix, director of the police department's Internal Affairs Unit, which conducted the background check.

"This is typical of the response we get from former employers of applicants for the police force," Felix says. "I think a lot of employers are worried about lawsuits if they say anything negative."

The police never dug deeper to learn more about Merchant, and that, too, is typical.

Merchant's friends and former co-workers paint a picture of a man quick to explode.

A former girlfriend, who asked not to be identified because she does not want her name linked to Merchant's in the public's mind, calls the former cop "a walking time bomb."

And she says his supervisors on the police force knew it but looked the other way.

Merchant broke into her house in 1989 and held a gun to the head of a man she was dating, she says. She had broken up with Merchant about a year earlier, but he refused to accept it, she says.

In August 1989, he drove his squad car to her home. She and her new boyfriend were watching television, and Merchant demanded to be let in. She refused; he kicked down the door and rushed at her date, she recalls.

"Joe had my friend on his knees and had his gun to his head," she says. "It was the most frightening thing I've ever experienced."

But when she reported the incident to the police, they closed ranks around their own, she says. For example:

• The investigating officer's report never reached Internal Affairs.
• Her telephone call reporting the incident is not on the police blotter, where all such reports are, by department regulation, supposed to be listed.

By February 1991 Merchant, the cop with the boyish grin and the penchant for trouble, was out of control.

That month, while he was out on patrol, he ordered a woman into his marked police car and drove her to a secluded area on Fisher Street, Christiansted. There he forced her to perform oral sex, then left her at the scene.

Six months later, Merchant struck again, but this time he dragged two fellow cops into trouble with him.

On Aug. 27, 1991, Merchant and partners Brian Gilman and Michael Freeman were on a routine patrol when they spotted a couple near an area of Christiansted known for drug activity. The officers claim that when they saw the couple duck behind a parked vehicle, they thought the two were trying to steal the car. The officers stopped and frisked the couple. The officers claimed they found drug paraphernalia and a small amount of crack cocaine.

But instead of immediately arresting the suspects, Merchant took the woman into a nearby abandoned building and gave her a choice: Perform oral sex or be arrested.

The woman later told investigators that she at first refused to perform the sex act, but Merchant slapped her. She gave in.

The woman's companion claims Merchant's fellow officers held him spread-eagled against the police vehicle while Merchant and the woman were in the building. He told investigators that one of the officers struck him in the head with a nightstick when he tried to see what was happening to the woman.

The officers didn't mention the couple or the incident in their nightly report. And an Internal Affairs investigation into the incident started only after an Internal Affairs officer heard rumors about it on the streets, since the couple were afraid to complain.

Gilman and Freeman were both brought up on internal charges. Gilman, a seven-year veteran, faced criminal charges as well.

Under a special agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office, Gilman pleaded guilty to being "an accessory after the fact of oppression." He was given two years' probation and his record was expunged at the end of his probation.

Gilman was no fallen angel. He had twice been sued successfully for using excessive force. In one incident, he broke the arm of a man he was arresting.

Critics of the Police Department say the Merchant case highlights serious shortcomings in how the department monitors its own and allows rogue cops like Merchant and Gilman to undermine the Police Department's fight against crime.

"If there is just one bad cop, there is reason for concern," Felix says.