Newsbrief: This Week's Corrupt Cops Story

Why is it that so many people get caught up in the minutae and fail to grasp the big picture?

This is an example of a situation that is far too common in our society, namely police corruption. Even if this particular man is absolutely innocent, there are thousands of other people who are as or more corrupt than this man is accused of being.

And yes, it is entirely possible with the mindset of many drug warriors for something like this to happen. Most ardent prohibitionists, especially the corruptible ones, think that they are above the law and that the rules don't apply to them or their families.

Are you going to try to answer some of the bigger questions or are you going to ignore them?

 

Nothing, DD? I am disappointed.

 

Although there was tough competition from Detroit, where officers under indictment for drug-related corruption are now accused of harassing witnesses, this week's honors go to an Atlanta Police Department "Officer of the Year" who was indicted on federal racketeering charges August 13. Officer David Allen Freeman, 38, was described in charging papers as the leader of an Atlanta-area drug gang known as the Diablos. Prosecutors charge that he tipped-off the Diablos to police investigations, stole drugs from arrested members of other gangs, and attempted to recruit new members for the Diablos.

Freeman allegedly worked closely with Diablos leader Billy Ladson, also known as "Billy Diablo," and was a key lieutenant in the organization, where he went by the moniker "Day Day," the federal indictment charges. "Day Day" helped control the drug traffic in northwest Atlanta for the Diablos. He is specifically charged with alerting the gang to impending search warrants, setting up other drug dealers for robbery by gang members, and transferring seized cocaine and other drugs to the gang for resale.

Freeman, a 12-year veteran of the force, was named "Officer of the Year" for his zone two weeks earlier. He is suspended with pay pending a hearing with Chief Richard Pennington this week.

 

What is it about Texas? DRCNet's recurring feature on corrupt cops has visited Texas more than any other state, and here we are again, although this time the corruption is more personal than financial. A pair of Texas cases made the news recently, both having to do with cops who took time out from arresting drug users to take drugs themselves.

Small town Elsa, Texas, deep in the Rio Grande Valley, is short five officers this week after they all failed random drug tests last week, the Valley Morning Star reported. The officers all resigned September 4 after being confronted with dirty mandatory drug tests. According to city manager Anabel Guerra, all city employees are subject to such random, mandatory drug tests.

Elsa Police Chief Primitivo Rodriguez told the paper that while the incident was unfortunate, it does not mean his department condones drug use by officers. "We test because we are not going to allow it to continue," Rodriguez said. "We still have a good department and its image will be something that the city of Elsa can be proud of because we are not going to tolerate this."

Meanwhile, in the East Texas town of Athens, a Henderson County Sheriff's deputy who specialized in narcotics investigations was ordered jailed by a county judge after failing repeated drug tests since being indicted for obtaining drugs through prescription fraud and retaliation against a police officer investigating him. Bryan Ray Nutt, of Murchison, was ordered jailed immediately pending trial on the charges he faces.

Calling Nutt "a sophisticated drug user," 3rd District Court Judge Jim Parsons raked him over the coals for taking drugs. "You've become that which you swore to abhor," Parsons told Nutt in court. "You've become that which you despised." Parsons added that Nutt, a long time narc whose father is an investigator for Henderson County prosecutors, had benefited from his law enforcement connections. "I think the law has cut him some additional slack because of who he was before he went on this downward spiral," Parsons said.

The judge is probably right. While official figures from Henderson County are unavailable, it is unlikely that normal defendants awaiting trial could get away with the eight positive tests for cocaine and the 19 positive tests for methamphetamine that Nutt produced while out on bond.

Nutt went down in June, after threatening a police officer investigating his supposed drug use. Out on bond, he got in a fight with his girlfriend in August, which, according to the Tyler Daily News, caused probation officials concern that he would become violent.

Nutt was a 12-year veteran of the sheriff's department until his resignation in December and had received many awards. He is now charged with two felony counts and faces up to 10 years in prison on each.

 

Poetic justice may be an appropriate term for the travails of this week's corrupt cop, South Carolina's Davidson County Sheriff Gerald Hege. Hege, a follower of the Sheriff Joe Arpaio school of
sanctimonious self-promotion through humiliating prisoners, was indicted this week on 15 felony counts including embezzlement --
he is charged with stealing cash from the department's drug buy fund, among other things -- and obstruction of justice.

The publicity-seeking Hege billed himself as "America's Toughest Sheriff," and made a reputation for himself through such stunts as painting his jail pink -- to emasculate prisoners, he proudly sneered -- posing in paramilitary uniforms, and inscribing the motto "No Deals" on patrol cars. The busy, busy sheriff also had
his own program on Court TV, "Live from Cell Block F," in which
inmates described their crimes and Hege berated them for the
amusement of viewers. The program was broadcast from his office, which Hege thoughtfully decorated to look like a military bunker.

Hege also has his own web site, http://www.HegeCountry.com, where he poses standing atop a tank with a double-barreled shotgun. Some of the photos, also for sale as posters, bear such slogans as "This ain't Mayberry and I ain't Andy!" or "Do the crime scumbag, and you'll do the time." (These links were not working as of this morning; we don't know if it is a temporary error or if they have been removed from the site.) On the web site, Hege also brags about his toughness: "His trade mark sunglasses and military style uniforms have put fear into drug dealers and criminals throughout the southeast and are being copied by other sheriff offices. Removing TV's from the cells and putting his inmates to work wearing black and white striped uniforms have brought national attention to this North Carolina Sheriff."

Sheriff of Davidson County since 1994, Hege is accused of stealing $6,200 from an undercover drug buy fund and using part of it to pay for reelection celebrations in 1998 and 2002. He is also accused of blocking an investigation into the disappearance of money seized by his office during a criminal investigation. And he is accused of conspiring with a former county maintenance director to conduct surveillance of law enforcement officers investigating him. Additionally, Davidson County District
Attorney Gary Frank, in moving to have Hege removed from office, accuses him of a pattern of intimidation and threats against
deputies he believed were cooperating in investigations against him.

Hege was suspended with pay pending a September 29 hearing to remove him from office. And although he was formally arrested, booked, and fingerprinted Monday, Hege did not have the opportunity to spend some time in his pink jail because of a previous arrangement with the State Bureau of Investigation agents who escorted him to court. Curiously, this time Hege avoided the media he usually woos.

Hege faces six to eight years on each of the 15 felony accounts.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/303/geraldhege.shtml

 

There is never a shortage of stories for this feature. This week's winners are a pair of former high officials of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, who allegedly gouged MBN and Mississippi taxpayers out of thousands of dollars in questionable overtime pay and questionable expenditures of anti-drug funds. The Associated Press reported September 27 that an internal MBN investigation named former MBN deputy director Ronald Pitts and former MBN chief of operations Bill Taylor as the malefactors and that the results of the investigation have been turned over to the state attorney general's office for further action.

According to the MBN report, Pitts was paid more than $4,500 in disputed overtime payments when he retired last year. Even though his account differed from the state's by 152 hours, he ordered that he be paid the full amount. The report also found that Taylor claimed more than $3,200 in overtime pay for mar1juana eradication, much of which he claimed to have done during seasons when mar1juana does not grow. Both men left the anti-drug agency last year.

The MBN report also found unusual anti-drug spending by the pair, including the purchase of 1,728 golf balls, 144 golf starter kits, 600 knit shirts, and three leather jackets.

Taylor and Pitts are only the latest to fall in the MBN's internal investigation. mar1juana eradication program head Jimmy Saxton was fired earlier this year over accusations that he cheated on his overtime pay, and agent Gary White has resigned after being caught giving Saxton helicopter lessons although White is not a certified instructor.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/305/mbn.shtml

 

While the Sarasota Police Department's legal institutional corruption is rewarded with trips to Orlando and Las Vegas, a Warren County, Virginia, sheriff's deputy's much more mundane but illegal corruption got him 40 months in federal prison. On September 30, now former deputy Kevin Glin Kinsey got himself sent up the river by a federal judge for using his position as a county jail supervisor as a crack cocaine franchise.

US District Judge James handed down five 40-month sentences, one for each count of cocaine trafficking for which Kinsey was convicted, but those terms will run concurrently. The 23-year-old Kinsey will be a free man again by 2007.

Kinsey, a first-year officer, came under suspicion from fellow employees in 2002, and the Warren County Sheriff's office asked the FBI to investigate later that year. The FBI found that Kinsey sold crack during his shift supervising work-releases prisoners, accepted drugs from them for his own use, and falsified drug test results for inmates. That probe led to his indictment in February. He was fired at that time.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/306/kinsey.shtml

 

This week's corrupt cop is a mystery man. Somebody at the Massachusetts State Police Troop C headquarters in Holden is a thief, and he's gotten away with $31,370 in seized drug money. The money was discovered missing from a safe in the office of Major Stephen Leary, then the area state police commander, in January 2002. In a recent update on the story, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported that no money has yet been recovered and no arrests made. The incident remains under investigation, according to a state police spokesman.

The money was seized in December 2001 from Wilson Osorio of Worcester, who was pulled over during what the paper quaintly referred to as "a routine traffic stop." A police search of the vehicle turned up mar1juana and cash, which was hidden inside the dashboard. Osorio is now a fugitive after failing to appear in court in September 2002.

As for the money, it appears to have released itself on its own recognizance.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/307/holden.shtml

 

Week after week, we hear about ever increasing violence and corruption rampant in the enforcement of prohibition. It is long past time to come up with a solution that actually works.