“Cops make the best crooks...”
I understand why you’d say this, but from where I sit, there are many politicians who could give cops a good run for their money. And the amounts involved—e.g., $90K in Rep. Jefferson’s freezer—aren’t exactly chump change. Although, if you’ll recall, the formerly powerful chair of Ways and Means, Dan Rostenkowski (”sixth most significant politician to come from Chicago in the twentieth century”), got taken down for some pretty petty antics such as converting his officially purchased stamps for cash at the House post office.
I thought it came out in Katrina that there were paychecks going out to non-police officers to inflate the numbers so that citizens (read crooks) didn’t know about dwindling police force numbers (money was being paid out all the same if I recall).