Posted on 10/18/2002 3:12:14 PM PDT by Pahuanui
Newsbrief: This Week's Cop Corruption Story
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/259.html#thisweekscorruption
The Week Online begins a new feature this week. Lest we forget, starting this week, each week's issue will have one news brief about police corruption in the drug war. It won't be difficult to find material. But it may be difficult to beat this week's nominee, the Detroit Police Department, for the sheer size of the corruption.
On October 10, a federal grand jury indicted nine people, including a Detroit police officer, a Detroit police civilian employee and a Michigan State Police officer on charges of stealing a whopping 222 pounds of cocaine from the police evidence room and then selling it in the city.
Evidence room employee John Earl Cole is accused of stealing the cocaine over a period of six years and selling it for $1.3 million. The indictment alleged that Cole used the proceeds to buy and renovate 18 rental properties and a barber shop, and to purchase a 1992 Corvette in exchange for three kilograms of cocaine.
Michigan State Police Lt. Ernest Myatt and Detroit Police Officer Donald Hynes were Coles' partners, the indictment alleged, while several Cole relatives and an acquaintance who is a bank teller helped launder money and hid profits through the web of rental properties.
The FBI, which is conducting an investigation of the department, said there is more to come. "There are a number of public corruption cases that we expect to bring forward," acting FBI agent in charge Paula Wendell told the Detroit Free Press.
They might next want to look at guns. According to Detroit Police Chief Jerry Oliver, the police department evidence room lists more than 200,000 seized guns, but Oliver told the Free Press there is no way of knowing how many are actually there. "I don't know how many guns we have," he said. "We have far too many guns."
Oliver, who took over the top cop job in Detroit earlier this year after leaving a similar position in Richmond, VA, has publicly and repeatedly called for an end to the drug war. Now he has one more reason to do so.
Thanks a bunch, drug warriors.
Not seen them running Budweiser recently. But during prohibition.....
You forgot the tagline: "I AM the law! ...shhhh... wanna score some coke?"
Or, to quote the Beastie Boys...
"The only cop with a rope chain walkin' the streets!"
Why, that's inconceivable, sir! Just ask those scions of moral rectitude like Roscoe, Kevin Curry and the usual crew.
The fiction of Columbians making all the money is analogous to the idea of farmers selling their crops at near-retail prices. Ask any farmer who makes the big bucks in the agriculture business, and they'll tell you it is the distributors and retailers, NOT the growers.
The real drug lords are the distributors: most of them American citizens living in the US who are members of the largest criminal empire in human history. They give generously to both major political parties and officeholders at all levels of government.
What do the real drug lords tell the people who run our country? The message is loud and clear:
KEEP FIGHTING THE WAR ON DRUGS!
A few years ago 40 cases of bootleg Bud out here never made it to the evidence room.
The bar owner walked on the charges with no evidence to present.
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