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Newsbrief:
This
Week's
Corrupt
Cops
Story
2/20/04
Competition remains fierce
as drug war corruption goes banal. One dishonorable mention goes
this week to former Hazard, Kentucky, police officer Calvin Sizemore.
In charge of the department's evidence room, he staged fake drug burns
and instead peddled seized marijuana and Oxycontin. He got 32 months
from a federal judge on February 13. Another runner-up is Denver
police officer Damon Finley, charged the same day with taking a $10,000
bribe from a crack seller to destroy evidence. Finley took the money
but didn't destroy the crack, the aggrieved seller complained, and now
Finley is looking at serious time.
But this week's winner comes
from Kansas, where former Trego County Sheriff Curtis Bender was indicted
February 10 on federal cocaine distribution charges. Bender became
the former sheriff in April, when he was first arrested on state charges
by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, who had been tipped that Bender
and a pair of associates were trying to move some cocaine.
Located in the vast flatness
of western Kansas, Trego County, whose largest town is WaKeeney (pop. 1,924),
is not known for its cocaine habit. But it does sit astride Interstate
70, which like all the nation's great traffic arteries, is, in DEA-speak,
"a narcotics trafficking corridor." And there is where Sheriff Bender
met temptation.
The cocaine in question,
more than one pound, had been discovered in a seized car being readied
for a sheriff's auction, and was turned over to Bender for safe-keeping.
Instead, according to the federal indictment, the cash-hungry cop saw a
chance to turn a profit. Now he faces two counts of cocaine distribution,
one count of possession with intent to distribute, one count of conspiracy
to possess with intent to distribute, and, for good measure, one count
of possessing a handgun in the furtherance of drug trafficking.
-- END --
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Issue #325, 2/20/04
Editorial: Long in the Making |
ACLU, Drug Reform Groups Sue over Federal Ban on Public Transit Drug Reform Ads |
Utah Asset Forfeiture Reform Law Under Attack |
As Continental Harm Reduction Movement Hits Bump, Brazil House Passes Drug Possession Depenalization Bill |
Oakland "Regulate and Tax" Marijuana Legalization Initiative Getting Underway -- Poll Says Public Support Strong |
Action Alert: HEA Campaign Entering New Stage -- Your Letters and Phone Calls Needed! |
Newsbrief: DEA Moving to Restrict Vicodin |
Newsbrief: Canadian Government Reintroduces Marijuana Decriminalization Bill |
Newsbrief: Methadone Maintenance Doctors Under Attack in Britain |
Newsbrief: This Week's Corrupt Cops Story |
Newsbrief: Drug War First -- Florida Town Offers Used Car Drug Inspections |
This Week in History |
Psilocybin Cancer Research Study Seeking Participants |
Asian Harm Reduction Network Launches Online Resource Collection |
Offer and Appeal: New StoptheDrugWar.org Ink Stamps and Strobe Lights -- DRCNet Needs Your Support in 2004 |
The Reformer's Calendar
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