Weekly:
This
Week's
Corrupt
Cops
Stories
7/8/05
And the beat goes on. This week we have a Texas twofer featuring a wheeling-dealing sheriff and a pot-selling cop, a New Hampshire drug task force with problems, yet another drug-dealing prison guard in New Mexico, and a coke-selling cop in Tennessee. Let's get to it: In San Benito, Texas, down in the Rio Grande Valley, former police officer Reymundo Hernandez, 27, was sentenced this week to eight years in federal prison for selling drugs he and his partner seized at traffic stops. The enterprising Hernandez pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and possession with the intent to distribute 240 pounds of marijuana. His partner and indicted co-conspirator, Officer Edgar Lopez, has fled, while a civilian co-conspirator was sentenced last fall to three years in prison. In Weatherford, Texas, former Parker County Sheriff Jay Brown was sentenced Tuesday to a year's probation on charges of abuse of office. Brown had the nifty idea of using money seized in drug cases to purchase vehicles for county use, then later trading them in for less valuable cars and pocketing the difference, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. In one case, he used $3,800 in seized drug money to buy a car, traded it for another valued at $,2600, and pocketed the $1,200 change. Brown also has to pay restitution. Editor's Note: A tip of the hat to Texas criminal justice blogger Scott Henson's Grits for Breakfast for those two Texas items. Other readers are invited to send in your entries as well. Send them to [email protected]. In Dover, New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Drug Task Force continues to draw scrutiny. The task force has been under the spotlight over a drunken brawl on St. Patrick's Day 2004, and now two of its members, Officers Kyle True and Michelle Murch, are in the news after refusing to testify during a deposition in a drug paraphernalia case. The two officers cited the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination when asked if their paraphernalia expertise was based on knowledge outside their professional experience. That follows a pattern established in the investigation of the bar fight, where both officers also refused to testify. An earlier attorney general's investigation of the bar fight concluded that the drug task force has lost the confidence of area police chiefs and that task force officers' behavior threatened the credibility of police undercover operations across the state. In Greeneville, Tennessee, former Cocke County Deputy Sheriff Larry Joe Dodgin pleaded guilty July 1 to federal drug and firearms charges. The plea came only two weeks after Dodgin was caught in a $60,000 cocaine buy. But according to the local US attorney's office, Dodgin may only be the beginning. That office told local news channels it has been investigating Cocke County for four years for organized crime, drugs, prostitution, and racketeering. Among those recently netted: 143 people arrested at a cockfight in mid-June. In Las Cruces, New Mexico, a guard at the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility was arrested June 29 on drug charges, KFOX-TV reported. Guard Dennis Duran is suspected of smuggling heroin into the jail. He was arrested after he picked up a package he believed contained heroin. He is jailed on $20,000 bond.
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