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Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

Submitted by Phillip Smith on (Issue #533)
Drug War Issues

A perverted Oklahoma sheriff gets indicted, an Atlanta narc goes on trial, an Indiana jail guard goes to jail, a Santa Fe narc doesn't -- and a cop who made these pages three years ago is found not guilty.

We do try to follow these stories to their endings, but we don't catch everything. If there is anyone else out there who has an update we haven't mentioned, please send it on to us. In the meantime, let's get to it:

In Arapaho, Oklahoma, the Custer County Sheriff resigned April 16 as state prosecutors filed a 35-count indictment charging him with coercing and bribing female inmates to participate in sex acts. Now former Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess faces 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy, and five counts of bribery by a public official, among other charges. A federal lawsuit filed by 12 former inmates alleges that Burgess and his employees had them participate in wet T-shirt contests and gave cigarettes to inmates who would flash their breasts. He also allegedly had sex with a female drug court participant after telling her she would be sent to prison if she didn't satisfy his sexual demands. Another prisoner alleges she was given trusty status after agreeing to perform a sex act on Burgess, but lost that status when she later refused. He also faces two counts each of sexual battery, rape by instrumentation, and subornation of perjury. It being Oklahoma, Burgess now faces 467 years in prison.

In Atlanta, an Atlanta police officer involved in the November 2006 raid that resulted in the death of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston went on trial this week in connection with her killing. Officer Arthur Tesler was one of three officers charged in the case, in which they ginned up a story to get a search warrant at her address, did a no-knock entry, then shot and killed Johnston after she opened fire on them as they burst through her door. They then planted marijuana in her basement and asked another informant to lie in an attempt to cover up their errors. Former officers Gregg Junnier and Jason Smith pleaded guilty to state charges of voluntary manslaughter and a federal charge of violating her constitutional rights and are now in federal prison awaiting sentencing. Tesler, the only one to go to trial, is charged with the lesser crimes of making a false statement to an investigator, violating his oath of office and unlawful imprisonment. He faces up to 15 years in federal prison if convicted.

In Pendleton, Indiana, a Pendleton Correctional Facility guard was arrested April 15 after police found 3.2 pounds of marijuana in his car. Tracy McGrady faces charges of bribery, trafficking with an inmate, official misconduct, and possession of marijuana over 30 grams. Police say she hid drugs in containers of frozen food to smuggle them into the prison. McGrady went down after another guard inside the prison tipped off authorities.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, a former Santa Fe police detective was sentenced April 17 to three years probation for stealing money seized from a drug suspect. Former Det. Danny Ramirez, 48, had pleaded guilty January 22 to one count of theft after being caught stealing $5,000 during the May 2006 drug arrest. He was also fined $1,000.

In Chicago, a former Maywood police officer was acquitted April 15 of charges he tipped off a local gang leader about a police drug raid in 2005. Former Officer Arian Wade, 36, had been charged with criminal drug conspiracy and official misconduct after an investigation by the Cook County state's attorney's office and Cook County sheriff's police. The misconduct charge was dropped before trial. During the two-week jury trial, prosecutors alleged that phone calls between Wade and a drug suspect were aimed at helping him evade law enforcement, but the defense successfully argued that Wade was grooming him as an informant and feeding him false information to ingratiate himself. The jury deliberated for four hours before delivering the not guilty verdict.

Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.

Comments

Anonymous (not verified)

What does the first case (Arapaho, Oklahoma) have to do with the drug war?

Fri, 04/25/2008 - 2:33pm Permalink
Anonymous (not verified)

http://badcopnews.com/
http://sexoffenderissues.blogspot.com/search/label/%2BCorruption

Fri, 04/25/2008 - 5:51pm Permalink
Anonymous (not verified)

The Mother of all Drugs

There is a drug epidemic at large that few people seem to be aware of. It has been silently raging for many centuries and is responsible for many times more destruction than all of the other drugs combined. As a result of the abuse of this drug, millions of people around the world have been cast into such a state of despair and alienation that they have been driven to seek solace through the use of the other drugs and alcohol.
It is the same drug that corrupted the thinking of the first European immigrants to the Americas and helped them to rationalize the killing of over 100 million indigenous Americans. That horrendous campaign included the theft of everything from Hudson Bay to the southern tip of South America, and stands as the second worst act of genocide and terrorism ever committed on planet earth.
This is the same drug that corrupted the European colonizers of Africa and helped them to delude themselves into thinking that what they were doing was somehow, not only excusable, but Christian. The estimated death toll to that horrendous campaign of terrorism was around 400 million souls. By far the worst crime ever to take place on this planet.
This is the same drug that corrupted the thinking of the leaders of the church and inspired them to operate something called the Inquisition for three and a half centuries. The resulting reign of terror(ism) was responsible for the torture and murder of well over a hundred million people on five continents.
This is the same drug that the leaders of the church were on when they and various monarchies insinuated that they were infallible and omnipotent. The result was six centuries of forced ignorance now referred to as the “dark ages”.
This is the same drug that the followers of Islam were on in centuries past when they convinced themselves that God wanted them to force their religion onto the rest of the world at the end of a sword. No-one knows how many died as a result of that campaign of religious inspired insanity because record keeping was conveniently not considered necessary.
This is the same drug that the founders of this country were on when they said that they were founding a democracy but simultaneously declared that it was perfectly acceptable to deprive the vast majority of their constituents the right to vote and even buy and sell others like cattle. Had they not had their reasoning clouded by this drug they would have understood that a democracy differs from all other forms of government by the fact that they, the government, exist to serve all of their citizens, not just the rich and powerful.
This is the same drug that twists the thinking of the current world leaders into continually devoting ever increasing proportions of our resources towards the development of weapons of mass destruction and the perpetuation of un-ending war around the world. Meanwhile tens of millions starve to death annually for lack of less than a dollars worth of food per day.
Please take note of the irony of the present day situation. The very same people, i.e. the pseudo-Christian and their neo-monarchist accomplices who have, throughout history, been responsible for the most horrible acts of genocide and theft that the world has ever seen are now telling us that it is necessary for them to implement an even more repressive right wing totalitarian state. According to their conveniently twisted “logic”, somehow it is the fault of the people that they have been systematically exploiting century after century, and therefore it is now their duty to strip us of any last vestige of Democracy “for our own good” and to subjugate us more intensely. Unfortunately, this is just another example of the very twisted logic that our pseudo-democratic, power addicted and pseudo-Christian governments have been so well known for throughout the ages.
This is the drug that presently perverts the thinking of most of our current world leaders and makes them blind to the fact that the real culprit is now and has always been their abuse of power. The simple fact is that there is a very easy way to make most of the terrorism, crime and sufferings in the world disappear without killing anyone, and that is to simply initiate an actual democracy and begin to serve all of the people instead of just the rich and powerful. It is that simple but kindness and generosity doesn’t put power and wealth into the hands of the rich and greedy and that is why that option is continually overlooked.
As you can see the fault lies in our government, church and corporate leaders who are all addicted to the “mother of all drugs’ and are in an ongoing state of denial. In many ways we, the worlds’ people, are guilty of allowing ourselves of being manipulated. Like the country bumpkin who is met on the way to town every month and allows himself to be swindled by the same group of thugs who victimize him through the use of a slightly different version of the same scam time after time. We continually allow the people who are supposed to be protecting us from tyranny to function as the criminal organizations that have always been responsible for the worst acts of tyranny and genocide that the world has ever witnessed.
It is time for the citizens of planet earth to figure out who the addicts are and what the real drug is.

Tue, 04/29/2008 - 12:59pm Permalink
Anonymous (not verified)

A few weeks ago the Prime Minister of the U.K. ,Gordon Brown,attended a secret meeting at a hotel that had been surrounded with a steel barricade. It was a gathering of world leaders,eurocrats ,financiers and corporate bosses convening to discuss their plans for us all.The press were not invited and to all extents and purposes the meeting never officially took place although it was mentioned in a back page of the Guadian newspaper a few days after .The timing of the meeting is significant as it came just after the British parliament voted to disallow the people from having a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon(the redrafted constitution that had been rejected by the French and Dutch electorates a few years back).
If the Treaty of Lisbon becomes European law we will have lost our democratic sovereignty and will have become subjects of a federal superstate whose masters make their decisions behind closed doors and who are accountable to no one but themselves.
As Earth -dwellers we all have a vested interest in having a free and fair system of government that is truly accountable to us.The civil rights that we still have have been hard fought for and we must wake up as many people as possible to the threat of the Bilderberger's plan.They have been remarkably good at keeping their very existence a secret,Look them up on the net,spread the word!
have faith that soon "...God's will be done on EARTH as in HEAVEN ..."

Wed, 04/30/2008 - 3:02pm Permalink

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