When the Cop Is the Criminal: Preying on Drug Addicts

[Brewman_Jax]

http://www.alternet.org/story/153387/whe...g_addicts/

From the article:

Quote:Patrick J. Sullivan, 68, was the sheriff of Arapahoe County, Colo., near Denver, for nearly 20 years before he retired in 2002. Sullivan was considered such an exemplary police officer that, in 2001, the National Sheriff's Association named him Sheriff of the Year. In a hugely ironic twist, last week Sullivan became an inmate at The Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility, and yes, the jail was named in his honor.

After several informants tipped off police that Sullivan was involved in drug trafficking, investigators watched as Sullivan agreed to meet a male informant and swap him methamphetamines for sex. That's when the cuffs came on. He was charged with felony distribution and possession of meth, in addition to a misdemeanor charge of soliciting prostitution.

Sullivan was released Tuesday after a judge reduced his bail from $500,000 to $50,000 for past service to the public, including his heroic rescue of two deputies. But the details of his arrest, as well as another shady incident involving an unsolved drowning, raise questions about the impunity with which law enforcement acts in the drug war.

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Examples of double standards and hypocrisy occur throughout the criminal justice system when people with power are arrested for crimes. If Sullivan's contributions to the community were considered when he was caught attempting to exchange meth for sex, then why was the work of Joe Miller, a probation officer in Arizona, not considered when he was fired for simply adding his name to a LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) petition to decriminalize marijuana in California? As the New York Times recently reported, cops do not rise up through the ranks by speaking out against drug laws but executing them. If you raise a question about policy, it can be the end of your career.
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Betrayal of the public trust should be as severely punished, if not more, as acts against public servants. The system should not be shielding these offenders while ordinary people would treated unmercifully.