[Ludite]

Va. Sheriff and 19 Others Charged in Drug Scheme

Who can blame them? Cops put their lives on the line every single moment of every single day. They are constantly dealing with disrespectful attitudes. Why the other day I saw this video of this mouthy infantile woman just asking to be tasered. It's no wonder cops end up making such forgivable mistakes.


By MARIA NEWMAN
Published: November 2, 2006
Federal investigators began to suspect that the Sheriff’s Department in Henry County, Va., was involved in illegal drug trafficking in 2005, when drug enforcement officials in Philadelphia intercepted a mail package containing the illicit date rape drug Ketamine to a house owned by a sergeant with the department.

The package was mailed to William Randall Reed, a private citizen who told federal investigators that he had been the middleman in a scheme to buy and sell drugs with the help of members of the Henry County Sheriff’s Department and others.

Today, after an investigation lasting more than a year, the United States Attorney in Roanoke, Va., John L. Brownlee, announced that his office has charged 20 people, including H. Franklin Cassell, the Henry County sheriff, in a scheme to sell drugs and other items seized from drug offenders back to the community.

Among the 20 charged are 13 current and former officers in the Dheriff’s Department, including a former United States Postal Service employee and a state probation officer.

Mr. Brownlee said at a news conference today that the scheme involved officers and former officers working with drug dealers to distribute and sell Ketamine, cocaine, marijuana and steroids. The members of the department worked with a drug ring to take a variety of items seized from criminals, including not only controlled substances, but also firearms, cash, automotive equipment and even lawnmowers, the indictment said.

“You have law enforcement risking their lives to take these guns off the street and putting them right back out there,” Mr. Brownlee said. “It is disgraceful corruption that they would take narcotics seized from the community and then members of law enforcement would put them right back out there.”

The 48-count indictment against the 23 includes racketeering conspiracy, weapons charges, narcotics distribution, obstruction of justice and perjury.

Investigators said Mr. Cassell, who had been the sheriff since 1992, told his officers to lie to investigators, and either ignored or encouraged illegal activities among his staff.

Mr. Cassell was quoted by investigators as saying that the only way to acquire wealth is to be “a little crooked and not get caught,” The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Cassell headed a department of 96 officers in a county with a population of about 58,000 located near the North Carolina border. The area’s tobacco industry was replaced years ago by textile and furniture manufacturing, but unemployment has climbed into the double digits in the last few years.

State police and other county officials are helping to run the sheriff’s office in the wake of the arrests, officials said.

The investigation found that since 1998, “sworn officers, employees, and associates of the Henry County Sheriff’s Office engaged in a continuous scheme to steal narcotics, firearms and other contraband from the seized evidence property room,” a statement by Mr. Brownlee’s office said. “The defendants took cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana, and firearms, and then sold the stolen drugs and guns back into the community.”

The indictment said that when the sheriff was told that his officers might be involved in illegal drug trade, he “chose not to take any action.”

Instead, Mr. Cassell “covered up these illegal activities by failing to pursue investigation, by agreeing to disclose sensitive law enforcement information to the offending parties in order for them to avoid detection and arrest,” according to the indictment.

James Alden Vaught, the sergeant who agreed to cooperate with investigators, told investigators that he was paid off by a drug ring that included Mr. Reed to use his house in Martinsville, Va., to distribute illicit narcotics.

The indictment also said Mr. Cassell tried to help Mr. Vaught in a money-laundering scheme “to disguise the source of monies represented to have been derived form the distribution of cocaine.”
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This post has been edited by Ludite: 02 November 2006 - 08:49 PM