A Wyoming cop get sentenced for stealing his canine officer father's training dope, a prosecutor in Indiana is in the hot seat over asset forfeiture, and another prison guard gets busted.

Crooked policing runs the gamut this week: from a former chief of police busted for dope dealing, to a cop nailed for acting as a middleman in a bribery scheme, to some lying cops being scrutinized

From sea to shining sea, cops, jail guards, and court officers go bad. This week, in addition to the usual rogues' gallery of corrupt cops, we get an abusive one, too. Let's get to it:

Budget-conscious European junkies looking for the biggest bang for their drug buck might want to visit Kosovo, if a report from

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A Texas constable and probation/parole officers in Massachusetts and North Carolina are in the spotlight this week. Let's get to it:

We have cops and prison guards getting into drug war trouble from coast to coast this week, from San Diego to Chicago and from Florida to Maryland. Let's get to it:

A cop with a pain pill habit gets in trouble; so does yet another jail guard. Let's get to it:

A key Coast Guard anti-drug fighter gets caught doing cocaine, plus the usual array of miscreants in blue.

Cops "misplacing" money, cops providing help to a pot crew, a court security officer peddling pain pills, and a jail guard getting caught bringing in the goodies.

A Boston cop goes to prison for being muscle for drug dealers, and a Miami-area cop and two prison guards get caught up in a massive Oxycontin and health fraud scandal. Let's get to it:

Prison guards get busted as cocaine traffickers in Louisiana and New Jersey, and a pair of North Carolina cops plea to helping out the local cocaine trade. Let's get to it:

Three cases of crooked cops in Florida this week, and a pair of asset forfeiture abuse situations in St. Louis and Muncie, Indiana. Let's get to it:

Cops in LA and New York get caught lying about drug busts, a couple of Indiana cops get in trouble, an Alabama cop is headed for prison, and, of course, more jail guards get caught.

What happens when a crazy person tells local police he's a federal agent and offers to help them fight drugs?

Busts began. Houses were ransacked. People, in handcuffs on their front lawns, named names. To some, like Mayor Otis Schulte, who considers the county around Gerald, population 1,171, “a meth capital of the United States,” the drug scourge seemed to be fading at last.

Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar change in what they understood, from television mainly, to be the law.

They said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government.
…

Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding-performing minister, a former small-town cop from 23 miles down the road. [New York Times]

The whole thing provides yet another exhibit in the colossal incompetence that has become so routine and predictable in the war on drugs. If some nutjob showed up at the fire department with a badge and an axe, they'd tell him to hit the road. They wouldn't follow him in and out of burning buildings.

It is precisely because of the massive multi-tiered drug war bureaucracy that his psychotic scheme seemed somehow plausible to everyone. Drug enforcement is the one occupation so lacking in accountability, so consumed by macho tough-guy posturing, that some maniac can just walk through the door and fit right in. It's a match made in hell.

And it wasn't even the cops who figured out he was an imposter. It was a reporter, months into this mindboggling hoax. Even when he recklessly and routinely violated suspects' constitutional rights, the police who followed him around never thought anything of it. That's how easy it is. His flagrantly illegal and incompetent behavior actually made them think he was real.

That this even happened is a potent testament to the fact that drug enforcement in America is thoroughly rotten and diseased to its core. If you see vultures circling around something, you know it is not healthy.

An Ohio jailer, a Connecticut cop, and a pair of Florida deputies get busted, a Louisiana cop goes on trial, a Texas constable cops a plea, and so does a Texas US Border Patrol Agent.

Trouble in the Hoosier State this week, with some Indy cops busted for ripping off pot dealers and selling their wares and a Muncie drug task force being investigated over its asset forfeiture prac

Busy, busy. Border guards going down, prison guards going down, more cops in trouble, and more investigations of a perjury-condoning prosecutor in Detroit. Let's get to it:

A Connecticut prison guard gets busted, a pair of JFK airport Customs inspectors do too, an Arizona Border Patrol agent cops a plea, and a Connecticut narc heads to prison.

The debate should be over now. All you have to do is look south to learn that the drug war is worse than a failure; it causes massive violence, corruption, and death. From The New York Times:

"When the commander, Commissioner Édgar Millán Gómez, the acting chief of the federal police, died with eight bullets in his chest on May 8, it sent chills through a force that had increasingly found itself a target."

"Top security officials who were once thought untouchable have been gunned down in Mexico City, four in the last month alone."

"Drug dealers killed another seven federal agents this year in retaliation for drug busts in border towns."

"Drug traffickers have killed at least 170 local police officers as well, among them at least a score of municipal police commanders, since Mr. Calderón took office."

"The violence between drug cartels that Mr. Calderón has sought to end has only worsened over the past year and a half. The death toll has jumped 47 percent to 1,378 this year, prosecutors say. All told, 4,125 people have been killed in drug violence since Mr. Calderón took office."

"Several terrified local police chiefs have resigned, the most recent being Guillermo Prieto, the chief in Ciudad Juárez, who stepped down last week after his second in command was killed a few days earlier."

So what does Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who instigated the massive increase in drug war violence, have to say about all this?

The president has vowed to stay the course, portraying the violence among gangs and attacks on the police as a sign of success rather than failure.

Wow. Well, I guess you've got it all figured then, Mr. President. That's good to hear, because for a second there, it sounded like everything was going to hell.

On opposite sides of the country, crooked cops are headed for long prison sentences, and another Atlanta narc is going to the big house.