This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

by Phillip Smith
StoptheDrugWar.org
May. 10, 2013

Something is still rotten along Utah's Wasatch Front, a DC cop gets popped for money-laundering, a Detroit-area cop pleads to running protection for traffickers, and a South Texas cop heads for prison for shipping guns to Mexico. Let's get to it:

In West Valley City, Utah, prosecutors announced Friday they will drop 26 more cases in which the West Valley Police Neighborhood Narcotics Unit was involved. Ninety-nine other cases have already been dropped, and prosecutors have filed notices of possible impeachment of evidence in another 48 cases. That means the cases will move forward, but judges and defense attorneys will be notified there may be evidence calling into question the credibility of police witnesses. The department has been in turmoil since March, when prosecutors first announced cases were in jeopardy because of "unspecified issues" with narcotics detective Shaun Cowley. Cowley has since been suspended, as have other members of the dope squad over allegations of misconduct. Cowley and fellow officer Kevin Salmon shot and killed unarmed alleged heroin user Danielle Willard in November, and that killing and the other allegations are now being investigated by the FBI.

In Washington, DC, a DC Metro police officer was arrested Monday on charges he was part of a drug trafficking scheme. Officer Jared Weinberg, 28, is accused of helping to launder money in the scheme that stretched from Pittsburg to the Baltimore area. The federal indictment, which focuses on a time before Weinberg became a DC police officer, alleges that he helped hide drug trafficking profits by setting up accounts at 29 banks in Baltimore, Chicago, and New York. Deposits totaling $1.08 million were made to those accounts. At the time, Weinberg was making $6,500 a year as a lifeguard. Money from those deals helped buy apartments in the DC-Baltimore metro area, including one for Weinberg. He is one of more than a dozen defendants in the case, including his father.

In Detroit, a former Highland Park police officer pleaded guilty last Thursday to taking money in exchange for protecting a shipment of cocaine. Shawn Williams, 33, admitted that he and three other Highland Park officers took the money to do the dirty deed. All four were caught up in an FBI sting, taking cash to protect what they thought was coke. Williams copped to one count of extortion and is now looking at up to 20 years in federal prison.

In Brownsville, Texas, a former Rio Hondo police officer was sentenced last Wednesday to five years in federal prison for buying guns that ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Armando Duenez had been arrested in 2008 after being charged with gun trafficking for buying 15 semiautomatic rifles, but fled to Mexico and didn't return until last year. He got five years each for one count of gun trafficking and one count of failure to appear, but the sentences will run concurrently, except for an additional four months he will have to do for fleeing.