While poor people get life sentences for petty marijuana offenses, DEA agents tasked with fighting the war on drugs can get caught running drugs and lying to the authorities and still keep their jobs.
USA Today reports:
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has allowed its employees to stay on the job despite internal investigations that found they had distributed drugs, lied to the authorities or committed other serious misconduct, newly disclosed records show.
Lawmakers expressed dismay this year that the drug agency had not fired agents who investigators found attended "sex parties" with prostitutes paid with drug cartel money while they were on assignment in Colombia. The Justice Department also opened an inquiry into whether the DEA is able to adequately detect and punish wrongdoing by its agents.
Records from the DEA's disciplinary files show that was hardly the only instance in which the DEA opted not to fire employees despite apparently serious misconduct.
Of the 50 employees the DEA's Board of Professional Conduct recommended be fired following misconduct investigations opened since 2010, only 13 were actually terminated, the records show. And the drug agency was forced to take some of them back after a federal appeals board intervened.
In one case listed on an internal log, the review board recommended that an employee be fired for "distribution of drugs," but a human resources official in charge of meting out discipline imposed a 14-day suspension instead. The log shows officials also opted not to fire employees who falsified official records, had an "improper association with a criminal element" or misused government vehicles, sometimes after drinking.
"If we conducted an investigation, and an employee actually got terminated, I was surprised," said Carl Pike, a former DEA internal affairs investigator. "I was truly, truly surprised. Like, wow, the system actually got this guy."
The log, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, does not include details of misconduct or the agency's reasons for choosing one punishment over another. But it illustrates just how uncommon it is for DEA employees to lose their jobs because of misconduct.
[...]The DEA’s internal affairs log shows investigators review more than 200 cases each year and often clear the agents involved. When they do find wrongdoing, the most common outcome is a either a letter of caution — the lightest form of discipline the agency can impose — or a brief unpaid suspension.
In fewer than 6% of those cases did DEA managers recommend firing. In some of those cases, the agency allowed employees to quit. More often, it settled on a lesser punishment. While the political class is afforded endless leniency, we the plebs live under a regime of zero tolerance.
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