Scandal - Officer accused of stealing $1 million in cocaine

[fnord]

CHIP member allegedly took pounds of drug from evidence locker

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A California Highway Patrol officer is accused of breaking into an evidence locker and stealing more than $1 million worth of cocaine, prosecutors said.

Joshua Blackburn, 32, broke into the evidence locker room at highway patrol headquarters in Santa Ana early Friday and made off with several pounds of cocaine, Deputy District Attorney Susan Schroeder said. He was arrested later that day in Riverside County and the cocaine was recovered, she said.

Blackburn was being held on $4 million bail at Orange County Jail. His arraignment hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
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His attorney, John Barnett, declined to comment because he had yet to receive a copy of the police report. An area phone directory listed no number for Blackburn.

A highway patrol officer declined to comment on the case because the investigation is ongoing.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22391047/

[zera]

I was reading a book "Quirkology" today, and it detailed how experiments were done with ATMs and news stands where people got an extra $10 in change. Virtually 100% of the people who received the extra cash did the dishonest thing and walked away without even giving it back. In fact they even did a follow up on the experiment where they had someone posing as a market surveyor standing outside the news stand. He asked several questions on honesty and other related things and finally ended with the question "If you accidentally received too much change from a news stand would you return it." Half the people blatantly lied and said no, and the other half tried to dodge the question.

Anyway my point is that when people think no one is looking and there's only $10 on the line there is massive dishonesty. Think about the situations the drug war puts cops in, constantly being around millions in drugs or cash, ripe for the taking, while making $30k a year. I am almost positive this is by no means an isolated incident, and in fact is pretty common in pretty much every department.