result many officers were prosecuted and many more lost their jobs. A massive re-structuring took place afterwards with strict rules and regulations to make sure that the problem would never happen again. Be that as it may, the problem did arise once gain... In 1992 when five officers were arrested on drug-trafficking charges. Michael Dowd, the suspected 'ring leader', was the kind of cop who gave new meaning to the word moonlighting. It wasn't just any job that the 10-year veteran of the New York City force was working on the side. Dowd was a drug dealer. From scoring free pizza as a rookie he graduated to pocketing cash seized in drug raids and from there simply to robbing dealers outright, sometimes also relieving them of drugs that he would resell. Soon he had formed ``a crew'' of 15 to 20 officers in his Brooklyn precinct who hit up dealers regularly. Eventually one of them was paying Dowd and another officer $8,000 a week in protection money. Dowd bought four suburban homes and a $35,000 red Corvette. Nobody asked how he managed all that on take-home pay of $400 a week. In May 1992 Dowd, four other officers and one former officer were arrested for drug trafficking by police in Long Island's Suffolk County. When the arrests hit the papers, it was forehead-slapping time among police brass (New York Times, March 29, 1993: p 8). Authorities in Atlanta broke up a ring of weight-lifting officers who were charged with robbing strip clubs and private homes, and even carrying off 450-lb. safes from retail stores. (Washington Post, Jan 18, 1993: p. 11) In Los Angeles an FBI probe focusing on the L.A. County sheriff's department has resulted so far in 36 indictments and 19 convictions on charges related to enormous thefts of cash during drug raids -- more than $1 million in one instance. ``The deputies were pursuing the money more aggressively than they were pursuing drugs,'' says Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Bauer. (Washington Post, Jan ...
