Friday, October 22, 2004

Kansas task force dissolved after scandal depletes staff

This Byrne-funded drug task force in Kansas dissolved after its ranks were 100% depleted from various disciplinary episodes.

The El Dorado Times reported earlier, (no longer available for free),

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation "launched an investigation in September at the request of the El Dorado Police Department and the Butler County Sheriff's Department.


"Butler County Sheriff Craig Murphy and El Dorado Police Chief Tom Boren requested that the KBI conduct an investigation involving the El Dorado police detective sergeant and his son, a detective with the sheriff's department.

"The detectives, who are both members of a drug task force in the county, were not accused of illegal drug activity. They were both placed on paid administrative leave by their respective departments, and remained so for four weeks.

"Murphy said the task force now consists of just one officer from El Dorado and one from the county. It was formerly more multijurisdictional, said Murphy, but Augusta dropped out and the force dwindled to two." [ed note: the two left were the suspended father and son.]
And then there were none.

Hopefully the disgrace of the whole system will take all the Byrne drug task forces down. Not personally tending toward schadenfreude, watching them go down one at a time over familiar, repeated scandals becomes painful and a bit demoralizing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

El Dorado Police Department Det. Sgt. Larry Mitchell, who resigned in the wake of the KBI probe, was accused of checking a handgun out of the department's evidence locker and taking it home. The magazine of the gun, but not the gun itself, was found when a search warrant was served on the home of Mitchell's son. I don't know why the sheriff's deputy was suspended -- probably just a CYA thing.