Arlington PD launching steroid testing after latest scandal

Earlier this year, Grits opined that it was, "Time for comprehensive steroid testing at Arlington PD," and now, reported the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ("Arlington police will undergo random drug testing," Sept. 15), the Arlington City Council agrees. The story opened:

Arlington Police Department employees will undergo random drug and alcohol testing starting as early as next month after a federal investigation earlier this year involving possible illegal use of steroids by some officers.

The Arlington City Council has given initial approval for $60,000 in the upcoming fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, to expand the department’s drug testing policy to include all 640 sworn police officers. Previously, the department only required testing for new hires, for officers receiving promotions or for employees working in specific areas where they regularly come in contact with drugs, such as the narcotics unit, property room or the jail.

In June, the FBI arrested 17-year veteran police officer Thomas S. Kantzos, who they said had accessed law-enforcement-only databases to tip off a dealer from whom he had been buying steroids for himself and other officers for years that he was under police surveillance.

A second officer questioned by federal investigators, David Vo, committed suicide the day Kantzos was arrested. A third officer, Craig Hermans, resigned from the department in August after being placed on paid administrative leave in connection with the investigation.

Arlington PD has struggled with this issue for years. This was long overdue.

On celebrity, the NSA, and the hypocrisy of DOJ perjury prosecutions

Not a Texas-specific issue, but this has been bugging me: Can anyone justify why the US Justice Department (unsuccessfully) tried to prosecute "Rocket" Roger Clemens for perjury but somehow James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, not only hasn't been indicted for blatantly lying to Congress about the NSA phone spying program, the Obama Administration and senior US senators are publicly praising him?

At the time, Grits expressed dismay bordering on disgust that the DOJ would waste resources prosecuting athletes like Roger Clemens and Marion Jones over allegedly lying about steroid use while turning a blind eye to far more serious crimes. But that sordid spectacle appears even more embarrassing when compared to what's happening with Mr. Clapper. The basis of the Roger Clemens prosecution was the uncorroborated word of a shady informant and the government couldn't prove the charges in court. Clapper's perjury before Congress was both blatant and (thanks to revelations by Edward Snowden) entirely demonstrable.

The USDOJ's approach to those accused of lying to Congress smacks of shameless hypocrisy. They'll go after a celebrity for alleged perjury over trivia, then the Administration praises this mendacious NSA official for far more blatant, provable lies to Congress regarding much more serious subjects. My prediction is Mr. Clapper won't ever be prosecuted because he's in a position to reveal many more illicit activities about which the executive branch has probably also been lying.

Grits doesn't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, black, white, brown or green. This sort of calculated sophistry has denuded the Obama Administration of any remaining shred of credibility when it comes to defending, or even discussing, the Bill of Rights. And DOJ's failure to consistently pursue perjury prosecutions, declining to act when an Administration official lies but going after celebrities in a high-profile fashion, speaks to a smarmy unctuousness that's incredibly disingenuous. Just sickening.

Time for comprehensive steroid testing at Arlington PD

It's been a while since this blog has focused on the topic of use of illegal steroids by police, mostly because those in power seem utterly uninterested in the topic compared to, say, steroid use by retired baseball players. But this blog's recent indifference doesn't mean the issue went away and it reared its head again this week in the Metroplex. Here's how the Star-Telegram coverage of the case ("Arlington officer accused of tipping off steroid dealer," June 13) opened:

A 17-year Arlington police veteran accessed law-enforcement-only databases to tip off a steroid dealer from whom he had been buying steroids for himself and other officers for years, according to federal documents released Wednesday.

Thomas S. Kantzos, 45, was arrested by the FBI on Tuesday, the same day that David Vo, another officer under investigation, died in an apparent suicide.

Kantzos, who had been federal custody, made an initial appearance in federal court in Dallas on Wednesday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Paul D. Stickney.

He was ordered released on pretrial supervision with certain conditions. Wearing a black T-shirt and shorts, Kantzos was told that he must give up his weapons, law enforcement license and passport and refrain from taking drugs.

Kantzos is charged with unlawfully providing sensitive information by exceeding authorized access to a protected computer.

According to a federal affidavit, the investigation began in January after a man arrested for distributing anabolic steroids told authorities that he had sold steroids to Kantzos for five or six years.

The man, referred to in the affidavit as the “CW,” or cooperating witness, told investigators that on at least one occasion, he delivered about 20 human growth hormone kits to Kantzos while the officer was on duty, in uniform and in his patrol car.

Grits has long said I wouldn't mind if steroids were legalized and used responsibly by cops, firefighters, athletes, bodybuilders, you name it. Others will surely disagree, but at root I think adults should be able to take them if they know the risks. In part that's because of the harms from a black market and in part because a regulated market would make it easier to keep steroids out of the hands of young people, for whom the physical risks are more significant. But as long as the substances are banned, the act of securing steroids opens police up to corruption and mixed allegiances that may sometimes favor the criminal element, as alleged in this unhappy story.

Long-time readers will recall that Arlington PD has a history of de facto tolerance toward steroid users with arbitrators in 2007 reinstating an officer in a high-profile case that department brass wanted to fire for steroid use. Futher, as Grits reported in 2008, now-deceased steroid dealer David Jacobs claimed to have sold steroids to officers in five Metroplex police departments before he and his girlfriend died of gunshot wounds that year in an incident officially ruled a murder/suicide. Dallas PD implemented department-wide steroid testing after the incident, but the other four - Garland, Richardson, Arlington and Plano - did not. In other words, this episode is not a one-off. And Arlington PD has already tried doing nothing and hoping the issue will blow over.

Given that record, perhaps it's time for Arlington PD to begin immediate, comprehensive steroid testing of its police officers. These episodes keep cropping up over and over. Why not react more aggressively?

MORE: Eric Nicholson at the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park blog had an even more detailed post yesterday regarding this most recent incident involving Officer Thomas Kantzos:

A federal criminal complaint filed against Kantzos today provides a much clearer picture of the allegations.

According to court documents, Kantzos used his access to state and federal law enforcement databases to illegally run at least a half-dozen names and license plates for a suspected drug dealer. The first time this happened, in December 2011, the dealer discovered that the man with the laptop parked down the street was a member of a local drug task force and that someone had hidden a tracking device on his car.

But that just scratches the surface of Arlington PD's troubles. The drug dealer was arrested in January 2013 and became a cooperating witness. He told the FBI that Kantzos had been a customer for at least five years, regularly stocking up on steroids and human growth hormone. Once, he told agents, he had even delivered a shipment to Kantzos while the cop was in his squad car, in uniform and on duty.

But Kantzos wasn't the only one. Text messages (""oy from work wants a test and a dec....") and phone conversations revealed that a whole mess of Arlington cops were doing steroids. The dealer -- he's identified in court documents only as "CW," or cooperating witness -- had supplied several. At least two of the license plates checks were conducted by Kantzos' Arlington PD colleagues when he wasn't at work.

Following the his arrest, FBI agents built a criminal case by recording the dealer's texts and phone calls. During one conversation in April, Kantzos seemed concerned by the arrest of a couple of dealers who'd been selling steroids to his colleagues. He wanted to know if the dealer was connected at all to the arrestees and whether it would affect his supply.

"All our sources dried up," Kantzos explained, going on to promise that "You'll be back in business" and "I got like five guys that are fucking 'jonesin.'"

That was in April.

AND MORE: In response to the indictment, reported the Dallas News, Arlington police chief Will Johnson "announced an immediate expansion of the department’s random drug testing program to include all employees." Three questions immediately come to mind: 1) Dd the random testing not cover uniformed officers already? 2) Why not enact comprehensive testing - at least on a one-time basis - to clean house instead of waiting and hoping random testing will pick them up over time? Finally, 3) when will the other shoe(s) drop? From what's publicly known already, Kantzos allegedly supplied other officers, yet more officers still obtained steroids from other sources. Kantzos was busted not for steroid use per se but for doing favors for his dealer like license plate checks. And at least two other Arlington police officers did it, too. This is but the beginning of a sordid tale, not its denouement, if APD management has the stones to follow the evidence all the way to the end of the path. Given the scope of APD officer involvement, it might be better if an independent agency like the FBI or the Texas Rangers took on that task.

See prior related Grits posts:

• Shift steroid testing dollars from students to cops
• Why only athletes and body builders? Plano steroid prosecutions ignore alleged police doping
• Dallas PD will implement steroid testing after David Jacobs' allegations
• Possible suicide by snitch who alleged police doping deserves outside inquiry
• Informant who accused Metroplex police of steroid use turns up dead
• Plano steroid dealer said he sold to police in five Metroplex cities
• NYPD requires steroid testing of officers in wake of scandal
• Feds should check names of steroid customers with state law enforcement registries
• Where is Congressional investigation of steroid abuse among law enforcement?
• Steroid use negligible among high school jocks; what about testing police?
• Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?
• Arbitrator reinstates steroid using police officer
• Cops on Steroids
• Lawsuit: Private mercenaries, police trainers abuse steroids in Iraq
• Insert Shrunken Testicle Joke Here: Book by ex-Texas cop defends steroid use by police

Prosecutors whiff on Pettite testimony at Roger Clemens perjury trial II

Roger Clemens' second perjury trial demonstrates the dangers of pursuing criminal prosecutions based on the personal political agendas of members of Congress. Much has been made of the fact that pitcher Andy Pettite told Congress he recalled Clemens telling him he'd used HGH, though he said in a past deposition he could have misunderstood the Texan pitching ace. In any event, he had never been cross-examined over the statement. When he was, according to the Washington Post, Pettite:

admitted that he might have misunderstood his close friend admit he took performance-enhancing drugs in 1999 or 2000.

Under cross-examination by defense lawyers, Pettite agreed that there was a “fifty-fifty” chance that he misheard Clemens when he testified earlier that “The Rocket” had confided in him that he had taken the drug Human Growth Hormone.

And with that the feds' case likely went down the drain. What a waste of time and money this witch hunt has been! Now it seems that Clemens will likely walk (and good for him): Pettite's testimony was what held the case together, with the only other witness a discredited, self-interested snitch trying to weasel out of prosecution himself.

Grits remains amazed that Congress and federal prosecutors have focused on baseball players and track stars when the much more problematic use of steroids from a public policy perspective occurs among cops and federal security contractors. Such skewed priorities IMO stem from sheer geek envy of jocks (and likely also undue deference to the security apparatus). Politics has been aptly called "show business for ugly people," and politicians compete with celebrities for the scarce commodity of public attention. Neither members of Congress nor federal prosecutors will ever hurl a fastball like Roger Clemens nor run as fast as Marion Jones, so some insecure pols feel the need to take such public heroes down a notch to elevate their own (oft-sullied) class. Sure, the public policy concerns abut cops and security contractors buying and using steroids from the black market have much more critical implications for the public than whether Roger Clemens juiced at a time when there was no law or Major League Baseball regulation banning it. But investigating those far more serious issues wouldn't get everybody's picture in the paper, at least not as often or predictably as hounding a celebrity from the capitol to the courts on trumped up charges.

For more, see a dedicated blog on the case at the Houston Chronicle.

Because all the other big problems have been solved ...

Obama's Justice Department today indicted Texas baseball legend "Rocket" Roger Clemens for perjury related to alleged steroid use, reports USA Today. See the indictment (pdf). The allegations rest primarily on the word of a snitch who turned on Clemens to avoid prosecution himself.

This seems to me like a massive waste of time and resources and an extremely poor exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Making the situation appear even more hypocritical, as I pointed out before Clemens' ill-advised testimony to Congress, "We couldn't get Condi Rice to testify under oath about 9/11, and myriad Bush administration officials under the GOP Congress were allowed to appear before Congress without risk of perjury charges if they lied," but the feds are using Clemens' Congressional testimony as a perjury trap to go after baseball's all-time strikeout leader Clemens for no good reason I can identify. Hell, even Henry Waxman who chaired the hearing where Clemens allegedly committed perjury later said he regretted staging the event. The whole fiasco was a bad idea from the get-go and this indictment just makes matters worse.

Perjury is a crime that's prosecuted very selectively, with many obvious instances routinely overlooked by prosecutors. Federal prosecutors are going after Clemens because of his star power, not because he poses some terrific threat to the public, or for that matter to anyone but a batter on the receiving end of a beanball.

UPDATE: Tom Kirkendall rightly delcares that "These witch hunts, investigations, criminal indictments, morality plays and public shaming episodes are not advancing a dispassionate and reasoned debate regarding the complex issues that are at the heart of the use of PED's [Performance Enhancing Drugs] in baseball and other sports. On a very basic level, it is not even clear that the controlled use of PED's to enhance athletic performance is as dangerous to health as many of the sports in which the users compete."

Shift steroid testing dollars from students to cops

Kuff criticizes the high-school athletics steroid testing that this blog has derided since its inception, noting that "About 50,000 tests since February 2008 have found only about 20 confirmed cases of steroid use." Chuck opines that the program at one point cost $3 million per year before it was scaled back in reaction to reports of its ineffectiveness. "It’s now down to $750K," he says, "Which ought to be the first thing erased from the budget next biennium, since clearly we’re spending all that money on a non-problem."

I certainly understand that sentiment. I'd suggest, though, that funds for steroid testing not be eliminated entirely but instead redirected to an area where we know there's a much more significant problem than in high school sports: Steroid use among law enforcement. After a high-profile steroid dealer in Plano who was accused of selling illicit drugs to cops and professional athletes died of gunshot wounds along with his bodybuilder girlfriend, Plano authorities chose to aggressively pursue his athlete clients but didn't investigate who were his police officer customers. Only one of the five agencies at which he allegedly sold drugs implemented steroid testing in response. Too often, police agencies tolerate steroid use among their own even while investigating others for the same offense.

There are so many high school athletes that spending $750K can't remotely check everybody, and even when they do test, only 2 in 10,000 athletes come up positive. OTOH, that much money aimed at steroid testing a much smaller number of active-duty law enforcement officers would allow for much broader coverage among a group where there's a lot more evidence that steroid use is a widespread, significant problem. Right now, in most cases investigators - federal, state and local - fail to take the most obvious first steps toward investigating steroid use among police, even when they have evidence that would allow such an inquiry. (If you're a celebrity sports star, though, they'll spare no expense to hang you out to dry.)

Steroid testing on student athletes turned out to be well-intentioned but unnecessary. Perhaps if police were tested, we'd similarly discover that a de minimis number were using steroids, at which point I'd argue, just like with athletes, that it's simply not necessary if it's catching so few. OTOH, there's good reason to suspect steroid use among police is much more widespread than among high school student athletes, and if the state is going to invest in steroid testing, it makes a lot more sense to put resources there.

Should officers who use drugs, lie to investigators, remain on police force?

This is not a Texas case but the difficulties faced by the Boston PD in disciplining bad cops come up again and again in the Lone Star State, particularly in agencies whose employment policies are governed by Texas' civil service code. Here are the opening lines to a Boston Globe editorial about the local PD's weak response to an egregious corruption case ("Too easy on rogue cops," July 9):

BOSTON POLICE Commissioner Edward Davis sent a weak message on police misconduct last week -- all the more so because it was timed to generate minimal publicity. The disciplining of officers in a steroid-use scandal deserves greater scrutiny, especially given the city's recurring problems with rogue officers.

Davis parceled out punishments ranging from written reprimands to a 45-day unpaid suspension to 11 officers who were involved in steroid use or had frequented an afterhours club in Hyde Park where drugs, alcohol, and prostitutes were present. The punishments are a byproduct of a federal investigation in 2006 that culminated in the arrest and lengthy imprisonment of three former Boston Police officers for protecting a large shipment of cocaine arranged by federal agents posing as drug dealers. The head of that protection racket, former officer Roberto Pulido, was a steroid user who also guarded parties at the after-hours club frequented by police.

Davis acknowledges that termination, not suspensions, would have been a more "appropriate punishment" for some of the officers who not only used illegal drugs but also lied about such use to the department's anti-corruption investigators. But like his predecessors, Davis says he is handcuffed by an aggressive union, contractual language that metes out light punishment for first-time drug violations, and labor arbitrators who overturn long suspensions and terminations.

Going forward, officers who used drugs and lied to anti-corruption investigators are worthless to the department: Even if they continue to perform police work, they can never be called to testify in court because they'd be easily discredited. If they'd lie to official investigators, who doesn't believe they'd lie to a jury?

Cops deserve due process rights just like everybody else, but the public also needs to be protected from corrupt law enforcement. When a department determines officers lied to investigators and participated in illegal drug markets, it's a grave disservice to the public to keep them on the force just because management fears the union's political clout.

Tight state budget, minimal results may doom HS steroid testing

AP's Jim Vertuno says that de minimus results and the looming budget crisis may combine to eliminate Texas' $6 million per year steroid testing program for high school athletes:

The results so far have found little to confirm fears that steroid use is a rampant problem. When the first 10,000 tests found only four positive results, critics declared the two-year program a waste of time and money.

Now state lawmakers must decide whether to keep the $6 million program chugging along, scale it down or eliminate it. The 2009 legislative session starts Tuesday. ...

Critics rolled their eyes when the first results were released.

According to a University Interscholastic League report released Dec. 1, the first 10,117 tests produced only the four confirmed cases of steroid use. ...

Republican state Sen. Dan Patrick has been a vocal critic of the tests, calling them a "colossal waste of taxpayer money" that could be better spent battling recreational drug and alcohol use among teens.

Like Sen. Patrick, I've long thought these tests were a "colossal waste of money." I'd suggested testing police officers - for whom the issue is a more serious, documented problem - might get more bang for the public policy buck than going after high school students. When the budget is tight, though, there are many competing demands for that $6 million, nearly all of which would be more productive than this program turned out to be.

Why only athletes and bodybuilders? Plano steroid prosecutions ignore alleged police doping

With disgraced sprinter Marion Jones heading home to Austin this week from a federal prison and the feds prosecuting amateur bodybuilders in Plano for steroid use, I continue to wonder with each new headline when the same level of attention will be focused on steroid use by police officers, particularly in the Plano case?

Steroid dealer David Jacobs and his body builder girlfriend died under suspicious circumstances that police ruled a murder-suicide soon after he accused police officers from five Metroplex departments of being his customers. (Today's coverage inexplicably doesn't mention the police angle, but see these prior Grits posts and others linked below for background.)

It's a lot more important for public safety to ensure cops aren't using illicit steroids than is policing foot races or body building competitions, but you wouldn't know that by paying attention to state and federal enforcement priorities.

After Jacobs' death, no law enforcement agency disciplined any of his alleged police officer clients; of the five, only Dallas PD implemented steroid testing going forward. Otherwise, the officers Jacobs sold to have never been identified or disciplined, and are likely still on the force using illicit steroids.

In that light, there's a bold hypocrisy to pursuing amateur bodybuilders who were for the most part also merely Jacobs' clients. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If they're prosecuting bodybuilders who bought steroids from Jacobs, the police officers who purchased from him should be pursued just as aggressively.

See prior related Grits posts:

• Dallas PD will implement steroid testing after David Jacobs' allegations
  
• Possible suicide by snitch who alleged police doping deserves outside inquiry
  
• Informant who accused Metroplex police of steroid use turns up dead
  
• Plano steroid dealer said he sold to police in five Metroplex cities
• NYPD requires steroid testing of officers in wake of scandal
• Feds should check names of steroid customers with state law enforcement registries
• Where is Congressional investigation of steroid abuse among law enforcement?
• Steroid use negligible among high school jocks; what about testing police?
• Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?
• Arbitrator reinstates steroid using police officer
  
• Cops on Steroids
• Lawsuit: Private mercenaries, police trainers abuse steroids in Iraq
• Insert Shrunken Testicle Joke Here: Book by ex-Texas cop defends steroid use by police
  
• Readers back steroid testing for cops and high school athletes

The case for steroid testing high school athletes if 2 in 10,000 are users

Since I've argued against continued steroid testing of high school athletes, maintaining that steroid abuse by police officers empirically poses a more significant threat, I wanted to point readers to a column by Donald Hooton, father of a steroid using teen who committed suicide for whom Texas' steroid testing law is named. Writes Hooton in the July 14 Dallas News:

Out of the preliminary findings, two positive tests resulted from more than 10,000 tests conducted by the National Center for Drug Free Sports and the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory. But the law's primary purpose is to prevent our children from turning to steroids by providing a deterrent – the risk of getting caught gives our kids a solid reason to say no.

Consider speed traps on highways. Many adults and teens drive the speed limit not because they know that doing such is safer and saves fuel, but because they know someone is watching – the fear of getting caught is greater than the desire to disobey the law. What happens when you take away the speed traps? People start breaking the law.

Whether the program yielded two positives, 400 positives or 1,000 positives, no one should be drawing conclusions about the extent of steroid use based on these preliminary lab results. The program was never designed to measure steroid use among high school athletes.

According to the statistics from the 2007 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, recognized as the premier organization in this field, 3.9 percent of high school students are abusing anabolic steroids nationally. Given that 10,407 students were tested in Texas in the past year, the results should have yielded at least 400 positive tests. Based on the preliminary results that we've read about, what we do know is:

• The random testing preliminary results of Texas students identified that 99.98 percent of the sampled student-athletes tested clean for performance-enhancing drugs.

• At least two kids are going to get help before something tragic happens. (I can only wish that my son had been "caught" and been able to receive help.)

• Ten thousand kids know firsthand that we are taking this issue seriously here in Texas.

• Millions of Texas families now know about the dangers of anabolic steroids.

Those results are, to me, an excellent definition of success.

The speed trap analogy is a particularly poor one. If officers only gave tickets at 2 out of every 10,000 traffic stops, there'd be scarce incentive to continue them. Speed traps make money because traffic violations are a lot more common than that.

Also, even if the "program was never designed to measure steroid use among high school athletes," the results are more directly probative than a survey that merely asks verbally about steroid use. The size of the sample is quite large and Texas specific. I don't think we can rely on that 3.9% figure based on these results - certainly not if next year's round of steroid testing duplicates the lower number.

I'll agree with Hooton the program served a short-term public relations benefit, but that has already been realized. Now the public relations message is actually being undermined by extremely de minimus results.

To the extent steroid abuse is a widespread problem, these data show the main nexus of its use does not lie with high school athletes. That means education and prevention resources are likely adequate for that population and enforcement spending (the 10,000 tests cost $3 million) should be reserved for groups where testing gets more bang for its buck.

Justifying Failure: Columnist defends steroid testing high school athletes despite logic and evidence. What about police?

I'm amazed anyone can look at the results from Texas' experiment steroid testing high school athletes - which identified two steroid users out of more than 10,000 tests given - and think the idea was anything but an abominable failure. However, columnist Cedric Golden at the Austin Statesman believes that cost-benefit analysis is just fine ("Steroid problem should be tackled at home, not just with testing," July 3):

So Texas taxpayers spent $3 million to expose two steroid users?

The $1.5 million-per-positive test would appear from the outside to be a muscle-headed waste of our tax dollars. It would also suggest the other $3 million earmarked to test 40,000 to 50,000 athletes this coming school year should be put back in the vault.

Not exactly.

The numbers may not bear it out, but the state made progress here. Somewhere out there, at least one kid was scared straight by the thought of the parents' negative reaction to a positive drug test.

So the state "made progress" because by spending $3 million they might have "scared" one kid? Really? Scaring kids isn't that hard, when you get down to it - that's not such a great accomplishment for that much money! After all, is spending $3 million to change behaviors of three kids instead of two really all that much better?

I continue to believe steroid testing in Texas police departments would yield a much larger number of illegal steroid users than any batch of high school kids you can find, and to be honest it matters a lot more!

Por ejemplo, now-deceased steroid dealer David Jacobs claimed to have sold steroids to officers in five Metroplex police departments before he and his girlfriend died of gunshot wounds this spring that were ruled a murder/suicide. Dallas PD implemented department-wide steroid testing after the incident, but the other four (Garland, Richardson, Arlington and Plano) did not. That's apparently a bigger nest of illegal steroid use identified than in all of Texas high school athletics!

Golden asks several questions about the testing of high schoolers aimed at rationalizing its continuation, all of which appear to me to have obvious answers, but let's run through them: "Did we learn anything?" Yes! We learned that the problem of steroid use in high school is dramatically overhyped by the media and not really that big deal.

"Did the testers scare off the users, or are high school students using masking agents?" Since when does anyone think high school students pay attention to the newspaper or the actions of the state Legislature? It's a safe bet most students never had the remotest inkling about the test until their own coach announced it. As for masking agents, they're a crapshoot; they don't work consistently enough to explain these results, and anyway it's a reach to think everybody figured out how to cheat.

"Are they testing at the right time of the year?" Well at what time of year besides summer aren't high schoolers somewhere participating in athletics? Unless you operate under the assumption that only football jocks use steroids (or that athletes stop training in the off season), that makes no sense at all.

Texas legislators should take that same $3 million per year in the next budget and use it to pay for random testing in Texas police and sheriff departments. I'm certain we'd get a lot more bang for the buck in terms of how many steroid abusers the state identified and the relative import of each finding.

That said, if Texas did 10,000 tests and found only two steroid users among police, I'd be the first to say it was unnecessary and needed to be discontinued. There's no need to manufacture problems that don't exist (though I suppose they're easier to solve that way!). Even after writing on Grits for several years now in favor of steroid testing for police, if the in-the-real-world results turned out that lopsided, I couldn't imagine viable arguments for continuing it. That goes double in the case of high school athletes.

See prior related Grits posts:

• Steroid use negligible among high school jocks; what about testing police?
  
• Dallas PD will implement steroid testing after David Jacobs' allegations
  
• Possible suicide by snitch who alleged police doping deserves outside inquiry
  
• Informant who accused Metroplex police of steroid use turns up dead
  
• Plano steroid dealer said he sold to police in five Metroplex cities
• NYPD requires steroid testing of officers in wake of scandal
• Feds should check names of steroid customers with state law enforcement registries
• Where is Congressional investigation of steroid abuse among law enforcement?
  
• Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?
• Arbitrator reinstates steroid using police officer
  
• Cops on Steroids
• Lawsuit: Private mercenaries, police trainers abuse steroids in Iraq
• Insert Shrunken Testicle Joke Here: Book by ex-Texas cop defends steroid use by police
  
• Readers back steroid testing for cops and high school athletes

Steroid use negligible among high school jocks; what about testing police?

After a Texas law passed demanding steroid testing for high school athletes, I argued the program wasted money and ignored more seriously problematic classes of steroid users, particularly in law enforcement where the state has a more compelling interest in preventing illicit steroid use.

Now the results are nearly all in, and the state got back only two positive tests after randomly testing more than 10,000 student athletes. That rate of return is good news to the extent it confirms steroid use isn't a big problem among Texas high school athletes, but it was sure a massively expensive and needless waste of time and money to prove that point.

Dallas PD recently announced it would begin steroid testing for its officers, but most other Texas police departments do not. As I'd argued in the comments to a prior Grits post:

Certainly there are good arguments for police officers wanting to take steroids, and I'm actually quite sympathetic to the idea that they ought to be able to do so. My personal view is that steroids, like marijuana, pose modest risks that are knowingly taken by those using the substances, and probably should be legalized. But as long as steroids are illegal, making sure cops don't participate in an illicit drug culture is a LOT more important than policing [athletes].

When I wrote that I was talking about professional athletes, but that goes double for high-schoolers where the state testing regimen proved there was no significant problem. If testing for police officers revealed similarly low rates, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. But the stakes are a lot higher and from anecdotal accounts, the problem of steroid use among police is more widespread than these data reveal among high school jocks.

Dallas PD will implement steroid testing after David Jacobs' allegations

In the wake of allegations that deceased steroids dealer David Jacobs sold the drugs to officers at Dallas PD and four other area departments, Dallas PD had decided to implement random drug testing, the Dallas News reports, though they insist they've been planning it for some time. Will the other departments Jacobs named - Plano, Garland, Richardson and Arlington - follow suit?

I haven't seen a copy of the policy but it sounds like a good faith start to addressing the problem, and DPD deserves credit for taking this step. Still, I still wish feds or some other outside entity would take over the investigation into Jacobs business connections with Metroplex police officers.

Possible suicide by snitch who alleged police doping deserves outside inquiry

As the mainstream media continues to focus on whether the National Football League will investigate allegations by deceased Plano steroid dealer David Jacobs, I continue to wonder who will investigate allegations that he sold steroids to police in five Metroplex departments?

Jacobs' death was ruled a suicide, but the more I learn, the more I think his case deserves an outside investigation.

Let me be clear I have no first-hand knowledge; I can't know what happened. Perhaps it really was a murder-suicide, the denouement of a rocky and jealous relationship with his bodybuilder girlfriend Amanda Jo Earhart-Savell. But when a police department Jacobs accused of harboring steroid abusers is the same one conducting the investigation, that creates an inherent appearance of conflict that would be better served by enlisting independent investigators. I agree with Bill Baumbach from the Collin County Observer who:

hope[s] Collin County DA John Roach takes a very hard look at this case. Even if the evidence supports suicide, Rossi died before he could give testimony against law enforcement officers . An outside investigation is warranted. If Mr. Roach will not investigate, then the feds should.

I'd earlier compared Jacobs' case to a New York steroid dealer who accused police and was soon thereafter found dead from gunshot wounds to the chest and head, which was ruled a suicide. (NYPD instituted department-wide steroid testing as the result of his allegations.) It turns out David Jacobs was also shot in the abdomen and head, but the medical examiner concluded his death was a suicide, too.

In general, how likely is it that a suicide requires two shots? Certainly possible, but statistically speaking, not very. Via Steroid Nation I found this study from North Carolina that has the biggest dataset I've seen on the topic. Here's the abstract:

Suicide by firearm is a frequent mode of death and the most common mode of suicide in the United States. So typically is there but one bullet entrance would in the suicide victim, and so often are there multiple wounds with homicide that some investigators and the public are unaware or forget that the person intending suicide may discharge his gun into himself more than once. The frequency, incidence, and other characteristics of the phenomenon deserve more recognition. The data presented are from medical examiner reports and related material from 7,895 gunshot deaths, including 3,522 suicides by firearm, that occurred in North Carolina in the 7-year period 1972-1978. The 58 multishot firearm suicides represent 0.7% of all firearm deaths (one in 136) and 1.6% of forearm suicides (one in 61). Characteristics of the individual entrance wounds such as body regions involved and muzzle distance were the same as those of single shot cases. Long gun use was not rare, but 0.22 caliber handguns predominated. Other characteristics of weapon, victim, wounds, and situations are presented. Each of the cases was assessed by forensic pathologists as it was reported and was reviewed again for the study. The type of data presented is one advantage of a structured, centrally guided, statewide medical examiner system.

So .7% of gunshot deaths were two-shot suicides, but steroid dealers who accused police in New York and Plano both died that way? (A possibly probative followup study question might have been, "what percentage of two-shot suicides were people who had pending accusations against police officers regarding misconduct?")

Also, who tries to commit suicide by shooting themselves in the abdomen?

Another piece of datum makes me think there's more to investigate: the North Carolina study found most two shot deaths were with "long guns" and .22 caliber handguns. But David Jacobs supposedly couldn't do the job with a .40 caliber Glock?

Over the weekend, Tanya Eiserer at the Dallas News gave more detail about what police found ("Steroid dealer David Jacobs death ruled a suicide," June 7):

Police responded to Mr. Jacobs' home after receiving a missing-person call about midnight Wednesday from Ms. Earhart-Savell's family. The family told police they had not heard from her and thought she might be at Mr. Jacobs' house.

Police were still trying to determine who owned the gun believed to have been used in the shootings.

Authorities said they found "no sign of forced entry" and have no reason to believe anyone else was in the home at the time of their deaths. But according to the court records, they found signs of a struggle, six fired bullets and 10 bullet casings.

After the bodies were found, Plano police wearing masks over their faces were seen entering the house and taking evidence away, some in boxes. Police say they were undercover officers who need to protect their identities because of other work.

According to the court records, police seized computers, several cellphones, video equipment and other computer-related equipment, as well as more than $3,000.

One wonders exactly how many undercover Plano cops are working on steroid cases? After all, Jacobs already cut a plea deal and was no longer an investigative target. For whole groups of investigators to be hiding their identity while they're investigating the snitch who accused their colleagues of crimes simply leaves an eery and decidedly ambiguous impression. Wrote Dallas News columnist Kevin Sheridan:

Frankly, Jacobs made lots of public allegations, which was part of the problem. Besides counting athletes as customers, he said he sold to police officers in Garland, Richardson, Dallas, Arlington and Plano. He even said a Plano cop stole $4,500 from him during a raid last year.

"One of the feds told me that [Jacobs] was talking a lot more than they wanted him to," [said Don] Hooton [father of a steroid using high-school pitcher in Plano who committed suicide] ... "They weren't happy about that at all.

"The last thing they want to see is all this stuff on the evening news."

I've argued previously that the Department of Justice has little business investigating drug use by professional athletes, but DOJ has longstanding authority and responsibility to investigate allegations of police corruption. If it's true that Jacobs operated one of the largest steroid rings in America and sold his product to police officers, the feds need to step in so the public can feel confident nothing will get swept under the rug. At the end of the day, it's a lot more important to root out police officers who're trafficking in illegal steroids than to investigate a bunch of overpaid NFL jocks.

Informant who accused Metroplex police of steroid use turns up dead

I normally try not to indulge too readily in conspiracy theories, but a pair of killings this year of informants who ratted out steroid using cops, taken together, are beginning to give me the creeps, not to mention make me wonder when Congress will investigate steroid use in law enforcement as aggressively as they did in baseball.

Most recently, an informant in Plano who threatened to out police officers in five Metroplex departments was found shot to death in his home this morning, making him the second steroid dealer/informant killed this year before he could testify against law enforcement. Reported Jason Trahan at the Dallas News ("Convicted steroid dealer David Jacobs found dead in Plano home," June 5)

Convicted steroids dealer David Jacobs, who recently agreed to tell the NFL which football players received banned substances he manufactured, was found dead in his Plano home this morning.

The body of a woman identified as Amanda Jo Earhart-Savell, 30, and a gun were also found at the home.

About 11:30 a.m., four men in ski masks and raid jackets with “police” on the back — indicating they may be undercover narcotics officers — arrived at the busy scene and entered the home with a cart to carry documents.

The Dallas Morning News spoke to Mr. Jacobs frequently and exchanged e-mails with him as recently as this weekend. He was interested in getting on with his life after accepting a plea deal for three years of probation on charges related to his steroids trafficking.

Mr. Jacobs said he wanted to rebuild his nutritional supplement business, but he was having trouble getting his old client base to work with him. He also was having financial problems, but the former Marine seemed to be in good spirits.

Jacobs claimed to have sold steroids to officers from the Garland, Richardson, Dallas, Arlington, and Plano police departments.

A similar case involving NYPD in January caught my eye, and made me wonder just how deep the rabbit hole goes regarding steroid use in law enforcement. A pharmacist set to testify against NYPD police was found shot to death. As I pointed out previously, "his case was ruled a suicide, despite 'gunshot wounds to the chest and head.'"

Reacting to this news, I'd wondered "Have you ever heard of a suicide with two shots to the chest and the head? If the guy accusing Roger Clemens turned up dead under these circumstances, do you think there'd be a bigger media hoopla than the one-day story in passing that constituted coverage of this pharmacist's death?"

Now we've seen informants accusing police of steroid use at two of the largest police departments in the country turn up shot to death within months of one another under suspicious circumstances before they could testify.

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe both cases were suicides, or perhaps one or both were killed by non-police customers or suppliers. I'm not so much speculating about likelihoods as acknowledging a dark, unhappy, but seemingly inescapable hunch. I'd certainly feel better if the FBI or somebody outside Plano PD took over the task of investigating David Jacob's' death.

See prior related Grits posts:

• Plano steroid dealer said he sold to police in five Metroplex cities
• NYPD requires steroid testing of officers in wake of scandal
• Feds should check names of steroid customers with state law enforcement registries
• Where is Congressional investigation of steroid abuse among law enforcement?
  
• Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?
• Arbitrator reinstates steroid using police officer
  
• Cops on Steroids
• Lawsuit: Private mercenaries, police trainers abuse steroids in Iraq
• Insert Shrunken Testicle Joke Here: Book by ex-Texas cop defends steroid use by police
  
• Readers back steroid testing for cops and high school athletes

Plano steroid dealer says he sold to police in five Metroplex cities

Somehow I missed the story from earlier this month about a Plano steroid distrubutor who's threatening to blow the whistle on Metroplex area police officers. While headlines focused on his alleged sale of steroids to former Cowboys punter Matt Lehr, reported WFAA-TV ("Man says Plano police stole steroids from him during a raid," May 1):

David Jacobs says he’s ready to name names of police officers who got steroids from his network. "We as people have given them a set of authority to uphold these laws, but they are breaking them right in front of our faces," said Jacobs.

Jacobs is talking about officers in five cities: Garland, Richardson, Dallas, Arlington, and Plano. He says the Plano officers stole from him during a raid.

"And to steal money from my house, and steal steroids, and steal growth hormones from my house, then put handcuffs on me and then judge me," said Jacobs.

Plano police say Jacobs has yet to file a formal complaint with them so they have not investigated the allegations.

Federal prosecutors are investigating professional athletes.

When asked if he thought that a lot of professional athletes would be brought into this scandal, he answered: “I think this is way bigger than baseball.”

According to the Dallas News, Jacobs informed police about the alleged theft and steroid use by officers when he was arrested, but apparently Plano PD was waiting for him to complain formally to Internal Affairs. That's a pretty lackadaisical response to allegations by a known steroids dealer that he sold drugs to your officers!

Will these allegations of steroid use by Metroplex police be investigated or swept under the rug? And will authorities express as much interest in Jacobs' police officer clients as those who are professional athletes? They should, but I doubt it.

See prior related Grits posts:

• Where is Congressional investigation of steroid abuse among law enforcement?
  
• Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?
• Arbitrator reinstates steroid using police officer
  
• Cops on Steroids
• Lawsuit: Private mercenaries, police trainers abuse steroids in Iraq
• Insert Shrunken Testicle Joke Here: Book by ex-Texas cop defends steroid use by police
  
• Feds should check names of steroid customers with state law enforcement registries
• Readers back steroid testing for cops and high school athletes
  

NYPD becomes largest US department to require random steroid testing

Having posed the question last year whether it's more important to test police officers for steroids or high school athletes (Texas chose the high schoolers), I was interested to learn that the New York City police department will be adding steroids to its drug testing regimen.

The NYPD steroid scandal caught my attention earlier via an odd forensic twist that still doesn't sit right with me. The pharmacist/informant in the case who ultimately helped finger all these steroid using officers was found shot to death in January. His case was ruled a suicide, despite "gunshot wounds to the chest and head." Maybe it's possible, but I continue have trouble imagining the suicide sequence that results in shots to the "chest and head." I guess if you're a REALLY bad shot ...

In any event, the case where the pharmacist would have testified may still result in several officer terminations, but no prosecutions, reports the New York Times ("Police department to start routinely testing officers for steroid use," April 10). One hopes, though, that the new testing regimen will generate some good out of the tragedy:

As investigators looked into the dealings at the Brooklyn pharmacy, Lowen’s, an old-fashioned neighborhood drugstore in Bay Ridge, they said it had expanded into major transactions of steroids and growth hormone.

The investigation into Lowen’s uncovered 19 officers who had been prescribed steroids, police officials said. That investigation was part of a larger inquiry into the illegal underground steroid industry. Steroid scandals have touched the sports and entertainment industries, exposing vast distribution networks for the illicit bodybuilding drugs.

Of the officers implicated in the Lowen’s raid, six tested positive for steroid use, Mr. Browne said. Five of them have been suspended without pay and are facing departmental trials that could lead to their dismissal, he said. The sixth was put on modified duty.

While steroids may not be perceived as being as dangerous as recreational narcotics, Mr. Browne said they are just as problematic for officers who do not have proof of their medical necessity.

An internal memo was sent to all police commands on March 26 warning that using steroids for “bodybuilding and/or body enhancement” is not a legitimate medical use. “The demand for anabolic steroids caused by their continued use in bodybuilding and body enhancement activities creates an illegal market for these substances that is supported through organized crime,” the memo said.

It said that steroid use can seriously impair a person’s health.

The memo reflects the growing concern — among law enforcement agencies and the public — about the use of steroids and human growth hormones, particularly by athletes.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the nation’s oldest and largest group of law enforcement executives, published a policy review about steroid use among officers in 2005, said Wendy Balazik, a spokeswoman for the association.

Police officials in other cities said steroids was a topical issue.

While firing them is a big deal, after recent prosecutions of athletes, I notice that authorities don't plan to pursue perjury charges against officers who earlier misled investigators. I think that's the right decision, actually, I just wish it were applied equally by the feds when the defendant is capable of drawing a large number of television cameras.

Let's face it, not even baseball fans seem to care if professional athletes juice. "Steroids Era" or not, major league baseball continues to set attendance and profit records, and the sport is more popular than ever.

But so long as steroids are illegal, everyone should care if police officers juice. It's not just the possibility of affecting their behavior and judgment (so-called "roid rage"), but because officers must engage in black market activities and expose themselves to implicitly corrupting influences in order to obtain the illegal drugs.

Every officer who uses steroids or other illegal drugs is a potential blackmail target waiting to happen. Such a scenario inherently invites corruption, placing the officer's career future in the hands of a criminal who could easily demand favors or threaten to rat.

If I had my druthers, the 81st Texas Legislature would take all the money its wasting testing high school athletes for steroids and create a grant program for police departments that want to do so. In New York, at least they seem to have their priorities straight about which group is more important to test first.

Bexar deputy's arrest shows police more deserving of steroid investigation than baseball players

As the media continues to rip into Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens over allegations of steroid use, I continue to wonder when the same sort of systematic attention will be paid to steroid use among law enforcement?

When I first raised this issue, more than a few people expressed surprise and said they didn't believe it was common. So since then, I've been paying closer attention when these cases come up, especially in Texas. Last month in San Antonio, a Bexar County Sheriff's Deputy was busted purchasing steroids at his off-duty job as a flea market security guard, reported WOAI radio ("Deputy arrested and charged with drug possession," Feb. 12):

The deputy, 34-year-old Omar Rubio, was taken into custody Saturday. Sheriff's detectives said Rubio was in his full deputy's uniform when he purchased several vials of illegal steroids.

"The sheriff's office started an investigation about 90 days ago into the allegation that Rubio had been purchasing and possibly using steroids," said Deputy Chief Ronald Bennet of the Bexar County Sheriff's Department.

Sources inside the sheriff's office said a tipster warned detectives about the 34-year-old deputy and the illegal body enhancing drugs.

The Bexar Sheriff's department only discovered the deputy's drug use because an informant came forward, not because of departmental testing or other proactive efforts by the Sheriff. In the scheme of things, it's a lot bigger deal if law enforcement officers are engaging in black markets to purchase performance enhancing drugs than if Marion Jones or Andy Pettite did so. But while federal investigators went actively hunting for steroid use among sports stars, apparently abuse among police isn't so big a priority. Authorities usually only go after such cases among law enforcement, as in this instance, when somebody hands it to them on a silver platter.

See prior related Grits posts:

• Where is Congressional investigation of steroid abuse among law enforcement?
  
• Congressional steroid hearings an abuse of power
• Lawsuit: Private mercenaries, police trainers abuse steroids in Iraq
  
• Contrarian views on steroids hysteria
  
• DOJ media ploy on steroid investigation rightly decried as foul
  
• Marion Jones already punished, why send her to prison?
  
• Clemens informant shielded from prosecution: Do snitch agreements give incentives to lie or tell the truth?
  
• Baseball's Mitchell report relies on uncorroborated, coerced informant testimony to accuse 'Rocket' Roger Clemens
  
• Barry Bonds perjury indictment is pure USDOJ media ploy
• Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?
• Arbitrator reinstates steroid using police officer
  
• Cops on Steroids
• Insert Shrunken Testicle Joke Here: Book by ex-Texas cop defends steroid use by police
  
• Feds should check names of steroid customers with state law enforcement registries

Where is Congressional investigation of steroid abuse among law enforcement?

Ever since the US Department of Justice (USDOJ) began selectively prosecuting high-profile athletes amidst Congressional media grandstanding, I've been wondering why the same focus isn't placed on law enforcement, where there's at least as much evidence of widespread use.

It turns out a fellow Texan beat me to that argument; Dr. John Hoberman of UT-Austin in 2005 wrote an informative article on the subject ("Dopers in Uniform," May 22, 2005). The full, footnoted piece is well worth reading, but here's an excerpt that shows the connections between police and steroids has been recognized for quite some time:

One of the remarkable anomalies of the anti-steroid campaign of the past two decades is that it has virtually ignored the many reports of steroid use by police officers in the United States and in other countries. Unknown but clearly significant numbers of policemen have imported, smuggled, sold, and used anabolic steroids over this time period. According to an article that appeared in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin in 1991: "Anabolic steroid abuse by police officers is a serious problem that merits greater awareness by departments across the country." In 2003 another expert offered a similar assessment. Little research has been done on the use of steroids by police, said Larry Gaines, former executive director of the Kentucky Chiefs of Police Association. "But I think it's a larger problem than people think.".

A segment of the CBS-TV program "60 Minutes" had already made that point on November 5, 1989. "Beefing Up the Force" presented interviews with three officers whose use of steroids had apparently caused the hyper-aggressiveness that had gotten them into serious trouble. The worst case involved what one psychiatrist called "a real Jekyll and Hyde change" in the personality of a prison security guard in Oregon who had kidnapped and shot a woman who made a casual remark he didn't like. He got 20 years in prison, and she was paralyzed for life. The personality he presented during his prison interview made it seem utterly improbable that he would have been capable of such an act. But his testosterone level when he committed the crime was 50 times the normal level. This broadcast conveyed the message that steroid problems were lurking in many police departments across the country, and that police officials were turning a blind eye to a significant threat to public safety.

It was no accident that the "60 Minutes" segment paid special attention to a "hard core group" of steroid users on the Miami police force. Two years earlier the Miami Herald had run a long article on steroid-using police officers. The seven notorious Miami "River Cops", who in 1987 were on trial for alleged crimes including cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to commit murder, included Armando "Scarface" Garcia, a weightlifter who had publicly admitted to taking steroids. "There's a great potential for an officer abusing steroids to physically mistreat people," said the police chief of nearby Hollywood, Florida, who had told his investigators to be on the lookout for officers who looked like "small mountains." The Miami Herald article may have been the first of the tiny number of analytical treatments of this subject that have appeared in American newspapers since the 1980s.

So the next time you hear someone say that steroid abuse isn't a problem among cops or that there isn't a documented need to investigate the issue compared to professional athletes, you might share Dr. Hoberman's piece with them. (I can't find the referenced 1991 FBI Bulletin online, but I'll see if I can lay my hands on it.)

The House Government Oversight Committee's grandstanding witch hunt over steroid use in sports constitutes one of the craven abuses of power I've seen in a while. In an election year, Waxman's antics honestly makes me wonder whether national Democrats are ready to run the country? The Chairman actually told the New York Times:

“I’m sorry we had the hearing. I regret that we had the hearing. And the only reason we had the hearing was because Roger Clemens and his lawyers insisted on it.”

Well gee, sir, NOW you regret it? Who controls the damn committee besides you? Clemens insisted on the hearing because the other option was for you to issue a report smearing him without including his side of the story! Houston lawyer Rusty Hardin's views are closer to my own on this when he:

said Waxman’s statements were “unbelievable, disingenuous and outrageous.”

“He is the one who created this circus in the first place,” Hardin said of Waxman, contending that Clemens and his lawyers had asked several weeks ago for the hearing to be called off, only to be rebuffed by Waxman’s staff.

“We didn’t think any good would come out of having a food fight with the accuser,” Hardin said in reference to McNamee. But once the depositions were taken last week, he said, the Clemens side felt it had no choice but to proceed, fearing that the committee would use the depositions to produce a hostile written report. “We wanted this out in the open,” Hardin said.

The Justice Department should never have assisted Mitchell Report investigators, and certainly it was a mistake to include uncorroborated allegations from an informant who'd been threatened with incarceration. The hearing was little more than an elaborate perjury trap.

But more than that, why is Congress investigating baseball, anyway, especially when the feds have known for two decades there's a significant problem with steroid abuse in law enforcement they're utterly ignoring? Where are your priorities, Chairman Waxman?

I'm still wondering, as are many Americans, why the steroid hearings were so partisan, with Republicans mostly supporting Clemens and Democrats like Waxman fairly openly supporting Brian McNamee? Stephen Colbert suggested the other night it was because Republicans supported drug users while Democrats supported drug dealers! That explanation makes about as much sense as any. But nothing I've heard explains to my satisfaction why this was any of Congress' business.

Congressional steroid hearings an abuse of power

We're at war. The nation's credit system and housing markets are headed down the toilet. One quarter of Americans don't have healthcare and about 2 million Americans are locked up behind bars. But Congress and the nation's media today will focus their rapt attention on steroids and baseball, with "Rocket" Roger Clemens scheduled to testify under oath, risking perjury charges if he lies.

Let me repeat that: Clemens will testify under oath to Congress. We couldn't get Condi Rice to testify under oath about 9/11, and myriad Bush administration officials under the GOP Congress were allowed to appear before Congress without risk of perjury charges if they lied. But now Congress will give a baseball pitcher the third degree? I can just see the D.C. pols thinking, "We've got to get that guy's testimony straight. The fate of the republic is at stake."

No wonder Congress polls lower, even, than the President! What a bunch of grandstanding fools.

I'll give Clemens this: If he testifies under oath at risk of perjury that his ex-trainer did not give him steroids, the chief argument of his critics will be taken away. Senator Mitchell and others have said that Brian McNamee's testimony was credible because he risked perjury charges if he lied. But if, after this hearing, Clemens is in the same position and there's no other evidence besides the informant, all you have is a he-said, he-said situation where no one can prove what happened.

Which is why this witch hunt was a bad idea in the first place, and why it was improper for the Justice Department to participate in this PR-driven investigation.

I'd still like to know why the Justice Department and Congress don't pay this much attention to the just as clear evidence of widespread steroid use among law enforcement?

Just to have mentioned it, and this is naught but suspicions from afar, but I couldn't help but suspect foul play when I saw in the New York Times that the pharmacist who allegedly sold steroids to New York City police officers in an ongoing scandal turned up dead. I kid you not, officials ruled it a suicide (because they found a note and a gun) even though police said he died from "gunshot wounds to the chest and head."

Have you ever heard of a suicide with two shots to the chest and the head? If the guy accusing Roger Clemens turned up dead under these circumstances, do you think there'd be a bigger media hoopla than the one-day story in passing that constituted coverage of this pharmacist's death?

I bring up the NYC police case because the Department of Justice (and hence Congress) actually has an historic role investigating police corruption. But under the Bush administration, DOJ has turned a blind eye to police use of steroids and focused on high-profile athletes. That may make bigger headlines, but the approach results in little public safety benefit, especially when you consider that the "path not taken" in the steroids investigation would have been to go after corrupt cops.

Using Congressional investigative authority to create perjury traps for athletes is a joke when the government doesn't have to play by the same rules.

UPDATE: Here's an oddity from the long, grueling hearing: I got to watch the last half of it, and there was a clear pattern among the Congressional questioners. With the exception of drug war zealot Indiana Republican Mark Souder, all the GOP members appeared sympathetic to Clemens, while the Democrats appeared more accusatory of the baseball star. That pattern culminated when, in his closing remarks, Chairman Henry Waxman, a Democrat, actually apologized to Brian McNamee for comments by his colleagues, even though all they'd said was that he is a liar and a drug dealer, both things to which he's already admitted.

I don't understand why Congressional loyalties would fall along partisan lines? What am I missing that explains this pattern?

The rest of the "new" evidence that came to light was hearsay that would never hold up in court, so unlike the ESPN talking heads I don't expect any perjury charges to arise from this episode in either direction.

Waxman told the press the hearing was held because Roger Clemens insisted on it, but that's not how I see it. I think the hearing was held because the Mitchell report irresponsibly named Clemens based on the word of an informant coerced with threats of incarceration. After that horse was out of the barn, all Clemens could do was try and clear his name. At this point, whoever you believe, Roger Clemens has done everything he could possibly do to try to achieve that increasingly unlikely goal.