“There are no comprehensive statistics available on problems with police integrity, and no government entity collects data on all criminal arrests of law enforcement officers in the United States.” —Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested
Just another drug-trafficking cop or two arrested. Move along, please.
This latest involved the sentencing of two former Columbus, Ohio, police officers on charges of bribery and drug trafficking. One, Marco R. Merino, was sentenced this past February to 108 months in prison for conspiring to distribute over eight kilograms of fentanyl and accepting bribes to protect cocaine transportation. From March to September 2021, Merino received $45,000 for drug trafficking and ensuring the safe transport of 47 kilograms of cocaine, and $32,500 for trafficking fentanyl.
Merino’s co-conspirator, former officer John J. Kotchkoski, was sentenced on December 3 to 65 months for his role in the scheme. Arrested with Merino in September 2021, Kotchkoski, as part of his sentence, must forfeit several assets, including cars, firearms and $500,000 as a money judgment.
Shockingly, Merino and Kotchkoski’s case isn’t an outlier. Just this past August, a Clearwater, Florida, police detective was arrested on eight felony charges involving feeding information to two drug traffickers.
“His friendship with these drug traffickers was more important to him than upholding his oath of office.”
Frederick Lise, a nine-year veteran of the Clearwater PD who served in the narcotics division for two years, was also president of the Clearwater Police Union.
Lise’s arrest came in the wake of the arrests of 13 people on drug trafficking charges in which law enforcement seized drugs, money, guns and more than 100 dogs being used by a dog-fighting ring. Matthew Turner and Henry Smith were two of the primary players in the organization, which—in under one year—trafficked some 220 kilograms of cocaine, 660 pounds of methamphetamine, 25 kilograms of fentanyl, 5.5 kilograms of black tar heroin and 14 kilograms of MDMA.
When Detective Lise learned of the ongoing investigation, he sent several text messages to Turner and Smith over the course of several months.
As Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri explained, “Lise placed an alert in that system regarding Turner and Smith, so that he would be notified if there was an investigation being conducted into their activities by other narcotics units, including the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.”
Lise warned both men that they were under investigation and in trouble. Together, the three of them concocted a scheme.
“They’re going to go out and buy drugs from somebody that they know and set that person up with Lise so that they would be acting as informants, if you will, for Lise. And they could get credit later on for setting this person up ahead of time so that when they got arrested, they could say they were working off charges with Lise and that they would get, what we call, substantial assistance or good time off of their sentence,” Gualtieri said.
Lise now faces felony charges of misuse of public office for the unlawful disclosure of criminal investigative information and unlawful use of two-way communication devices.
“His friendship with these drug traffickers was more important to him than upholding his oath of office and his loyalty to fellow law enforcement officers. Lise, especially as a union president, is supposed to be looking out for cops, not putting them in harm’s way,” said Gualtieri.
And the beat goes on. Google “cops arrested for drug trafficking” at this writing, and you’ll find the above two, plus a Miami police officer, a Raleigh police officer and a Laredo police officer, all with the same story: They used the resources of law enforcement to violate their sworn oath to protect and serve, they trafficked drugs, they got caught, they pled guilty and they got sentenced. Eleven years, 25 years…
How bad is it? What percentage of law enforcement officers become that which they are supposed to fight? We don’t know. The Department of Justice does investigate constitutional violations like excessive force in the course of arrests, but it keeps no statistics on how many law enforcement officers get arrested for illicit activities, which officers are being investigated for corruption, and whether the statistics they aren’t keeping or releasing are leveling off or soaring.
What we do know is that it’s happening, and it’s happening with enough frequency that those whom law enforcement is sworn to protect and serve—namely us—should demand transparency, accountability and guardrails put in place to prevent the cautionary tales of Detective Lise and others.
As Sheriff Gualtieri said, “Fredrick Lise decided to cross the line from being a law enforcement officer to being a criminal.”
