Brickbat: Side Hustle

A court in Liverpool sentenced Andrew Talbot, a former officer with the Greater Manchester Police, to 19 years in prison after finding him guilty of multiple charges, including misconduct in public office and supplying Class A drugs. Prosecutors said Talbot stole 4 kilograms (8.8 pounds) of cocaine from the evidence room, valued at £400,000 ($508,770), then used the police database to find local drug dealers so he could sell it. He was discovered when he accidentally dropped a bag of cocaine outside his daughter's school.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

He was discovered when he accidentally dropped a bag of cocaine outside his daughter's school.

Mortifying!

[Chumby]

Abolish the side hustle.

[diver64]

Everyone knows police aren't paid that much. Give him credit for trying a side hustle to supplement his meager earnings. No one was using the coke anyways.

[Don't look at me!]

When a cop steals 8 lbs of snow, it only worth $500,000. When cops find 8 lbs of the stuff in a raid, it’s worth $7 bazillion on the street.

[AT]

I thought you guys liked drug dealing.

[mad.casual]

then used the police database to find local drug dealers so he could sell it

I kinda want to hear this rationalization. Because you’ve gotta love the confused notion of capitalism(?) at play here. To borrow from Bryan Callen’s character in “Walk of Shame”, “Do you walk into a McDonald’s with a bunch of your own cheeseburgers and ask them if they want to help you sell them?”

You can’t just tell the dealers to charge 5% more and skim 5% or you’re a cop and you’ll turn them in because that would piss them off and they’ll want hush money, but if you, uh, bring them 5% more cocaine and make them sell it and give you a cut of the profits that makes you a, what, good, respectable, capitalistic crooked cop?

You caught a dealer in a bust and, in the moment, you shake out a deal and wind up ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ down the road I can kinda understand, but this guy isn’t making any spur-of-the-moment decisions here. He, apparently, has, or had, a plan to go tell these dealers to move his, someone else’s, blow for him. Do you think he’s thought it through to the point that he has to wind up murdering all these drug dealers to tie up loose ends or no? Has he never "seen this movie before”?

[Don't look at me!]

Most criminals are not very bright.

[mad.casual]

Sure, but I think even the explanation of why you would have the coke on you in/around your daughter's school could be entertaining.

[voluntaryist]

When business/society is controlled by deadly threats, fraud, as it is in all countries, by what moral code do govt. agents act? Remember, "the law is the law", meaning it is the initiation of force, NOT reason. Yet, every discussion of a law begins with a reasoned argument for the particular law, as if law were based on principles. Is "do or die" a principle? Or, is it the opposite? Is the sacrifice of reason to violence civilized politics? Or, is it surrender to chaos?