cop dealing steroids
As the Free Thought Project reports on a regular basis, cops across the country are often caught committing the same crimes for which they routinely kidnap and cage people. From stealing from charities to selling drugs they steal from their jobs as cops, many police officers have proven to be as bad or worse than than the criminals from which they claim to protect society. The following instance out of Kentucky of a cop running a steroid ring highlights this hypocrisy quite well.

Below is a post from Scott County deputy Joe Baker from earlier this year in which he is bragging about kidnapping and caging people for possessing cannabis.

He also arrested his own sister for drugs two years ago.

What makes these arrests particularly hypocritical is the fact that deputy Baker, himself, was just arrested last week on similar charges. Earlier this year, Scott County Sheriff Jerry Goodin asked Indiana State Police to investigate after receiving a tip that Deputy Joe Baker and Reserve Officer Phil Thomas were involved in dealing illegal steroids.

"He immediately stepped into action and contacted us," ISP Sgt. Carey Huls said. "We worked side by side to make sure everything was above board and done properly. And that was one reason Sheriff Goodin contacted our department. He didn't want anybody thinking they were hiding any information or covering anything up in their department."

The investigation would find out that Baker and Thomas were, in fact, not only using illegal steroids, but running an operation and conspiracy to sell them.

"Officer Baker was a school resource officer," Goodin said. "He had been assigned to one of the schools here in the community, and I wanted it done before school opened back up on Monday."

According to WDRB, Baker, 39, is now charged with three felonies, including conspiracy to deal steroids, official misconduct and possession of a hypodermic needle. He also faces a misdemeanor charge of possession of a controlled substance.

In a Facebook post this week, Baker apologized to the community "with humility and shame running down my face" for the crimes he committed. While everyone deserves to be forgiven for their mistakes, the hypocrisy of taking people's freedom for similar acts, while committing those same acts, speaks volumes. Nevertheless, the community has rallied around this cop — who betrayed his oath to the constitution and the community he served. People all over Facebook and the media appear to be bending over backward to show their support for this officer.

It is important to point out that TFTP doesn't think any drug should be illegal, including steroids. If people want to take performance enhancing steroids, who are we to stop them. But deputy Baker hypocritically kidnapped and caged so many other people for these substances while selling and using them at the same time, which means he should most assuredly face accountability. What's more, although we feel anyone should be able to do any drug they wish, it is not at all a good idea to allow people in law enforcement, with authority to use violence against citizens, to use these drugs as they are associated with rage.

In fact, the problem of police steroid use became so bad, in 2004, the DEA intervened to warn of the "possible psychological disturbances" of steroid raging cops.

The DEA said symptoms included:
  • Mood swings (including manic-like symptoms leading to violence)
  • Impaired judgment (stemming from feelings of invincibility)
  • Depression
  • Nervousness
  • Extreme irritability
  • Delusions
  • Hostility and aggression
Eventually, a few years later, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, made up of 16,000 members worldwide set a standard that "calls upon state and local law enforcement entities to establish a model policy prohibiting the use of illegally obtained steroids" by officers.

However, this policy never happened.

Not only do cops vehemently resist being drug tested by their departments, claiming it is a violation of their civil rights, as this case illustrates, they are also frequently caught selling steroids.

cops drug testing
"This is one of the dirty little secrets of American law enforcement," says Gregory Gilbertson, a former Atlanta cop who teaches criminal justice in the Seattle area and works as a legal expert on police standards and practices, according to Alternet. "Steroid testing is declining, and I think there's an attitude in all these agencies of 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' because they don't want to know about it. Because if they know about it, then they have to address it."

Ignoring the problem of roid rage does not make it go away. As TFTP previously reported, the cases of cops using and selling steroids are anything but isolated.

These are some of the cases from a 2016 report from Alternet that made the news that year, though there likely are others that have not been revealed publicly:
  • In June, a Jeffersonville, Ind., cop, Anthony Mills, resigned after pleading guilty to possession of steroids. His attorney told the media that Mills did not consider steroids to be illegal drugs.
  • This spring, authorities in Edmonton, Alberta, revealed that a handful of police officers had been involved in the use or distribution of Stanozolol, the steroid commonly sold as Winstrol. More than 30 officers in Edmonton have been implicated in steroid use in the past few years, according to press reports there.
  • In January, a Portland, Ore. cop who faced firing for a positive steroid test was allowed to resign.
  • Last fall, a scandal rocked police in the Augusta, Ga., area when a man arrested for steroids possession gave authorities a list of steroid users among local law enforcement officers. At least one deputy resigned; authorities denied that the list included as many 30 others.
  • Also last fall, the Miami New Times revealed that Miami-Dade police officers had been customers of Biogenesis, a South Florida steroid clinic at the heart of professional baseball's ongoing doping scandal.
The dangers of cops taking steroids are obvious, as the rage associated with their use can become uncontrollable. All too often, we see police officers immediately escalate situations to violence when de-escalation would have been far easier and safer. Steroids could be the reason.

"I keep seeing all of these cases where the level of anger and violence shown by officers makes no sense," Gilbertson says. "And when things don't make sense, they don't make sense for a reason...Maybe steroid rage is a reason so many police officers seem so angry and aggressive."

Cops on the juice feel indestructible, as if they have superhuman strength.

Or as the DEA puts it, "The idea of enhanced physical strength and endurance provides one with 'the invincible mentality' when performing law enforcement duties."

Starting to make sense now?

"Reasonable suspicion should be raised if they shoot somebody or beat the living daylights out of somebody," Dan Handelman, a founding member of Portland Copwatch told Alternet. "In some of these recent cases, the officers seemed to be pumped up and were not necessarily working in a calm and level-headed manner. We wonder how much of this was coming from natural adrenalin and how much coming from other substances."