The example that I will be sharing
is an example of the slippery slope that was mentioned in the video. The
example that I will use was with three undercover narcotics detectives that
were responsible in the street level dealers selling illegal narcotics.
The detectives were assigned to
what we in law enforcement refer to as a TAC team whose main responsibility is
to apprehend dealers who stand on the street corner selling narcotics. The detectives
initially started out making a positive impact in the drug trade here in
Jacksonville, Florida and they were making multiple drug arrests and were
making a difference. The slippery slope began when they would allow the drug
dealers to walk away after seizing their narcotics in return they would act as
informants. Now this is standard practice in turning criminals into
confidential informants which could have a bigger payoff. The problem with this
is that they are required to report these informants to the chain of command
which they did not. Ultimately they began to use these informants to get to the
middle dealers where the dealers would have more money. The detectives would
threaten the dealers with prison time if they did not cooperate. This is where
it turned illegal.
The detectives then began to insist
the dealers pay them a stipend in return for protection from other officer involvement.
These detectives were now making 1,000-2,000 dollars a week from these stipends.
This continued to escalate until a dealer refused
to cooperate and they planted narcotics on the dealer where they arrested him
and he was convicted and sentenced to prison. The dealer eventually went to
prison where he complained about these detectives to the FBI.
Unfortunately these detectives
moved to robbing individuals who were not associated with the drug trade and
they robbed a store owner and they murdered this individual. The detectives
were eventually caught and they were all convicted and sentenced to prison. This
is an example of how they began with small ethical dilemmas and it escalated to
murder. So day for my profession.
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