Grants, NM — As the Free Thought Project pointed out many times before, police departments in America can legally discriminate against hiring individuals if their IQ is too high. Couple this with the fact that thieves aren’t always the sharpest tools in the toolbox, and you get the makings of a scenario like the one that unfolded in New Mexico last week. A Grants cop was caught on his own body cam stealing weed.
Grants Police Department Sgt. Roshern C. McKinney, 33, was arrested last week after an investigation found that he’d stolen both money and marijuana from the police department. McKinney has since been charged with marijuana distribution, conspiracy, and felony embezzlement.
State police also charged McKinney’s 23-year-old girlfriend Tanicka Gallegos-Gonzales, for drug distribution and conspiracy. Both were arrested in Albuquerque and booked into the Sandoval County Detention Center, according to KOB.
Public Information Officer for the New Mexico State Police, Elizabeth Armijo said Grants police chief, Craig Vandiver alerted state police after the department found video from Mckinney’s lapel camera that “exposed possible illicit activity by a Grants Police Department sergeant.”
According to the NMSP statement:
State Police Agents began investigating the activity on July 11, 2016. The six week long investigation into this incident included approximately eighteen interviews, analysis of numerous documents and paperwork and the review of numerous lapel camera recordings.
Agents viewed the lapel camera recording in question and observed Grants Police Department Sergeant Roshern C. McKinney (33) on duty, in uniform, driving his marked patrol car to the Grants Police Department. He entered his private office, obtained a substance believed to be marijuana and placed the substance in his uniform pocket. Sergeant McKinney then left the department and drove to his girlfriend’s residence located in Grants, NM. Upon arrival at the residence, Sergeant McKinney is recorded, on video, stating that he was giving the marijuana to his girlfriend, Tanicka Gallegos-Gonzalez, to give to her father, which she ultimately did.
Investigators also alleged that McKinney embezzled at least two items taken as evidence “including $785.00 in currency and an eight ounce brick of marijuana.”
According to the report, “these items were never submitted to the department’s evidence vault.”
While there is no harm in possessing and giving marijuana to willing adults, McKinney’s actions are indicative of a much more ominous problem created by the war on drugs.
Making substances illegal and having cops enforce these immoral laws allows for and fosters corruption by putting cops in tempting situations. This sort of thing undoubtedly happens every day in police departments across the country. However, most cops probably turn off their body cameras before stealing weed and cash from the evidence locker.
While the investigation continues, McKinney remains on paid vacation.
Before McKinney made this hilariously corrupt blunder, a former Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper accused of receiving oral sex while on duty from a Knoxville porn actress was dubbed the world’s worst decision maker.
However, it appears that there is now a tie between McKinney and former state trooper James Randy Moss.
Moss served 4 years of probation for his corrupt and hilarious actions, after stopping Justis Ellen Richert, who’s known in the “industry” as Barbie Cummings.
Cummings said the trooper spotted alcohol and a bottle of illegal Vicodin pills in her car after she was pulled over heading home from her aunt’s house.
Cummings said she told the trooper about her job and sat beside him in the front seat of his cruiser as he checked her website from his state-issued laptop. She said he ended up tossing the pills into the bushes, then said yes when she offered him oral sex.
Cummings said the trooper shot photos and video of the act with his cell phone and sent her copies. He then asked her to put them on her blog so he could brag to his buddies on the force.
And, he still wrote her a ticket.
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