Three Schaumburg police officers have been arrested in what has been described as a drug-dealing enterprise. The revelation that the officers were involved in illegal activity has called into question much of their work in law enforcement.
The police department is now investigating any cases that any of the three officers were involved with in any capacity. A spokesperson for the police department said that the arrest calls their credibility as law enforcement officers into question and that all closed and active cases will be reviewed. It is not clear at this time how many cases are implicated in this investigation, but police officials say that the active cases will be dealt with first.
Two of the three officers were listed as the area's top arresting officers for drunk driving, so there may be a high volume of cases that are now called into question. As with the issues that we discussed in our last post, the conduct of police officers during arrests has a major impact on the case as a whole and on whether the charges are valid. Since police reports make up a large portion of the evidence in a given case, particularly for cases without a lot of evidence like a DUI arrest, the reliability of the police officer's account of the events is crucial. If the police report is deemed unreliable or unusable then it may result in the prosecution having to drop the charges for a lack of evidence.
One of the officers was quoted as having told his arresting officer that he sold drugs for the thrill alone.
Source: Daily Herald, "Cases worked by Schaumburg officers under review" Jake Griffin, Jan. 17, 2013.
More information about the criminal justice process is available on our DuPage county criminal defense page.
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