“Technically Wrong, Morally Right”: 30 Times Cops Have Done Something Illegal

We used to give homeless dudes rides in the back of the car all the time. Technically wrong, morally right Lol.

My buddy’s dad used to run with a biker gang and one of the ‘club members’ got an officer arrested because he had 3 pounds of grass and they charged him for 2. He was so adamant about the other pound they had to investigate and sure enough one of the arresting officers was in possession of a pound of marijuana.

Been an officer for 15+ years. Maybe I'm biased but my agency's very strict about lying and corruption. Got a few stories about cops getting fired:

We had a hurricane and an officer called out saying a tree was blocking his street so he couldn't come to work. His sergeant drove to his house and called him from his driveway. fired.

An officer forgot to have a suspect sign a ticket for shoplifting. Instead of handling it by proper procedure the officer forged the suspect's name on the ticket. The officer was charged with felony forgery and eventually pled guilty to a misdemeanor, resulting in termination.


An officer was spending time at home while on the clock. Eventually IA got a search warrant for the cameras inside of the officers house and found they were doing chores and other non work related activities. Fired and charged with embezzlement for stealing time.

An officer was shaking down prostitutes at hotels for money. Fired and criminally charged with embezzlement.

An officer was clocking in for court off duty and then going home and milking overtime. They caught him mowing his yard while on the clock. Fired and charged with embezzlement. This officer had weeks to reaching a full pension.

Maybe not the most corrupt, but one of the most slimy.


The weekend watch commander and four officers were stealing money from people brought in intoxicated.

Not a police officer but happened in my hometown. 


Chief of police was up for a new contract so one of the city manager wrote it up and got the rest of the city council to sign off on it, without reading it. 


Turns out the city manager was the father (or some relation) to the chief of police. The contract paid him one of the highest salaries for a chief of police in the country, this is for a town of 60k in Massachusetts. The contract also had a clause that if it was ended by anyone but the chief he would get a payout of 1mil+, which the city couldn't afford. 


During the pandemic he refused to take a pay cut so the city had to lay off a bunch of officers instead. 


They finally got rid of him a few years back but the corruption involved was staggering.

Not a cop, but talked to a retired one at a wedding. Told me he would randomly arrest black dudes in NYC, and press their faces against the blistering hot hood of his car in the summer heat. His justification was that even though he didn't see them do anything wrong, he knew they were up to something. So he was "scaring" them into behaving. I wanted to say something to the guy, but he and several other attendees were open carrying and didn't know that I'm gay and not that brand of southern white dude. I just bowed out as quickly as I could. .

Police in South Africa resold/redistributed confiscated firearms to gangsters and thereby fuelled the gang wars in Cape Town. Amongst a lot of other things. Oh yeah, also over 4000 cops carry firearms despite not having passed the proficiency test. Also, over a 1000 firearms were „lost“, in one year.

I had a friend who joined the force because he wanted to help people. He quit because of all the s**t he saw.

Someone in my neighborhood was chief of the local department.
One evening he got drunk, crashed a police car. Then he went back to the station, took a new car, crashed it again. Only to return to the station again, and crash a third car.
I’m pretty sure he became chief again in a nearby department recently.

Obligatory not a police officer but I used to chat with an officer who worked in my area because he passed by a place I used to hang out at nights. He once told me this story about how they were preparing a raid on an illegal poker club, allegedly run by some mafia or another. Everyone gears up and packs up into their cars and once they're at the place in question and getting ready to barge in, his supervisor receives a call from the commander telling him to pack up and go home and not bother anyone or anything there.

Whatever was going on was well beyond his or his supervisor's or even the commander's paygrade.

This happened during my ride along before I got hired...

On the ride along, we got a call to the house of a neighboring department's sergeant. The oldest son of the family beat the ever loving s**t out of his mom.

When we got there, the dad (sergeant) had to be woken up and talked to downstairs. He couldn't care less. He was more upset about being woken up than his son beating the s**t out of his wife.

The officer I was riding with, told me they were familiar with this son and past instances of beating up his mom, and they usually dealt with this on the level of a "professional courtesy"... but it had gotten so bad with this latest instance, the kid would have to be charged. Which, in his words, was "too bad, because the kid wanted to be a cop really badly.".

In the early 90's had the chief spend 300K on top quality industrial saw machines for the little craft shop we had because he was going to renovate his house. Attitude by then was that it wasn't corruption but handsome for all who would also need some wood for home.

Having some higher officers smash an illegally borrowed police car to get home after going into town while totally loaded on c*****e and alcohol (Hey uppers and downers level each other out...) also was a nice one, their high ranks saved them and it was dismissed as a normal accident.

For the rest a lot of small things that could have happened everywhere. This was in the Netherlands and corruption was not o.k. but not much was done about it.

I also loved Uruguay and how easy and nice the bribing system was. Wanted to rent a motorbike for my holiday there and although I had a lot of experience I had no license, rental dude told me to get to the municipality building in town, but they were closed and it had a sign where in case of emergence they were, so I went there to find 4 guys drinking beer upfront of a bar. Shared some beers with them and paid their meal and we had some casual fun chat about football and after that they wrote me a permit on a piece of paper to drive motorbike for two weeks free of charge :D.

Wife was a dispatcher in central Washington for a number of years. When we first started dating, One of her deputies was routinely stalking his ex-wife and her boyfriend - often sitting outside her house while - both on and off-duty, engaging in intimidation of the boyfriend, etc. On one of these “excursions” he scared away the boyfriend and proceeded to r**e the ex-wife. She reported the r**e and he was arrested shortly thereafter. He ended up hanging himself while awaiting trial.

I had gone on a ride-along with another one of my wife’s deputies just a month or so before all of this occurred and met him for the first and last time on a call to a suspected gang fight. Seeing how he talked to and interacted with the suspects that day, I can assure you he was the type of officer that is headlining in the media these days. I was absolutely ZERO surprised when this all came to light not long after.

Obligatory not a cop, but where I am is a very rural area. This guy I know was having trouble with a woman bothering some people who were renting a place from him. The tenants said they'd called the sheriff and they'd refused to help. Guy calls the sheriff's office and says hey, this woman's been bothering my tenants, but they said you wouldn't send anyone out there. The deputy says, yeah, she's a pain in the a*s and we've already wasted a bunch of time on her on other calls. He continues, we won't go out there, but if *you* were to go out there and she were to have an "accident", just call me, and we'll notify the coroner and we won't say anything more about it. 


I'm not sure it gets much more corrupt than signing off on an extrajudicial killing of someone who's not really breaking any laws just because they're a pain in the a*s. .

Most corrupt I was somewhat a party to: a detective had somehow weaseled his way into an old-timer's will. I learned of it after he had been found out and the will had been corrected.

Most corrupt I'm aware of: one of my police academy classmates from a different department got arrested for coercing prostitutes to screw him while he was on duty. He set up each encounter as a quid-pro-quo, but some of the girls had been in custody while these arrangements were made. Yeah, if you're in custody, you cannot consent. That's r**e. Learned this through the grapevine; no idea whatever became of it. The piece of s**t had a beautiful little family, too.

*Edit:* Holy c**p, I can't believe I forgot this one! I was once crossing the street in a crosswalk, off-duty. I heard a car accelerating, and looking towards the sound, I saw a sports car barreling toward me. I waved both my hands over my head and pointed at the crosswalk, but the car kept coming. I literally had to run to get out of the way. As the car passed me, the driver locked eyes with me, and I saw him and his buddies laughing. So, I took note of his license plate. When I got to work that evening, I mailed him a ticket for speeding and the crosswalk violation. I could have criminality charged him for reckless engagement, but didn't. A few weeks later I got a call from a state trooper that lived in town, asking me to ~~blood~~ *void* the ticket. I explained the circumstances and he pressed on. This trooper is/was the largest of a******s and had a nasty reputation. Not wanting to cross him and land on his bad side, I voided the ticket. Oh well, he got his eventually when he was fired, charged, and convicted of racketeering.

Edit: corrected my swypo.

Co-worker used to be a cop. He was early on in his career when his shift supervisor picked him up for that day’s training. It was early morning, and the shift supervisor, who I remind you had been driving and continued to drive, was drunk off his a*s.

Co-worker quit at the end of the day. Looked into reporting it, but got told by a lawyer that the thin blue line would prevail, so he kept quiet about it and tells as many people as possible to not drive within five car lengths of a police car.

Not a cop, but dated a New York cop… he drove incredibly drunk off the clock and caused a multi-car accident. His boss covered it up for him and he got away without even a ticket.

(I'm not in law enforcement)

I live in Clark Country, Indiana. Our former sheriff was just convicted of several crimes, including stealing from his non-profit ambulance business and using sheriff resources for personal business (among others things). The guy owes over $3 million in restitution and was given a 12 or 15 year prison sentence.

Google Jamey Noel (yes, the same sheriff that did the first two seasons of "60 Days In")

This is a case where the corruption was actually prosecuted. He has some family moments being tried and some other associates. I sure his web was wider than what was caught, but it has been a major local.news story for the last year.

Lots of these examples are of US cops; this happened years back in London England. It was told to me by a relative who was a serving officer at the time

A young constable went to an address as the elderly occupant (F80s) hadn't been seen for a few days. He eventually gets in she's dead at the bottom of the stairs with a head injury; her house had been ransacked and jewellery missing. He calls it in, and shortly, two hungover detectives turn up and tell him to wait at the front door, let no one in etc..

After approximately 30 minutes, he hears a loud banging and tearing sound. He glances around and notices one of the detectives has kicked a hole in the carpet at the top of the stairs. Meanwhile, the other detective is wrapping up the tidying. As they leave, they casually mention, "She fell. It was an accident."

so yes, cover up a m****r as you're too lazy to investigate it.

Texas made it a Felony in 2021 to be a "John." Or someone who solicits a prostitute.

They busted a brothel in Texas and offered immunity to two girls who has very fresh "samples" of their work on their bodies.

One of the samples belonged to one of the cops on the raid. Meaning he was with the girl less than 15m before he took part in the raid.