Cop Tells Reddit He Blew The Whistle On His Corrupt Boss And Was Forced To Resign
commons.wikimedia.orgA whistleblowing cop has posted an AMA on Reddit alleging a rogue captain harassed him after he told a prosecutor that police had entered a suspected drug dealer's house without a warrant.
The Redditor, whistleblowing_cop, says he was forced to resign from the small sheriff's office in Oklahoma.
He wanted to remain nameless. While we were not able to confirm his identity, his story is very detailed.
According to whistleblowing_cop, the captain learned the whereabouts of an alleged drug dealer in March. Because he didn't have a search warrant, he enlisted whistleblowing_cop and two other deputies to do a "knock and talk," where police knock on the door and talk to the residents in an attempt to gain permission to search the house.
When a girl (who wasn't the dealer) opened the door, the captain just waltzed into the house, whistleblowing_cop said. He found weed in a room with a baby and threatened to charge her with child endangerment if she didn't call the dealer and ask him to come home.
She did. And when the dealer came home, the captain detained him at gunpoint and questioned him for two hours, forcing him to sign a release justifying the earlier search, whistleblowing_cop said.
Later that year, in June, Whistleblowing_cop received a subpoena regarding the incident.
Whistleblowing_cop spilled the truth. The DA dismissed the case against the alleged drug dealer. But the captain remained captain and "did all he could to make my life hell," whistleblowing_cop wrote. After humiliating him and accusing him of breaking protocol many times, the captain finally demoted the Reddit user, purportedly because of a shoulder injury.
Whistleblowing_cop refused the demotion and quit.
Commenters on the AMA mostly thanked whistleblowing_cop and compared his situation to a Dragnet episode. One user, Tiep0, asked: "If you were to apply for another law enforcement job, would your actions stand you in good stead and would you enter at a point that was similar to the level you were just at or would you have to start from the bottom again?"
"A dirty rookie again," whistleblowing_cop answered.