Cop by day, drug lord by night, sounds about right. This fool even had his mother involved in his operation. Why did he do it? He told the judge he was just being stupid. I guess that sounds a bit better than just being greedy and corrupt.

Akron -Former Cleveland police officer Zvonko Sarlog #2343,  police officer, 2nd district, Cleveland,  was sentenced to 10 years in prison Wednesday (2/2008)for moonlighting as a drug trafficker while wearing the badge.

A contrite Sarlog told U.S. District Judge David Dowd during his sentencing hearing that his actions were born of “stupidity, naivety, and foolishness.” The six-year police veteran also said he feared imprisonment because of his law enforcement past.

Sarlog, 37, was arrested in August after a federal investigation exposed his role in a drug ring that brought cocaine and marijuana to Northeast Ohio. Sarlog served as a bagman and coordinator for ring leader and longtime friend Ljubomir Rkman.

Federal prosecutors originally asked Dowd to give Sarlog between 12 and 15 years because the officer breached the public’s trust.

“He’s the only person in the conspiracy who raised his hand and swore to uphold the law,” said U.S. Assistant Attorney Robert Patton.

Dowd, however, gave Sarlog the mandatory minimum of 10 years, mostly because Rkman received a five-year sentence after a plea bargain. Five other co-defendants received sentences between one and four years after plea deals.

Sarlog’s expressions of remorse and shame to Dowd were a far cry from the roguish rhetoric Sarlog used as a drug dealer. During Wednesday’s hearing, prosecutors — in an effort to demonstrate Sarlog’s work as a lieutenant in the ring — played several phone conversations during which Sarlog nervously bossed around his drug-trafficking associates.

Those underlings included his mother Stefanija. After the woman failed to successfully deliver money to a drug courier, Sarlog became agitated and ordered her to try again. “You go and do it,” he said sternly in a phone conversation recorded by investigators.

Stefanija Sarlog, 60, of Parma, was never charged in the conspiracy. Zvonko Sarlog bought a house across the street from his mother’s house and planned to use it as a stash house, according to prosecutors.

FBI Special Agent Brian Young also testified that Sarlog once displayed a gun to an undercover agent and boasted “I run this [expletive]. Over time you’ll see what I’m all about.”

Story from the Cleveland Metro blog

The following are from books that are available on the subject of police misconduct and the Music industry. Anyone who follows some of these old cases knows there is a huge amount of misconduct and cover-ups involved. Maybe one day we will get the truth.

by Randall Sullivan — Acclaimed journalist Sullivan follows Russell Poole, a highly decorated LAPD detective who in 1997 was called to investigate a controversial cop-on-cop shooting, and eventually discovered that the officer killed was tied to Marion “Suge” Knight’s notorious gangsta-rap label, Death Row Records. Poole would come to realize that a growing cadre of officers were allied not only with Death Row but with the Bloods street gang. He began to uncover evidence that some “gangsta cops” may have been involved in the murders of rap superstars Notorious B.I.G. And Tupac Shakur. Poole became lead investigator in the murder of Notorious B.I.G. His shrewd detective work pointed to crooked cops such as David Mack, who orchestrated one of the biggest bank heists in LA history. Poole found his investigation stifled by a police chief wary of doing further damage to a department sullied by the OJ trial, the Rodney King beating, and the Rampart corruption scandal — in which dozens of officers were implicated in a conspiracy of robbery, brutality, drug dealing, and false imprisonment. Igniting a firestorm of controversy in the music industry and the LA media, the publication of Labyrinth helped prompt two lawsuits against the LAPD (one by the widow and mother of Notorious B.I.G., the other by Poole) that may bring this story completely out of the shadows.

The Notorious B.I.G. exploded onto the hip-hop scene with his platinum-selling album Ready to Die in 1995. The life of B.I.G. a.k.a. Biggie Smalls-born Christopher Wallace-had come a long way from the years spent in his Bed-Sty neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York where he dropped out of school at 17 to master his rapping style. It was on the street that Smalls began emceeing his original raps and was discovered by Sean “Puffy” Combs, who recognized Smalls’s potential and took his gangsta image to the next level. Within a few years he moved from the street to two successful rap albums, several million dollars in earnings, a Billboard Music Award in 1996 for Rapper of the Year, a marriage to R&B singer Faith Evans, a very public affair with L’il Kim, and hanging with Tupak Shakur, Marion “Suge” Knight, Puff Daddy, and Mary J. Blige. During his rise up the charts he had run-ins with the law ranging from assault to drugs and weapons possession. In 1994, he and Combs were publicly accused by Suge Knight and Tupac’s camp of setting up the shooting of Tupac, a charge they both denied. The high life was brought to an end March 9th 1997, after Biggie attended the Soul Train Awards in L A, Smalls was gunned down in his car like Shakur had been 6 months earlier. Years after the murder continues to raise more questions than it answers.

Nicole LeBlan — The saga behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. After ten years of reporting, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses reader into the intricacies of the ghetto world. She charts the cycle of the generations, as girls become mothers, mothers become grandmothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation. Two romances: nineteen-year-old Jessica’s infatuation with a successful heroin dealer, Boy George, and fourteen-year-old Coco’s first love with Jessica’s little brother, Cesar, an aspiring thug. The young couples try to outrun their destinies. Chauffeurs whisk them to getaways and nightclubs. They cruise in Lamborghinis and customized James Bond cars. Jessica and Boy George ride between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a dance between life and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George’s business activities; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, prison, and poverty. The teenagers make family where they find it. Girls look for excitement and find trouble; boys, searching for adventure, join crews and prison gangs. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc has slipped behind the cold statistics and surrounding inner-city life with a riveting, haunting, and true urban soap opera that reveals the clenched grip of the streets.

There were probably plenty of government officials in Columbia bummed out about this crazy car wreck. Millions of dollars in coke going down the drain, maybe literally.

In Colombia, Bogota, truck overturned when it cornered a turn too fast, spilling almost a ton of cocaine on the highway. I wonder how many millions of bucks a ton of cocaine is actually worth.

The truck was wrecked, the driver was not hurt in the crash (but may be badly hurt once his boss finds out he lost a ton of cocaine), was arrested. go figure.

Talk about having a really bad day.