An Oklahoma sheriff and his deputy were sentenced to two years and three months in jail on Tuesday for the crime of stopping and searching motorists so that they could steal their cash. An undercover federal sting operation caught McIntosh County Sheriff Terry Alan Jones, 36, and Under-sheriff Mykol Travis Brookshire, 38, red-handed. The pair were forced to resign their positions in May and plead guilty to Conspiracy Under Color of Law to Interfere with Interstate Commerce. “The court imposed the maximum permissible federal prison term, consistent with advisory federal sentencing guidelines,” United States Attorney Sheldon J. Sperling explained in a statement. “These sentences will not be subject to parole.”
The sheriff’s office conspiracy came to light after Marco Delgado-Hernandez was stopped on Interstate 40 on November 5, 2007. Brookshire searched the man’s vehicle and found $7000 in cash. He then seized this money and allowed Delgado-Hernandez to go. The next day, the district attorney’s office refused to press any charges or authorize the monetary confiscation. Assistant District Attorney Scott Biggs specifically ordered the money returned.
Almost one year later, Delgado-Hernandez, who had not received his money back, began making phone calls. Sheriff Jones told him that it would take “several weeks” to process the paperwork. The district attorney ordered it returned immediately. This kicked off cooperation between state and federal officials to look into the matter.
On May 21, 2009 McIntosh County Sheriff’s Deputy Tonya French pulled over a vehicle containing what she thought was an ordinary motorist. Brookshire was quickly dispatched to the scene to search the car. Brookshire found six bundles in the car, each of which contained $5000 in cash.
Brookshire insisted that the driver sign a form releasing custody of the money to the county, and threatened to arrest him if he did not comply. The man signed. Brookshire took one bundle for himself and then reported five bundles of currency to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
The driver in this case was an undercover agent working a sting operation in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and DEA. Federal agents obtained a search warrant and found the “missing” bundle of money from the traffic stop had been split between Jones and Brookshire. A total of $2600 was hidden in an air duct in Brookshire’s house while $2400 was found in the home of Sheriff Jones.
After 2 years in state prison, I’m sure the “Under-sheriff” will be very “red-handed.”
Glad they caught this POS.
only 2 years?
Sounds normal.
A friend of mine was arrested for DUI (I’m not condoning that). She was a waitress and all her pay, in cash, was in her purse.
Of course when she was released from jail, all the cash in her purse was missing when the sheriff’s dept. returned it to her. In her case, I know the jail staff took it. I asked her to report it to the sheriff’s dept. She was too afraid too.
She told me that the other inmates told her that all her money would be stolen by the jail guards, since that was the way things worked there. They were right.
This was in Harris County, Texas (Houston).
Good to know filching money with a radar gun is still OK.
@yankinwaoz
in those cases, one has to go to the federales/US Att’y General and hope that the local guy in charge needs to notch a few corruption convictions to advance his career.
Jeeze, if law enforcement officials can’t steal money and or cars from citizens, how will we ever win the war on drugs?
Were they wearing jack-boots while behaving thuggishly?
@ruckover…good one. i just spewed on my keyboard. thanks.:)
Hopefully these good old boys are going to have to toss a few salads while in jail. There should be a provision in the law that if you are a law enforcement official, you have to do three times the penalty that an ordinary citizen would.
Tar and feather his *** and leave him naked and about 250 miles from home…
I have NO patience for anyone that abuses his position.
I heard they were just trying to earn some extra cash on the side by working for Redflex.
Happens up here in Nebraska as well. Lost 120 bucks one day in broad daylight when the cops took my wallet to search for ID while I was a little incoherent. They asked permission, and I granted it, but when I got it back a short while later what was 140 dollars was down to 20.
These two are far too stupid to serve the community as police officers. And further to the point anyone who spells their name Mykol instead of Michael just proves that weird is relative.
Question is, how much loot was taken over a period of time?
This is not surprising.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-texas-profiling_wittmar10,0,6051682.story
JMB :
September 27th, 2009 at 5:04 am
Excellent article thanks. To bad its not true. I was listening to Glenn Beck and Rush and everyone knows nobody is racist or targets minorities.