That’s right—the very people charged with protecting our homeland and enforcing our laws were corrupted by the lure of large and easy, if illegal, profits. The “good guys” turned into the “bad guys.”
How “secure” does that make you feel?
Nicholas Kindle and David Cole are charged with stealing seized drugs from evidence lockers and selling them to their undercover informant who, in turn, resold the seized drugs.
And not just any drugs. Kindle and Cole were trading in bath salts, a powerful synthetic version of the African drug khat. Bath salts can cause psychosis, fatal heart attacks or strokes, and have been known to trigger horrific incidents, including cannibalism. In a single year, bath salts were involved in over 20,000 emergency department visits.
This is the kind of crystalline horror that Kindle and Cole are accused of releasing upon Utah streets.
Bath salts are also powerfully addictive and require a higher dose each time to get the same high, making users take more and more.
In 2012, Rudy Eugene, a Miami man who was believed to be under the influence of bath salts, stripped naked and chewed off the face of Ronald Poppo, a homeless man, before he was shot and killed by police. The incident became known as the “Miami cannibal attack.”
Armando Aguilar, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, said law enforcement see people on bath salts who take off their clothes and “suddenly have superhuman strength. They become violent and they are burning up on the inside.”
In 2012, a Florida man believed to be on bath salts began gnawing the hood of a police car when police tried to arrest him—literally chewing through the paint down to the metal.
In 2011, a West Virginia man on bath salts was found wearing scanty women’s clothing, covered in blood from his neighbor’s goat, which he had just killed. The goat was lying on the floor next to a pornographic photo. The man told police he had been taking bath salts for three days.
This is the kind of crystalline horror that Kindle and Cole are accused of releasing upon Utah streets. They either stole bath salts from police evidence lockers or withdrew the drugs, claiming they needed them for an investigation.
Bath salts are a Schedule I controlled substance often used as a cheap substitute for cocaine or methamphetamine, and the DEA has banned three chemicals used to create them. At least 38 states have adopted bans on bath salts, but they’re obviously still out there, infecting our society with their destruction.
During their searches of Cole’s home, office, vehicle and safe-deposit box, police seized over $67,000 in cash. They estimate that, because Kindle and Cole were selling 25 to 50 grams of bath salts per week for $5,000 to $10,000, they profited between $150,000 and $300,000 from their crimes.
But their nefarious scheme went south fast, when a lawyer for their informant notified the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI began surveillance of the drug buys. Armed with search warrants, the FBI then arrested the two men, who are now facing 20-year sentences if convicted.
Federal court documents state: “Kindle and Cole used their positions as special agents to wrongfully obtain illegal narcotics seized by the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies and then sold the illegal narcotics to drug dealers … for their own personal enrichment.”
Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, put it this way: “A drug dealer who carries a badge is still a drug dealer—and one who has violated an oath to uphold the law and protect the public. Today’s indictment reflects the department’s commitment to holding accountable law enforcement officers who engage in criminal conduct, because no one is above the law.”
“David Cole took an oath to protect and serve,” FBI Salt Lake City Field Office Special Agent In Charge Shohini Sinha said. “Instead, he allegedly distributed dangerous drugs in our communities for profit. Cole’s alleged actions not only helped fuel an already devastating drug crisis but also undermines the public’s trust in law enforcement. The FBI remains committed to holding accountable those who violate the law, regardless of their position.”
Exactly. These two corrupt cops had a pretty sweet, slick scheme going on, because a drug dealer loses his stash of valuable drugs once arrested. Then, the corrupt cops steal the drugs from the evidence room and have their snitch—their informer—(who thinks he’s working on an undercover police surveillance operation), buy the drugs from the cops and sell them to unsuspecting clients for twice that much. The clients never get arrested (after all, you want your snitch to keep selling to them again and again) and the drugs go right back on the streets.
It works brilliantly—until the snitch wises up and tells his attorney, and the attorney tells the Department of Justice, at which point the pair’s next stop is the slammer.
One question for these two crooked cops, though: How are you going to spend all that money while you’re in prison?
They’ve got us feeling more “insecure” in the old “homeland” every day.
