By Michael Weissenstein, The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) - A former narcotics detective who renovated his Long Island home with $45,000 in stolen drug money was sentenced to two years in prison Friday despite his lawyer’s pleas that he was drunk and distraught over his wife’s ill health during the theft.
Carlos Rodriguez was the first New York police officer sentenced in New York’s worst police corruption scandal in a decade. At least nine officers have been implicated in thefts of cocaine and drug money linked to their work on a northern Manhattan anti-narcotics initiative.
Rodriguez, 39, pleaded guilty in April, saying that he and another officer stole more than $100,000 in drug proceeds from a dealer and split the cash. Rodriguez admitted he took $45,000 and paid a contractor for improvements to his home on Long Island.
His attorney, Susan Walsh, said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Carol Amon that Rodriguez robbed a drug courier after a night of social drinking with another detective, Thomas Rachko, in the summer of 2000. The pair pulled over the courier on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, identified themselves as police officers and took the money from the trunk of his vehicle, Walsh said.
Walsh said Friday that the veteran detective was upset about the health of his wife, who has multiple sclerosis, when he robbed the courier. She pleaded with Ammon to depart from sentencing guidelines and issue a relatively lenient sentence.
Rodriguez told Amon that he took “full responsibility for the crime I committed.”
“It was the worst decision I ever made in my life and it has ruined my life,” said Rodriguez, who Walsh said had almost two decades on the job before he turned himself in to investigators. “I have been distraught and overcome with guilt.”
Amon declined Walsh’s request for a downward departure from the guidelines because of the gravity of Rodriguez’s crime and the need to send a message that could deter police corruption, the judge said.
She gave Rodriguez a lighter-than-maximum sentence, however, because she said he was obviously sincere in his contrition for the crime.
The scandal began unraveling in November, when a federal surveillance team tracking a drug courier saw Detective Julio Vasquez and his former partner, Rachko, stop the man and take $169,000 from him. Both detectives were arrested.
Vasquez pleaded guilty and began cooperating with prosecutors, implicating other officers in the scheme.
Rachko pleaded guilty in June to a federal drug charge, telling a judge that he led a group that stole millions of dollars worth of cocaine and resold it on city streets.
Rachko said he led at least five people who stole 100 kilograms of cocaine between 1998 and 2003.