editorial comment Just a few bad apples, no doubt.....

A state police sergeant allegedly was able to steal ``pounds and pounds'' of cocaine because the department's oversight of confiscated narcotics was ``sloppy and lax,'' a prosecutor said yesterday.

The system was so flawed, prosecutor William Bloomer said, that troopers were allowed to bring seized drugs home with them and some filed ``false reports'' indicating drugs were picked up by two troopers as required by regulations, when they actually picked up drugs alone.

``There were few policies. They were outdated and they were not adhered,'' Bloomer said in his opening statement in the Dedham Superior Court trial of Sgt. Timothy White.

White, 42, is accused of stealing and selling up to 27 pounds of cocaine and other narcotics while assigned in 2002 and early 2003 to the state police Narcotics Inspection Unit. He is also accused of threatening to kill his wife and assaulting her with his service pistol on Jan. 27, 2003 - one of three times prosecutors allege White abused his wife.

Bloomer told the jury of nine men and five women that White's wife Maura, Nancy White (a family friend who is the ex-wife of a state trooper and is no relation) and Robert Crisafulli of Hyde Park all conspired with Timothy White to traffic the stolen cocaine and engaged in frequent group sex that caused major tension in White's marriage.

Defense attorney Robert A. George told the jurors that Maura and Nancy White have been given immunity for testifying and that Crisafulli was given a ``sweet'' plea deal, and will serve three to five years instead of the mandatory 15 for cooperating.

Painting the witnesses as ``drug-addicted, drug-dealing, wife-swapping people,'' George said the key prosecution witnesses implicated his client to save themselves. He said state police oversight of seized narcotics was so bad that prosecutors won't be able to prove Timothy White stole drugs.

``It's going to come down to (state police) record-keeping and lying, drug-dealing, sex-swapping witnesses,'' George said.

Bloomer told Judge Judith Fabricant he plans today to call Maura White to the stand, as well as state police officials who will testify about drug-control procedures.

back | to top | full article >>