Bad cop. Alcoholic cop. But I repeat myself.
Asked by U.S. District Court Judge Gary A. Feess why he became involved in a robbery ring of rogue LAPD cops, Gabriel Loaiza responded, “I have no excuse. Just plain stupidity.â€
Loaiza’s cousin Ruben Palomares, the ringleader, told Feess that he failed to face up to “problems”as a young police officer. Palomares, now 38, told the judge, “Instead of facing my problems, I ran from them.â€
So wrote Scott Glover in an L.A. Times piece, “Rogue LAPD cop gets 13 years,”on the sentencing of both Loaiza and Palomares. As usual in the media, the focus is on symptoms (“stupidity”and “problemsâ€) rather than root causes. Even recovering addicts years into sobriety make this mistake.
The trouble is journalists are limited in terms of offering opinions and how deep they can dig. The alcoholism-unaware might think that Loaiza’s lack of clear thinking occurred because he was young (more likely because he had an alcoholism-damaged brain). The uninitiated could easily incorrectly interpret Palomares’ “problems”as, “financial problems at home were the instigator”or some such nonsense (more likely because alcoholism causes problems; therefore, the problem was alcoholism).
The gang of cops committed about 40 robberies, attempted robberies or burglaries between 1999 and 2001, often while wearing police uniforms and brandishing weapons, netting some $1 million in cash and drugs. Palomares, Loaiza and others were finally arrested buying 10 kilos of cocaine from undercover DEA agents.
Drug Recognition Experts, the 20% or so of law enforcers who understand that alcohol and other-drug addiction is at the root of most criminal behavior, don’t discriminate among the people exhibiting such behavior. They know that the Loaizas’s and Palomares’s of the world are almost always addicts and that addiction causes what appears to be “stupidity”and “problems.”If journalists were to dig deeper into the lives of those who commit crimes, they could provide the crucial link between idiotic and criminal behaviors, “problems”and substance addiction that would serve to educate rather than perpetrate the seemingly countless myths of addiction.