FRESH START: CORRUPTION CRACKDOWN BRINGS HOPE

'If you've got a lot of skeletons in your closet," U.S. District Judge
Terrence Boyle advised the defendant on May 29, "you might want to
take it" -- "it" being the seven-year prison term the judge offered to
impose, provided nothing new came to light that inspired him to raise
it even higher. It takes a little effort (the sentencing guidelines
top out at two years), but the fact that Boyle ended up giving Glenn
Maynor, the disgraced ex-sheriff of Robeson County, only six years
offers some hope that the bottom of this barrel of bad apples has
finally been scraped.

Maybe this really was all there was to be squeezed out of Maynor: using on-duty
deputies for personal and political tasks, and lying to a grand jury about
his knowledge of fraud being perpetrated by deputies serving under him.
Given the scope of the corruption uncovered by Operation Tarnished Badge, we
share Judge Boyle's distaste for Maynor's rhetorical shrug -- "I dropped the
ball" -- and can understand his suspicion that Maynor was not merely a lax
administrator but someone who either "turned a blind eye" or was personally
involved.

Regardless, it's over. The ex-sheriff heads to prison in August. Most of his
command-level officers and all of his drug enforcement deputies have been
sentenced, too. A new sheriff and a new cadre are in place, and they've been
busy. Some of their busy-ness has taken them to places that seem to have
needed the attention of law enforcement for many years.
That's all to the good, and we hope law-abiding Robeson residents are
breathing easier today -- and that the other kind of residents are nervously
glancing over their shoulders.

In a broader sense, of course, it's never over. Not where power,
secrecy and an authority to lay rough hands on people come together
under elected leaders positioned to do (and demand) favors.

In law enforcement, that particular wolf is always at the
door.

An informed and wary electorate, a top cop who by training and by
inclination conducts himself as a professional, line officers who meet
high standards and a department that both lives under a strict written
code and polices itself from within -- these are every county's best
insurance against tarnished badges, ruined careers and an ill-served
populace. The best of self-made luck to Robeson County in this new
chapter.