EX-COP GETS PRISON TIME IN DRUG STING

A former police officer was sentenced Wednesday to more than five years in
prison for agreeing to protect cocaine shipments and, in one instance,
offering to transport a briefcase of narcotics in his squad car.

David Anthony Morales, who tried to commit suicide last month, appeared
pale and said little before U.S. District Judge Edward C. Prado handed him
a sentence of five years, 10 months behind bars.

"I'm very sorry for what occurred," the 40-year-old said in a weak voice.
"I did lose a lot."

Morales' lawyer Van Hilley said the former San Antonio patrol officer has
lost his job, his reputation and his wife, also a police officer, since he
stumbled into an FBI probe for police corruption.

"Unlike Job, who had Satan to blame for his troubles, David Morales has
nobody to blame except the guy he sees in the mirror every morning," Hilley
said.

Morales was one of 10 law-enforcement officers duped by undercover agents
who posed as drug dealers intent on hiring badge-wearing bodyguards for
drug transactions. Indicted last year, he quickly pleaded guilty.

Morales stood out as perhaps the most brazen of the rogue officers. Only he
showed up to deliver drugs while in uniform and on duty. Agents once filmed
him putting into his squad car a briefcase of what he believed was 22
pounds of cocaine.

Agents also recorded him talking about how he would be willing to stand
guard outside a drug stash house -- as long as he had an appropriate
automatic rifle. As he daydreamed aloud, his police radio squawked in the
background.

"He even delayed response to a call," Assistant U.S. Attorney David Counts
said.

In court, there was no longer any spark of bravado visible in Morales, who
has struggled with despair and spinal problems. He is recovering from back
surgery as well as the suicide attempt.

Morales' despair was evident in the suicide note that he scrawled after
swallowing all his prescription medication Aug. 12.

"When you send me to jail, I am asking for life because I have nothing here
in society," he wrote.

In the next paragraph, Morales turned his bitterness on the undercover agents.

"I am not sorry for what occurred, because what the FBI (did) was wrong in
violating my constitutional rights," he wrote.

Morales will remain in a psychiatric facility for evaluation until he can
be assigned to a federal penitentiary, the judge said.