FORMER OFFICERS DESERVE NO BREAKS IN SENTENCING

Experience as law-enforcement officers should earn no credit for the former
Davidson County deputies and Archdale policeman who will be sentenced in
June for drug and conspiracy offenses. U.S. District Judge William L.
Osteen Sr. put himself in a dilemma Thursday when David Scott Woodall,
Douglas Edward Westmoreland, William Monroe Rankin and Christopher James
Shetley pleaded guilty to a series of charges.

Osteen asked prosecutors and defense attorneys for guidance as he decides
sentences for men whose jobs were to enforce the law.

"Does that make the person worse than someone who's never tried to help the
community, or does it make them better?" the judge asked.

He also wondered whether he should take into account the damage done to the
image of law-enforcement agencies.

The defendants rendered a great deal of harm to the reputation of the
Davidson County Sheriff's Office and the Archdale Police Department. While
working as undercover narcotics officers, they were dealing drugs themselves.

The four did not plead guilty to a charge of staining anyone's image,
however. That's a problem for their former superiors - who never detected
the wrongdoing - to deal with. It shouldn't be a factor in sentencing.

At the same time, the former officers' work in law enforcement shouldn't
earn them any favors from the judge. After all, they were using their
positions to commit these crimes. Anything they ever did in the past to
benefit the community was undone by the breach of trust they committed.
Asking for mercy because they were law-enforcement officers doesn't work
for crooked cops.

It's terrible that they turned from enforcers of law to abusers of the law.
The repercussions are profound, not only for the reputations of their
departments but also because dozens of cases they handled may have been
tainted.

But Woodall, Westmoreland, Rankin and Shetley pleaded guilty to specific
crimes and must be handed the sentences appropriate for those crimes. They
shouldn't be punished more harshly than circumstances warrant, but they
deserve no favoritism because they were officers.