NOPD cop charged for corruption compromises 37 cases
Cop’s arrest taints drug cases
DA drops charges in 37 prosecutions
Friday, May 30, 2008
By Laura Maggi
Staff writer
The Times-Picayune
As a member of the New Orleans Police Department’s 4th District task force, officer Joseph Lusk was involved in a plethora of Algiers drug busts, arresting people for dealing or using illegal drugs.
Lusk’s own arrest last month on suspicion of malfeasance in office means 37 of those cases have been dropped so far by the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office — whose prosecutors can’t press forward on cases with an allegedly corrupt cop as a main witness.
Each case needed to be evaluated to determine whether Lusk was an “essential witness,” or whether prosecutors could go forward without his testimony, relying on other NOPD officers, said District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson. Almost all of the cases involve drugs — save for the battery of a police officer charge in which Lusk was the alleged victim, an office spokesman said. “Once an officer is under investigation of any sort, we wouldn’t want to call him to testify for us,” Landrum-Johnson said.
— Arrested April 16 —
Lusk was arrested by his department’s Public Integrity Bureau on April 16 amid allegations he tipped off a woman about a drug location under surveillance on the West Bank.
This female acquaintance, Inger Hurst, allegedly told 4th District officers about the text-messaged tip-off — which Hurst said was meant to help her evade arrest for her drug purchases — when she was picked up the next day on suspicion of crack possession.
Lusk, who resigned from the NOPD the week of Hurst’s arrest, was booked the following week with malfeasance. The DA’s office expects to present his case to a grand jury next month, said Robert White, the assistant district attorney in charge of the office’s public corruption unit.
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