"'We all have demons in our lockers, we just need to deal with them appropriately. A day does not go by without me feeling terrible about how I let the citizens of Alaska down.'" So says former Alaska State Trooper Scott Ide, busted in 2008 forging the signature of a physician in order to score pain pills, in an enlightening story published this week by the Anchorage Press. Ide, the Press says, is among Alaska's most infamous bad cops -- in the ranks of Rafael Mora-Lopez (the exposed illegal immigrant posing as an Anchorage cop), alleged hit-and-run Trooper Eric Burroughs and Anchorage Police Department rapist Anthony Rollins. Ide's been harangued by the commenting public in stories published by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, the Anchorage Daily News and even by the notoriously bad biker community, which featured Ide on "White Trash Networks." Ide told the Press that he'd gotten help for his addiction from the Veterans Administration but found little support from the state of Alaska. "'I gift-wrapped it for them,'" Ide said in reference to the prosecution mounted by the state against him. Read more -- and learn why Ide thinks Alaska should quit knocking on scofflaw cops like himself and Trooper Burroughs, recently placed on paid leave for an alleged hit-and-run.
Should Alaskans ease up on their law-breaking cops? Sound off in our comments section.