Cop wrote bogus tickets in scheme to avoid working, South Carolina officials say
A police officer wrote traffic tickets to drivers without ever pulling them over, then dismissed the tickets in court without the people ever knowing, according to the Charleston Police Department.
The officer, Michael Baker, resigned after admitting to the scheme to inflate the number of tickets he wrote, police said in a press release.
“The officer was artificially inflating the number of tickets written in an attempt to conceal the fact that he was not actively and appropriately patrolling his area,” the department said.
Baker had been with the department since 2014, police said.
A second officer in the Charleston department is under an internal affairs investigation for doing the same thing, police said.
The department said any traffic tickets still pending from the officers will be dismissed. “Unwarranted tickets were dismissed by the officers at the time in order to hide their wrongdoing,” the department said.
“I want to be very clear on this point, to both the public and our officers. There’s no room in our department — none whatsoever — for this kind of misconduct,” Police Chief Luther Reynolds said in the press release. “And anyone who engages in it will be caught swiftly, and removed from the force without delay.”
This story was originally published July 4, 2019 at 9:48 AM with the headline "Cop wrote bogus tickets in scheme to avoid working, South Carolina officials say."
