The drug trade is a great place to make tons of money fast. In 2003, the UN estimated the total worth of the global drug trade at $320 billion, a figure that has certainly grown in the last 12 years.

So it's not surprising that some police officers, who interact frequently with the narco-world, decide to go crooked. But what makes these cases particularly egregious is that officers used the state's monopoly on violence to enrich themselves while persecuting others for the same crimes....