Want that burrito with red chile, green chile or smack?
Henry Marin was assigned to provide courthouse security, but in 2010 prosecutors say the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy strayed.
He poked his head out of his courtroom doors, according to an indictment, and spotted a woman who was there to sneak him a package. Marin waved her over. The woman told him she had been instructed to hide the special delivery inside a burrito.
“OK … no problem,” the deputy said as he allegedly accepted the hand-off.
Inside that bean-and-cheese burrito was heroin that prosecutors say the deputy intended to smuggle into the courthouse jail.
On Wednesday, Marin, 27, surrendered to fellow deputies at the sheriff’s South Los Angeles station. He pleaded not guilty to charges of bringing drugs into a jail and conspiracy to commit a crime.
The charges against him are the latest in a string of prosecutions and internal affairs investigations that have targeted corrupt sheriff’s deputies and other department staff for delivering contraband behind bars, and helping fuel a lucrative drug trade behind bars.
Three sheriff’s guards have been convicted and a fourth fired in recent years for smuggling or attempting to smuggle narcotics into jail for inmates…
In Marin’s case, prosecutors allege that at least two other unnamed individuals conspired with him. According to the indictment, one of those individuals contacted the other to discuss using a deputy to get narcotics into the Airport Courthouse jail…
How do you think drugs get into any jail in the country? Homing pigeon?
You can only carry illegal substances into a lockup via folks who are there via established procedures: visitors, staff and law enforcement. The latter two are most often used as mules because they’re most likely to have experience with bribes in the first place.
