Joseph Ruddy, a prominent Federal narcotics proscutor reportedly "so drunk he could barely stand" after an auto crash, was caught on police bodycam handing his business card to officers investigating the incident in Tampa, Florida. "What are you trying to hand me?" the cop asks, as a prelude to a failed field sobriety test and hit-and-run charges. "You realize when they pull my body-worn camera footage and they see this, this is going to go really bad."
That footage obtained by The Associated Press showed Ruddy apparently attempting to leverage his position to blunt the fallout from a Fourth of July crash in which he is accused of drunkenly striking another vehicle and leaving the scene. But despite being charged, the 59-year-old Ruddy remained on the job for two months, representing the United States in court as recently as last week to notch another win for the sprawling task force he helped create two decades ago targeting cocaine smuggling at sea.
It it seems like wildly self-destructive behavior, you just to remind yourself of one possible fact—that the card trick worked before—and one undeniable one: Ruddy wasn't suspended until the Associated Press was tipped off and its inquiries made exposure imminent.
the majority of cases handled out of his office involve mostly poor fishermen from Central and South America who make up the drug trade's lowest rungs
You might not like it, but this is what heroism is: staggering toward cops, business card in hand, shitfaced and soaked in your own piss, in the hope that you can get right back to your job imprisoning random drug mules after plucking them from international waters nowhere near the U.S., all at unlimited cost to the taxpayer.
