Drugged Out : Officers Who Lost Police Careers to Cocaine Counsel Others to Learn From Their Mistakes

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Graham never fit the stereotype of a drug addict who would risk his career and family to maintain his habit.

Before he was arrested in 1985 for withholding cocaine and money seized from people he had arrested, Graham was married to his childhood sweetheart. He had two children, a house in the suburbs and an expensive sports car. A former football and baseball star at El Camino High School in Woodland Hills, he excelled at his work as an undercover narcotics officer and was well-liked by his superiors.

“I was living my dream,” he said.

Clean-cut and blond, Graham looked like the successful adult you’d expect the boy next door to become.

But within a six-month period, he lost his car and house, filed for bankruptcy and his wife left him--all because of his drug use. Then he lost his job.

For several months, Graham, a drug user since he was 15, had been stealing cocaine that he had seized as evidence. He was also taking money from drug users in exchange for not arresting them. In October, 1985, Graham and his partner, Wayne Desire, were arrested and charged with bribery, extortion and cocaine possession.

After pleading guilty to the felony charges and serving a year in state prison, Graham, now 31 and a Granada Hills resident, has remarried.

He and John Jenks of Ojai, another former law enforcement officer who lost his job because of cocaine use, have formed a drug-consulting and counseling business that has been praised by employers, school districts and PTAs. Their fees depend on how much work is involved, they said. Sometimes they charge as much as $750; sometimes they work for free.

Both say the business is a logical extension of the law enforcement careers to which, as convicted felons, they can never return. Instead of arresting people to get drugs off the street, they’re getting addicts into treatment, they say.

Graham said he and Jenks are able to relate to drug users better than people who have never been addicts.

“One of the most important things they do is go in and share their own experiences,” said an Oxnard woman whose teen-age son received help from the pair. The woman, who asked not to be identified, said she heard Graham and Jenks speak at a PTA meeting, then contacted them about her son.

“They were a blessing,” she said. “They knew exactly what to do and say.”

But others, especially law enforcement officers, say Graham and Jenks are not the best examples for children, especially when an investigation into illegal activities by 18 members of the Sheriff’s Department narcotics unit is making headlines.

“I just have no use for cops who go bad,” said one veteran police officer. “They give law enforcement a black eye.”

Some law officers are also angry because the pair testify as expert witnesses for defendants in drug cases.

However, there is some acceptance of their work by law enforcement. The Sheriff’s Department invited them to do a training tape on ethics for recruits. They have also conducted classes for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Graham and Jenks said they hope that by telling their stories, they can keep others from destroying their lives.

Graham said he started smoking marijuana at 15, then graduated to stronger drugs, including Quaaludes, LSD and cocaine. He said he believes that one of his teachers was aware of his drug use but looked the other way because of his athletic ability.

“I did drugs on a daily basis,” he said. “But I maintained a normal appearance. I was able to excel in school and sports and still do drugs. That doesn’t work forever. One day the drugs take over your life. You get found out, and if you’re not treated, you die.

“I was the great manipulator, the great actor. It was easy for me to fool people for all these years.”

When he lost his family and went bankrupt, Graham said, “I just went nuts. I started to party even more. By this time, I’d started to use cocaine as well as smoke weed and drink. You’d think that would be enough to wake me up, but it didn’t.”

When he was hired by the Sheriff’s Department in 1982, Graham said, he was asked in an interview if he had ever used drugs.

“I told them I’d smoked weed a couple of times, that was all,” he said. “They believed me. But I was using it daily. I’d smoked a joint on the way to the interview.”

Graham said he was a good officer. He arrested more criminals than any other deputy in the West Hollyood Division. At the Sheriff’s Academy, he was elected a leader in his 176-member class.

Graham said he justified withholding drugs seized as evidence and taking money from drug users by telling himself that the suspects he let go were not hurting anyone but themselves.

“The other people I arrested, like robbers and burglars, were hurting others,” he said. “I took them to jail.”

Graham said he was not discovered sooner because he would pick people who would be happy to give up their drugs rather than go to jail. “I had a lot of people thanking me,” he said.

He said he chose his victims with care; they were mostly professional men who drove expensive cars such as Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs and Jaguars.

“I never dealt with drunks, women or homosexuals,” Graham said. “They were the ones who would become the most indignant about a cop doing something like that. They were the ones who were the most likely to turn us in.”

The Sheriff’s Department began to investigate Graham and his partner after a lawyer complained to authorities that his client had five ounces of cocaine when arrested by the two deputies but only an ounce was turned in for evidence.

The pair’s arrest in October, 1985, made headlines.

Still, Graham said, he continued to use drugs. “I had lost everything then,” he said. “You’d think a bell would go off, but it didn’t.”

Out of a job and awaiting trial, Graham even worked for a time as a male stripper--entertaining women at parties--to support his drug habit.

“I had sunk to an all-time low,” he said.

On the advice of his lawyer, Graham pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct justice in order to commit felony crimes, including extortion, bribery and cocaine possession. His probation report recommended no jail time, but the judge decided to make an example of him, Graham said.

On Jan. 26, 1987, he was sentenced to two years in state prison. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz said Graham deserved prison time because of “the unconscionable abuse of his authority.”

His partner pleaded not guilty. A jury convicted him and sentenced him to four years in prison.

Graham was freed after serving a year at the San Luis Obispo Men’s Colony and a minimum-security facility in Camarillo.

“That was pretty tough to take,” he said. “But I’m not bitter.”

While he was in prison, Graham said, he kept it a secret that he was a former law enforcement officer.

For the past two years, he has been free of drugs, he said. He credits his present wife, Jenny, whom he married in late 1986, and his faith in God with keeping him on the straight and narrow.

Jenny Graham, also 31, said she married her husband 20 days after they met even though he was facing criminal charges and a possible jail sentence.

“I knew just from talking with Scott that he was a winner,” she said. “I knew that was just a period he was going through--that he would pick himself back up again.”

Graham met Jenks last year when he happened to visit the used car lot in Oxnard where Jenks was working as a salesman.

The two men started talking, found that they had a lot in common and decided to become partners in a drug-counseling and consulting business in December.

Jenks had already embarked on a personal crusade to educate people about the dangers of drugs, speaking to service clubs and PTAs. Instead of moving from Ojai, the small community in which he had lived all his life, he said he chose to stay and face his hometown head-on.

“Those who were my real friends still are my friends,” he said.

During his 12 years as a police officer, Jenks had earned the Medal of Valor for bravery from the Peace Officers of Ventura County and had been named Officer of the Year by the Ojai and Port Hueneme police departments. So when he was charged with stealing $35,000 worth of drugs from the Port Hueneme Police Department evidence locker in November, 1987, Ventura County law enforcement was stunned.

“Some still are,” said Jenks, 36. “As a cop, I know I used to think drug addicts were the scum of the earth.”

Unlike Graham, Jenks was spared jail time. Instead, he was placed on five years probation.

Jenks tells schoolchildren, service clubs, law enforcement groups and others to whom he speaks that he’s lucky to be alive.

“If I hadn’t gone into treatment, I’d be dead now,” Jenks told sixth-graders during a recent talk at Las Colinas Elementary School in Camarillo.

Neither said he expects to completely support his family on earnings from the drug-consulting business. Graham’s wife has her own business. Jenks’ wife also works, and he has a second career as a private investigator.

Both are working toward their advanced certificates in drug and alcohol counseling in a two-year program at UC Santa Barbara.