LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Four Kentucky State Police troopers accused of illegally buying testosterone from doctors in Florida were never charged or fired after federal authorities tipped off the agency in 2017, an investigation by a news outlet found.
Documents and recordings obtained by WDRB-TV show the troopers - Jason Carpenter, Chad Peercy, Jonathan Sizemore and Anthony Trotter - admitted to obtaining the drugs during interviews with the agency’s internal affairs investigators, but said they didn’t know it was illegal.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigators had said the four were among hundreds of people getting illegal prescriptions for testosterone and human growth hormones from “pill mill” operations that incentivize people to recruit others with free treatments.
After the internal investigation, the troopers received a suspension ranging from 60 to 180 days.
“These are tough decisions when you’re sitting in that chair,” former Kentucky State Police Commissioner Rick Sanders, who was commissioner at the time, told the news outlet.
“I had to make a lot of decisions on disciplinary actions. I fired troopers. I gave harsh punishment to troopers. I did what I thought was the right thing to do,” Sanders said.
The troopers were assured during the interviews that what they’d reveal would be confidential. Each gave different reasons for their drug usage: from needing it for a medical condition to aiding in a mixed martial arts fight, according to recordings obtained by the news outlet.
Former Deputy Commissioner Alex Payne, who was second in command behind Sanders, had recommended two of the officers be fired. “Steroid use - or abuse, I should say - has been a dirty little secret in law enforcement for a long time,” he said.
The news outlet reported being met with resistance by the agency since 2017. It said the agency refused open record requests, ignored orders from state officials to release files and filed a lawsuit against the news outlet.
The outlet eventually won the case for the records, and a judge ordered the agency to pay more than $10,000 for their legal fees, they said.
“This isn’t about just this case,” Payne said. “KSP did not want any internal affairs cases getting out - period - because the thinking was that if one ever got out via open records request then that would open Pandora’s box, and all of them would be liable to get out.”
Out of the four troopers, only Trotter remained on the force after being demoted from sergeant to trooper.
Peercy quit after receiving another violation, and Carpenter and Sizemore also resigned.
None of the four immediately responded to the newspaper’s request for comment.
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