Scandals not new to Philadelphia police

Five Squad. The 39th Police District scandal. And now, three more Philadelphia cops accused of ripping off a drug dealer.

In 1988, six former members of an elite drug unit known as Five Squad were accused in a scathing federal indictment of stealing drugs and $400,000 in cash from drug dealers.

The indictment charged the six men, including the former lieutenant in charge of the unit, with racketeering, and prosecutors portrayed them as corrupt and greedy men who used their badges to rip off drug dealers.

Four of the defendants were convicted and sent to prison, and two were acquitted.

A few years later, it was the 39th Police District scandal.

A dozen former city police officers were charged in that corruption investigation.

Four were acquitted; the remainder pleaded guilty, mostly to charges that they preyed on suspected drug dealers, falsely arresting and searching them and stealing their cash.

That investigation had a major impact on drug prosecutions: hundreds of tainted convictions were thrown out, and the city paid more than $4 million to settle federal civil rights suits filed by people wrongly arrested.