Dragonater asks, how do we get this information during discovery in a traffic ticket defense? Subpoena a hair sample for a lab test for steroids and illegal drugs, as part of the routine cross-examination of a cop? This is why so many cops shave their heads, shave their bitchtits and shave their shrunken penis hairs.
"The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. Using Leape's 1997 medical and drug error rate would add another 216,000 deaths, for a total of 999,936 deaths annually. Our estimated 10-year total of 7.8 million iatrogenic* deaths is more than all the casualties from all the wars fought by the US throughout its entire history. Our considerably higher figure is equivalent to six jumbo jets are falling out of the sky each day.")
—Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; Dorothy Smith, PhD, Death by Medicine, March 2004 (plus 6-Million annual aborticides in USA
COPS magazine contains ads for anabolic steroids with "Special Discount for Law Enforcement" at taxslave expense
Fort Worth police chief promotes "hormone therapy" for wimpy cops
FORT WORTH — Sex drive. Mental focus. Energy.
All were topics of discussion at a recent voluntary Wellness Seminar for Fort Worth police officers. Chief Jeffrey Halstead called the meeting to share his testimony about testosterone.
He said he didn't have enough, and hit rock bottom, until he was treated with hormone therapy.
Halstead said he believes some of his officers may be better officers with a hormone adjustment. But is the product he's sharing safe?
A police chief works long hours and has to make some tough decisions. Managing hundreds of police officers is a challenge.
But recently, Halstead noticed something in his life was off. "Stress of the job, long hours and work — everything was getting pulled from both ends," he said.
So the chief turned to SottoPelle Pellet Therapy to boost his testosterone levels.
The therapy starts with a small incision under the skin. A pellet containing testosterone is inserted to raise levels of the hormone.
Halstead said he now feels great again, and to share his success, he created a voluntary wellness program for the entire Fort Worth Police Department and invited the SottoPelle team.
"When your boss tells you to be there for the wellness seminar, a lot of people do show up," Halstead said. "But afterwards, it was amazing: Five of them texted me and told me that was a very important day to them."
Halstead released the content of one of those messages:
"Thanks chief for bringing in the group today at all-staff. I will be checking this out to hopefully assist me in my personal life."
Among the topics at the seminar? Sex, because an increase in hormone levels increases sex drive.
"It may be uncomfortable for many other people in my position, but I have absolutely no problems whatsoever discussing this," Halstead said, adding that the information was for the betterment of his officers.
"My benefit in sharing this? I'm going to have a better K-9 officer, a better SWAT officer, better police executives, and people who are going to have better retirements," the chief said.
News 8 checked with independent sources about the product Chief Halstead is sharing with officers. Five North Texas doctors with expertise in hormones — representing five different hospitals and clinics — all agreed, first and foremost, that the Chief's testosterone level is too high.
He went from 125, which experts said is too low, to nearly 1,000. On average, the doctors said levels should not exceed 400 to 500.
That means Halstead has twice the testosterone they would recommend.
But Dr. Gary Donovitz, who represents SottoPelle, says his team never overdoses hormones, and maintains there is extensive blood work for each patient.
"We weren't jacking with his hormones like you would anabolic steroids," Donovitz said. "We're simply trying to return him and other men to where they should be when they were 30 with normal testosterone."
UT Southwestern endocrinologist Dr. Richard Auchus says the chief is encouraging a socially acceptable form of narcotics.
"There are a number of other psychological changes that occur, particularly when there is an abrupt rise from lowish levels to high levels," Auchus said. "Those include increased aggression, and some people become psychotic on it."
Dr. Donovitz said doctors who don't like his organization's product usually haven't done the research. He says the therapy does just the opposite of what Dr. Auchus suggested.
"It's going to lower their aggressiveness, because people with low testosterone levels — specifically males — are much more irritable, much more anxious," Donovitz said.
He said the pellets are all-natural, plant-derived, and safe.
Dr. Auchus doesn't buy that explanation. "Any time you take a man and you increase his testosterone levels, he experiences a euphoria from that," Auchus said. It's a euphoria he worries could become addictive.
A specialist at Texas Health Arlington said "cocaine is also a plant; I wouldn't give that to my patients."
Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas called the SottoPelle treatment "mis-marketing and inappropriate."
Even a wellness clinic that supports hormone replacement acknowledges that "men can become angry."
A Texas Health Dallas doctor believes "there are red flags all over it."
Chief Halstead says his hope is simple: To keep officers out of trouble.
"Usually you'll see officers divert to other not-so-popular behaviors, and I think they do that because they were where I was — nothing was giving any satisfaction," Halstead said.
The City of Fort Worth backs its police chief:
"...it was a voluntary presentation and similar to many of the wellness programs offered to employees. What was presented was one of many wellness options available, and in no way was an endorsement of any product."
Chief Halstead chief gets his testosterone pellets replaced every few months, but says he is not getting any kickbacks from SottoPelle.He says finding a hormonal balance can help keep his officers in shape to meet the new demands of their contract.
Officers are now subject to a physical fitness test. If they fail, they could lose their jobs.
Rafael Galan, an officer in the Passaic County Sheriff's Department, filled prescriptions for anabolic steroids from Jersey City physician Joseph Colao. Galan, shown posing in 2006 for a calendar shoot, faced a criminal charge of official misconduct for allegedly tipping off the subject of a drug investigation. The charge was dropped, and he was reinstated earlier this year, according to Bill Maer, the department's spokesman.
Cops' Use of Illegal Steroids a 'Big Problem'
The badge and a steroid-filled syringe -- it's not the typical image most have for the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs. But as more within law enforcement get nabbed in steroid investigations nationwide, observers say that usage levels among police officers could rival the seediest patches of the pro sports landscape.
"It's a big problem, and from the number of cases, it's something we shouldn't ignore," Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Lawrence Payne told AOL News. "It's not that we set out to target cops, but when we're in the middle of an active investigation into steroids, there have been quite a few cases that have led back to police officers."
The pace of investigations into steroid use in the police ranks has picked up in recent months:
A former police officer in Canby, Ore., who allegedly took delivery of some steroids while on duty pleaded guilty in February to purchasing steroids.
An officer in South Bend, Ind., pleaded no contest in March to selling steroids.
A Cleveland police officer was sentenced to a year in prison and five years of supervised release in April after he was found guilty of illegally purchasing steroids.
A dealer in Paw Paw, Mich., allegedly told authorities that he supplied "several police officers" with steroids, which led one Kalamazoo officer to resign in May.
Victor Conte, founder of the now-defunct lab known as Bay Area Lab Co-Operative that supplied numerous athletes with steroids and other banned substances, said it wouldn't surprise him if as many as a quarter of police officers were using some kind of performance-enhancing drug.
Seem high? While there are no empirical studies on the prevalence of steroids in law enforcement, the recent revelations that 248 police officers and firefighters from 53 agencies were tied to a Jersey City, N.J., physician gives some credence to Conte's estimate. The monthslong investigation by The Star-Ledger of Newark also found that taxpayers often footed the bill for the drugs since many were prescribed.
There's debate as to what dangers doped-up officers pose to the public. South Bend police Capt. Phil Trent, for one, would rather not take a chance. Tony Macik, once a well-respected member of the South Bend police force, was arrested for assault years before a steroids investigation led to a 300-day jail sentence earlier this year.
"First we have an officer who is a drug dealer," Trent said. "Second, you always hear about the bizarre side effects (of steroid use). If they are taking these drugs and it turns them into a raving lunatic, that's something we should be concerned about in law enforcement."
Conte said the psychological effects of steroids -- including mood swings and so-called "'roid rage" -- are often overblown and can depend on how much of the drug is used. The same is true for the other side effects such as liver damage, depression and high blood pressure.
"I think overall, it's kind of like alcohol," Conte said. "If you're a jerk when you're sober, you're going to be more of a jerk when you're using."
Joseph Santiago, a former police director in Trenton, N.J., told The Star-Ledger that Trenton had a "significant amount" of excessive force complaints.
"When you looked at these records, you start to see where there might be a correlation," Santiago told the newspaper. "Is it absolutely clear? No. Would a complaint have been there regardless of steroids? Those are issues that need to be addressed."
A lawyer for an 84-year-old Florida man who had his neck broken in September when he was thrown to the ground sought to get the Orlando police officer involved in the incident tested for steroids. The request was denied by the department, which claimed the test would violate the officer's rights.
Testing in law enforcement -- much the way it is in professional sports -- is a touchy subject. Like pro ballplayers, officers are usually protected by unions, and drug testing is often used as a bargaining chip. A majority of departments have random testing for street drugs like cocaine and heroin, but few also test regularly for steroids.
"Obviously, we have zero tolerance for any kind of drug use," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, an organization that has about 350,000 members spread across some 2,100 chapters. "But just like anybody else, we believe officers have a right to due process, and we want to safeguard them from any (unnecessary) investigations."
Law enforcement officials also cite the cost of testing for steroids as another reason such screenings aren't universal.
Larry Gaines, chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice at California State San Bernardino, authored the first major paper on steroid use in law enforcement two decades ago. He said the rise in usage in steroids among the ranks coincided with a change of culture as many departments began to stress physical fitness.
Some officers, however, appear to have taken that to an extreme.
"This has become a great competition among officers," Gaines said. "They want to be the biggest, strongest."
Conte said that carries over into regional and national police sports competitions that feature weightlifting, among other activities. "I've known people in those competitions who were using that stuff," Conte said.
Professional athletes get called to testify before Congress, and some like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are indicted after federal investigations. So where's the outcry over juiced officers on the street?
Gaines said that because there are no athletic records to protect, and kids usually don't idolize police officers with posters on their bedroom walls, there's little to keep the subject in the public consciousness.
"I don't know what would have to happen to make this a major issue," Gaines said. "Essentially, this has become commonplace."
GLOSSARY
Common Terminology
Anabolic steroid: Anabolic/androgenic steroids, usually referred to as anabolic steroids, are drugs manufactured to act like male sex hormones. Nandrolone, stanozolol and testosterone derivatives are just a few. In an anabolic/androgenic steroid, the anabolic qualities are known for building muscle and bone, while the androgenic qualities are known for masculine effects, like libido and hair growth.
"Roid rage": A real, although uncommon, side effect of anabolic steroid use. It’s the display of irrational behavior, such as anger, aggression, confusion or recklessness. Generally, the higher the dose of steroids, the more likely this behavior occurs.
T/E ratio: A ratio of the body’s testosterone to epitestosterone levels, taken from a urine sample, that can indicate steroid use. A normal ratio is about 1-1, while a ratio above 4-1 is enough for disqualification from many sporting events. The Jersey City Police Department used a 6-1 ratio as the threshold during a steroids probe in 2008.
Stacking: Taking more than one anabolic steroid, sometimes in combination with other hormones, at the same time to maximize muscle growth.
Cycles: Customized schedules for taking steroids to build muscle mass. Cycles typically last between six weeks and several months, followed by steroid-free periods to give the body recovery time.
HGH:
What is it? Human growth hormone is naturally produced by the body’s pea-sized pituitary gland. Somatropin, the biological equivalent of HGH, is synthetically produced.
How it’s taken: Injections
Brand names: Saizen, Norditropin, Genotropin and Humatrope are a few.
Legalities: HGH is legal for adults with very specific medical conditions: muscle wasting from AIDS, short bowel syndrome or a growth hormone deficiency. The latter is a condition that affects one of every 100,000 American adults annually, according to the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
What it does: Promotes muscle growth, decreases body fat and affects the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats and protein.
Side effects/risks: Swelling, joint pain, headache, sore bones, carpal tunnel syndrome and insomnia. While it is not known to cause cancer, HGH can speed the growth of cancerous tumors.
In the news: In 2007, actor Sylvester Stallone pleaded guilty to bringing nearly 50 HGH vials into Australia.
HCG
What is it? human chorionic gonadotropin: a prescription drug made of a pregnancy hormone found naturally in women.
How it’s taken: Injections
Brand names: Novarel, Pregnyl, Profasi
Legalities: FDA approved
Uses: Treating infertility in women and decreased function of the testicles in
men. Medical experts warn against bogus claims that the drug can speed weight loss, but it’s still promoted on the internet as a miracle diet aid.
What it does: It boosts the body’s natural testosterone production during or after a cycle of steroids. It can also help reverse some of the testicular atrophy that occurs in some steroid users.
Side effects/risks: Enlargement of male breasts, mood changes, headaches.
In the news: Former L.A. Dodgers left fielder Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games in 2009 for allegedly possessing HCG, a banned substance in Major League Baseball.
Testosterone
What is it? In the body, testosterone is the male sex hormone known for its muscle-building properties. Synthesized in the 1930s, it’s now produced in a variety of forms that mimic the natural hormone.
How it’s taken: Gels that are rubbed into the skin, injections and orally.
Brand names: AndroGel and Testim are common gels. Delatestryl and Depo-Testosterone are two popular injections.
Legalities: Testosterone is regulated as a Schedule III drug by the Anabolic Steroids Control Act. It’s legal with a valid prescription.
What it does: Commonly used to treat aging males with hypogonadism, a medical term for testosterone deficiency. Injections with higher percentages of testosterone are more potent and notorious for use by athletes and bodybuilders to gain muscle.
Side effects/risks: Long-term use can lead to testicular atrophy or pituitary gland damage. Other rare, but more severe, risks: hardening of the arteries and cardiovascular strain, mood changes, high blood pressure, and liver or kidney damage.
Stanozolol
What is it? An anabolic/androgenic steroid altered to produce better muscle-building properties, making it very popular for bodybuilders.
How it’s taken: Tablets or injections
Brand names: Winstrol, although that brand is no longer in production in the United States.
Legalities: Regulated as a Schedule III drug, meaning a valid prescription is required for possession.
What it does: Promotes muscle growth. In the past, it has been prescribed for patients with osteoporosis, growth deficiencies and hereditary angioedema, a disease that causes swelling.
Side effects/risks: Oily skin, acne and hair loss. More severe risks include liver damage, cardiovascular strain, mood changes and hardening of the arteries.
In the news: Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his 1988 Olympic gold medal after testing positive for stanozolol.
Sources: Star-Ledger research; interviews with medical experts
Compiled by Amy Brittain
N.J. doctor supplied steroids to hundreds of law enforcement officers, firefighters
NJ.com
December 12, 2010
On a rainy August morning in 2007, the news rippled through New Jersey’s law enforcement ranks, officer to officer, department to department.
Joseph Colao was dead.
The 45-year-old physician had collapsed in his Jersey City apartment, the victim of heart failure.
Within hours, officers were calling the Hudson County public safety complex.
"Is it true?" they asked, recalled Detective Sgt. Ken Kolich, who’d drawn the routine assignment to look into the death. "Did Dr. Colao die?"
Kolich didn’t suspect foul play, but he found it odd — and a little disturbing — that so many officers were interested in the fate of a man with no official ties to any police agency.
Today, it’s clear Colao was more than just a doctor, friend or confidant to many of the officers.
He was their supplier.
A seven-month Star-Ledger investigation drawing on prescription records, court documents and detailed interviews with the physician’s employees shows Colao ran a thriving illegal drug enterprise that supplied anabolic steroids and human growth hormone to hundreds of law enforcement officers and firefighters throughout New Jersey.
From a seemingly above-board practice in Jersey City, Colao frequently broke the law and his own oath by faking medical diagnoses to justify his prescriptions for the drugs, the investigation shows.
Many of the officers and firefighters willingly took part in the ruse, finding Colao provided an easy way to obtain tightly regulated substances that are illegal without a valid prescription, the investigation found.
Others were persuaded by the physician’s polished sales pitch, one that glossed over the risks and legal realities, the newspaper found. A small percentage may have legitimately needed the drugs to treat uncommon medical conditions.
In most cases, if not all, they used their government health plans to pay for the substances. Evidence gathered by The Star-Ledger suggests the total cost to taxpayers reaches into the millions of dollars.
In just over a year, records show, at least 248 officers and firefighters from 53 agencies used Colao’s fraudulent practice to obtain muscle-building drugs, some of which have been linked to increased aggression, confusion and reckless behavior.
Six of those patients — four police officers and two corrections officers — were named in lawsuits alleging excessive force or civil rights violations around the time they received drugs from him or shortly afterward.
Others have been arrested, fired or suspended for off-duty infractions that include allegations of assault, domestic abuse, harassment and drug possession. One patient was left nearly paralyzed after suffering a stroke his doctor attributed to growth hormone prescribed by Colao.
For many in the physician’s care, use of the drugs apparently didn’t end with Colao’s death.
They instead sought other doctors who specialize in prescribing growth hormone or testosterone, an anabolic steroid, according to patients, legal documents and the doctors themselves. The physicians have not been accused of wrongdoing.
Attorney General Paula Dow, New Jersey’s top law enforcement official, called the newspaper’s findings "disturbing" on a number of levels and said the issue should be collectively examined by state officials, prosecutors and police chiefs.
"If it’s shown that these law enforcement officers are getting steroids and human growth hormone through illegal manners, and specifically through false prescriptions, that’s a violation of the law," Dow said. "It’s a fraud on the system, and it’s something that should be stopped."
While questions have been raised about some of Colao’s patients, many have been recognized for acts of heroism. Some have taken killers, carjackers and armed robbers off the streets. They have confiscated millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs intended for New Jersey neighborhoods. One talked a man out of committing suicide. Another saved the life of a choking infant.
In Colao, they found a doctor whose methods were simple and lucrative. Employees in his inner circle say he created bogus diagnoses for low testosterone levels or adult growth hormone deficiency, a condition that affects just one in 100,000 people, according to the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
"If you had 100,000 police officers come in, you’d get one," said Oregon physician David Cook, a spokesman for the endocrinologists group. "Obviously, he was doing it unscrupulously."
Legitimate diagnoses of testosterone deficiency are likewise far less common than Colao’s practice would suggest. About 2 percent of men in their mid-30s have a bona fide deficiency, Cook said. The officers and firefighters identified by The Star-Ledger had a median age of 35 when they obtained the substances.
University of Texas professor John Hoberman, who has studied doping in and out of sports for a quarter-century, called The Star-Ledger’s findings "extraordinary and unprecedented evidence" of a national problem that has been "systematically ignored" for more than two decades.
"The use of performance-enhancers among first-responders has been a tabooed topic since it first came to light during the 1980s," Hoberman said. "This should shock the public as well as the public officials who will now have to take a stand on the widespread doping of public service professionals who carry guns and save lives."
Transformation
Gladys Nieves remembers when Joseph Colao could barely pay the bills.
Colao’s pain-management practice was foundering, and it seemed the doctor was, too.
He had undergone triple bypass surgery at age 38. He was overweight and relied on a daily cocktail of medications to treat heart problems and keep his blood pressure and cholesterol in check, said Nieves, Colao’s patient coordinator from the late 1990s until his death.
Those were the hard times, before the wait for an appointment stretched to months. Before Colao, suddenly flush with cash, shelled out for $2,000 dinners in Manhattan and shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus, Chanel and Coach. Before he became a crusader for hormones.
Victor Biancamano, Colao’s former office manager, said it was about six years ago when Colao flew to Las Vegas for a crash course in hormone replacement therapy, a staple treatment of the anti-aging movement.
The new tools of his trade: testosterone, the primary male sex hormone, delivered in creams or through a needle; stanozolol, the steroid that cost Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson his gold medal in 1988; and HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. Though not a steroid, HCG is often taken with steroids or at the end of a steroid cycle to kick-start the body’s production of testosterone.
Human growth hormone, commonly known as HGH, joined the list of Colao’s favored drugs despite the restrictions on its use.
The anabolic steroids Colao worked with have far different functions than the class of substances found in many commonly prescribed products. Corticosteroids, for instance, are anti-inflammatories used to treat a host of medical conditions, including asthma, arthritis, allergies and cancer.
For Colao, who studied at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the move to hormones and steroids marked a change from the physical therapy track he took after his graduation in 1992. But the new focus seemed to agree with him.
To Nieves, now a 42-year-old single mother, the transformation was stunning. It wasn’t just the increased business. Colao himself had changed. Trim and tanned, with muscle filling out his frame, the doctor looked every bit the anti-aging miracle man.
Along with the new focus came an important new relationship.
Representatives of Lowen’s Pharmacy, a neighborhood drugstore in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, were shopping for doctors who could help them expand by moving huge quantities of steroids and growth hormone illegally imported from China, said Mark Haskins, who investigated the pharmacy for the New York State Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, a division of the health department.
"Without a doctor, you can’t peddle the stuff," said Haskins, who retired from the agency after helping secure an indictment against Lowen’s. "You only need one doctor, and you’re golden."
Colao became that doctor.
The physician steered clients to Lowen’s, and the pharmacy sent Colao boxes of HGH as a kickback, Haskins said. The more product Colao pushed, the more he received off the books. And the more he received, the more he could sell for cash, Haskins said.
"Dr. Colao sold drugs," Haskins said. "Lowen’s sold drugs. There was no doctor-patient relationship here."
Nieves and Erika Lehar, the office’s blood specialist, said the HGH sales took place after hours or during lunch, when few people were in the waiting room. Colao directed Nieves to handle the smaller HGH purchases, or those under $1,000, she said.
"Doc would just give me the medicine in the box, and he would say so-and-so is coming to pick this up," Nieves said.
Larger sales were handled by Biancamano, the former office manager, according to Nieves and Lehar.
"I would see boxes on the floor and him getting stuff out of the box," Lehar said. "It was like a transaction. They paid cash. I would see them counting money. Some would be patients, and some would be Victor’s friends."
Biancamano, 36, who left Colao’s practice shortly before the doctor’s death, denied involvement in HGH sales or in any aspect of the physician’s hormone business, saying Nieves oversaw all patients and transactions.
"He never even taught me the business when it came to hormones," Biancamano said.
"Him and Gladys handled everything. People have nothing else better to do than make up stories."
A Growing Clientele
From the squad rooms and firehouses of Hudson County, word of Colao’s reputation radiated out, town by town, county by county.
It was around 2005 when the first law enforcement officers and firefighters came to Colao for steroids, employees and patients said. Each month brought new faces from new departments. By early 2007, the office had become "a hangout for cops and firefighters," Nieves said.
Eight officers came from the Edison Police Department, seven from Paterson. Six more traveled from Franklin Township in Somerset County, Colao’s prescription records from Lowen’s Pharmacy show.
There were sheriff’s officers and corrections officers from Bergen, Essex, Passaic and Ocean counties. Other clients included a dozen NJ Transit police officers, at least three state troopers and 16 state corrections officers working in seven prisons.
Distance wasn’t an obstacle.
Police officers made the trek to Jersey City from Eatontown, Deal, Asbury Park and Bedminster. One corrections officer, assigned to Southern State Correctional Facility in Cumberland County, lived more than 100 miles away.
There were patrolmen and deputy chiefs, detectives and union representatives. Two patients counseled students against drug use through the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, which lists anabolic steroids on its national website as "one of the most dangerous categories of performance-enhancing drugs."
Another works in internal affairs, policing other officers’ behavior. Six of those who received steroids through Lowen’s were women.
Nieves said the medical practice’s swift growth came without the benefit of advertising. Colao didn’t believe in it.
"I remember someone asking Colao, ‘How do you get so many patients?’ " Nieves said. "He would look at me, give me a smile and say, ‘All word of mouth. I don’t have to do a thing.’ "
Residents of Hudson County formed the backbone of the practice, prescription records show. At least 40 Jersey City police officers and 27 city firefighters received hormones from Colao.
Smaller numbers of officers came from Bayonne, Hoboken and Union City. Fourteen more officers represented the county sheriff’s and corrections departments.
At the time of their treatment, the officers and firefighters ranged in age from 23 to 59, with almost three-quarters under 40.
To medical experts interviewed by The Star-Ledger, the clearest indication of something amiss in Colao’s practice is the number of young officers and firefighters — men still in their physical prime — who obtained steroids from him.
More than three dozen of the 248 identified by the newspaper were in their mid- to late 20s at the time, and dozens more were in their early to mid-30s.
Jersey City officer Michael Stise was 26 when he filled the first of seven prescriptions for testosterone and HCG in March 2007, according to the pharmacy’s records and a brutality lawsuit later filed against him and another officer.
Stise did not respond to requests for comment, and a lawyer representing him in the lawsuit did not return phone calls.
For dozens of patients, records show, Colao served up steroid cocktails, combining testosterone, HCG and stanozolol, the generic name for Winstrol, a drug popular with athletes and bodybuilders.
In the parlance of performance-enhancing drugs, it’s known as stacking.
Between October 2006 and July 2007, the month before Colao’s death, Jersey City officer Brian McGovern filled 20 prescriptions for stanozolol, testosterone, human growth hormone, HCG and nandrolone, according to the pharmacy records and legal documents.
Nandrolone is one of three steroids former major league pitcher Roger Clemens is alleged to have used.
McGovern, 40, was charged with misdemeanor assault and suspended for seven days after getting into a fight in Point Pleasant Beach in May 2009. He did not return calls for comment.
At least one of Colao’s patients is a competitive bodybuilder. Passaic County sheriff’s Detective Rafael Galan, 39, won the Mr. New Jersey middleweight bodybuilding title in 2006.
Galan has had a tumultuous tenure in Passaic County. In 2004, he was one of several sheriff’s officers ordered to undergo testing for steroids, according to a news account at the time. He later sued the department, claiming the tests were ordered illegally. The results were not made public.
Last year, he was criminally charged with official misconduct for allegedly tipping off a drug dealer to an investigation.
The Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office dropped the case with little explanation in April.
Galan returned to the department in July. He did not respond to requests for comment. Records show Lowen’s sent him testosterone and HCG in January 2007.
That same year, he would appear shirtless in a beefcake calendar sold under the name Calendar Cops and produced for charity by the publisher of NJ COPS, a monthly law enforcement magazine.
The Pitchman
He spoke with the fervor of an evangelist, salting his pitch with first-person details.
In the exam rooms of his Jersey City office, Joseph Colao told patients hormones had changed his life, according to employees and several officers and firefighters who were patients.
Growth hormone, he said, was as close to the "fountain of youth" as a drug could get. And if it was sexual prowess you wanted, testosterone was just the thing.
Among some two dozen patients who spoke to The Star-Ledger about Colao, not one could recall him discussing the serious health problems that can result from the drugs. Those problems include liver damage, prostate enlargement and an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
It didn’t matter if patients’ blood work showed their hormone levels in the normal range. Colao prescribed the drugs anyway, said Nieves, his patient coordinator, and Lehar, the office’s blood specialist.
"His mentality was to get them to the max, the highest," Nieves said.
Colao’s younger brother, Leon Colao, disputes Nieves’ characterization, saying that in the several years he worked as his brother’s office manager, he never saw Colao push a drug that wasn’t medically necessary. Leon Colao left the practice in 2005, returning to work there shortly before his brother’s death.
"My brother worked a very long time to get his medical license," said Leon Colao, 32. "He wouldn’t jeopardize that for anything in the world."
As the practice grew, Nieves said, Colao upgraded security, installing video cameras and a locking system that required patients to be buzzed in.
Nieves wondered if Colao just wanted the place to feel more professional, but she’d also noticed an increase in the number of unruly patients. More of them seemed to be edgy or quick to lose their temper, she said.
One incident still frightens her.
It was a gray day, near dusk. As Nieves left Colao’s basement office, a Jersey City police officer greeted her.
He’d been waiting in his patrol car, as if on a stakeout. When he spotted Nieves, he climbed from the driver’s seat and confronted her.
"Where’s doc?" he barked.
The officer, who’d been taking HCG and a high dose of injectable testosterone, wanted his drugs immediately, Nieves said.
She told him Colao wasn’t in the office. Then she hurried away.
"He abused the medicine," Nieves said. "He was scary."
The Star-Ledger confirmed the officer’s identity and prescriptions but is withholding his name at the request of Nieves, who said she fears retaliation.
The changing practice was confusing, even alarming, to Nieves. She didn’t get many answers from Colao.
"He told me, ‘The less you know, the better.’ He kept stuff from me," she said. "He was over his head. But the money motivated him."
Lehar, the office’s blood specialist, 35, likewise suspected there was more to her employer’s practice than Colao wanted anyone to know.
"There was a lot of mystery in there," she said.
Some patients, for instance, bypassed the typical appointment process. Those were the "important people" — athletes, bodybuilders and high-profile officials — who didn’t want to be seen or leave a paper trail, Lehar said.
"They would hide them," she said. "They would come in late, through the back door, so no one could see these characters coming into the office."
Looking back, Lehar said, she should have realized Colao was breaking medical protocol, if not the law. Today, that idea haunts her. What if someone had died, she wonders. What if she had gotten in trouble?
Nieves maintains a softer view of Colao. Despite her concerns about what went on, she said, she believes the physician cared about his patients and wanted to help them, however unorthodox his methods.
"He was a good man," she said.
Allegations of Violence
The man on the stoop looked "wild-eyed."
Mathias Bolton stood inside the vestibule of his Jersey City apartment building, trying to decide what to do.
Moments earlier, after hearing footsteps and bangs on his roof, he had called police to report a possible break-in. Then he had rushed down the stairs to let the officers in. Bolton had expected to find a uniformed officer when he opened the door on that August night in 2007.
Instead he saw a man in street clothes, with no badge visible, shouting at him, he claims in a lawsuit against the Jersey City Police Department.
"He looks very nervous and wild-eyed and looks like ... to me he looks like a thug," Bolton said in a deposition last year. "And he yells at me, ‘Did you call the police? Did you call the police?’ And I’m hearing the sirens coming, and I — at that point — I’m just terrified. I just let the guys in who were on the roof."
The man on the stoop wasn’t a burglar. He was Jersey City officer Victor Vargas, whose use of steroids would come to play a central role in Bolton’s lawsuit against the city.
During the suit’s discovery phase, Bolton’s lawyers learned Vargas, now 33, was one of two officers on the scene that night to have received steroids or growth hormone from Colao. The other is Stise, the officer who was just 26 when Lowen’s sent him drugs.
Between January and August 2007, Vargas filled 11 prescriptions for HCG, testosterone and growth hormone through Lowen’s and a local Walgreens, the lawsuit states.
Bolton claims Vargas never identified himself as a police officer and, in a steroid-induced rage, sent him sprawling with a punch to the face.
"I grab onto the railing and this guy — it turns out to be Victor Vargas — and he’s pounding me like a bear, like over and over," Bolton, 37, said in his deposition.
Bolton contends Vargas then tossed him down the stairs to the sidewalk, where other arriving officers, including Stise, continued to beat him.
"Mr. Bolton’s description of the sudden and violent behavior he allegedly encountered with the city police officer Vargas, if true, is consistent with a manifestation of the aggressiveness that is known to occur with anabolic steroids," wrote Gary Wadler, Bolton’s steroids expert.
The officers provide a markedly different account of the incident in legal papers, saying Vargas and others on the scene clearly identified themselves, repeatedly ordered Bolton to stop resisting and acted with restraint in subduing a man they claimed was punching and kicking them.
Bolton was charged with resisting arrest and aggravated assault on a police officer. The counts were later dropped.
Thomas Jardim, a lawyer who represents Vargas and Stise, deferred comment to Jersey City Corporation Counsel William Matsikoudis. In a statement, Matsikoudis said all of the accused officers "conducted themselves appropriately" and that Bolton’s claims are "totally without merit."
In October, both sides agreed to resolve the case through binding arbitration. It remains ongoing.
The Bolton suit is one of at least five alleging brutality or civil rights violations by police officers or corrections officers who filled prescriptions for steroids from Colao.
In Edison, allegations of brutality against two of Colao’s patients are now under investigation by the FBI.
Detective Salvatore Capriglione, 44, and Patrolman Scot Sofield, 36, are among five Edison officers accused of beating Lenus Germe, 44, as he lay on the ground in May 2008. A video camera in a nearby patrol car recorded the incident.
Later, at Edison police headquarters, the officers allegedly threw a handcuffed Germe down a flight of stairs and beat him into unconsciousness, leaving him with a concussion and internal injuries that required hospital treatment, according to a lawsuit Germe filed against the department.
Officers counter that Germe, a domestic violence suspect, went for an officer’s gun and tried to run away. Germe pleaded guilty to resisting arrest and was sentenced to a year in county jail. He has since been released.
His lawyer, Lennox Hinds, said FBI agents have interviewed his client. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment. Sofield and Edison Police Chief Thomas Bryan did not respond to requests for comment.
Records show Sofield filled a total of three prescriptions for HCG and testosterone in December 2006 and January 2007. Capriglione filled nine prescriptions for testosterone, stanozolol and HCG between April and July 2007.
Capriglione’s lawyer, Charles J. Sciarra, called his client a decorated officer who has a "spotless employment record" and who did nothing wrong, either in the arrest of Germe or in taking medication prescribed by Colao.
Any suggested link between that medication and the allegations by Germe, a convicted criminal seeking a “taxpayer-funded payday,” is “scraping the barrel,” Sciarra said.
‘Quack’ or hero?
Alex Ambros said he knew a questionable doctor when he saw one.
The former state corrections officer had once been a patient of Jerrold Goldstein, a Millburn physician who so liberally prescribed testosterone, growth hormone and other drugs to his many law enforcement clients they dubbed him “Dr. Feelgood,” Ambros said.
Goldstein was stripped of his medical license in 2005. A year later, he committed suicide.
So it was in the fall of 2006 that Ambros found himself in the office of Joseph Colao, whose name was circulating as an able substitute who would meet an officer’s needs.
To Ambros, now 49 and three years into retirement, Colao seemed like a “quack.”
Ambros, who described himself as morbidly obese, said he never took steroids from Goldstein and wasn’t looking for them from Colao. He wanted diet pills to lose weight, saying he preferred a “magic bullet” over time in the gym.
While waiting for his appointment, he said, he noticed he was the only overweight person in the room.
“Everyone else looked like they came out of Muscle and Fitness magazine,” Ambros said, recalling the scene with a laugh. “Immediately I felt out of place.”
Colao gave him a warm welcome when the physician learned he was a corrections officer, telling him “that’s, like, the majority of my practice.”
"He said there were police, firefighters, sheriff's officers, Port Authority guys," Ambros said.
The doctor, he said, raced from exam room to exam room, as if he had too many patients and too little time.
“He was a Speedy Gonzales type. Boom boom, you need this, boom boom,” Ambros said.
Colao gave him prescriptions for phentermine, a weight loss drug, and an injectable liquid. Ambros said he didn’t remember the drug’s name and didn’t take it. Records show Lowen’s Pharmacy sent him testosterone in November 2006. Ambros said the vial sat in his refrigerator for five months. Then he threw it away.
Former Jersey City firefighter Harold Motley had a higher opinion of Colao, calling him a “good guy” who seemed interested in helping him achieve his goal of losing weight.
Motley, who retired earlier this year at age 50, said Colao told him to eliminate pasta and cheese from his diet, then explained how certain medications could change his life.
“He said he was going to give me some stuff to make me feel 18 again,” Motley said. “I took it, of course. He’s a doctor. I’m not going to say no.”
Colao told him he was taking similar drugs to “help him in the gym.”
“He was chiseled,” Motley said. “He said he worked out all the time.”
The retired firefighter said Colao gave him prescriptions for AndroGel, a testosterone cream, and Norditropin, a brand of growth hormone. Motley said he had no idea Norditropin was a form of HGH, adding he also didn’t realize it was so expensive, at about $1,100 per month. Motley’s city insurance plan covered the cost.
Today, Motley said he believes Colao did nothing inappropriate, saying the physician enjoyed a stellar reputation among men in uniform because he could help them feel better, get stronger and improve their sex lives.
“In the world of police and firemen, he died a hero,” Motley said.
Coming Under Scrutiny
Colao was no hero to Leonard Era.
On March 21, 2006, the former corrections officer collapsed during his shift at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Hunterdon County. Era’s limbs began to shake. He lost control of his bladder and fell unconscious. At 37, he had suffered a stroke.
Three months earlier, the Bayonne man had gone to see Colao because he wanted to get stronger and slim down, according to a lawsuit filed in the case. Era’s weight-lifting friends identified Colao as a man who could help.
Colao ran blood tests, which showed Era’s hormone levels within normal ranges, the lawsuit states. In all respects but one — Era suffered from hypertension — he was perfectly healthy.
Yet Colao diagnosed him with adult growth hormone deficiency and testosterone deficiency, putting the corrections officer on a weekly regimen of Saizen, a form of growth hormone, and HCG, according to the suit.
A doctor who later reviewed Colao’s records on behalf of Era determined the drugs led to his stroke.
“There was no medical indication to give him these drugs,” Era’s lawyer, Abbott Brown, said in an interview. “Dr. Colao was negligent. He deviated from a generally accepted standard.”
Today, Era still has trouble speaking and can barely move his right arm, said his father, also named Leonard. The family settled with Colao’s insurance company for an undisclosed sum.
Four months after Era’s stroke, another incident would draw the first law enforcement scrutiny of Colao’s prescribing habits.
Andrew Wietecha, a muscled 23-year-old police officer in North Bergen, was charged with marijuana possession and drunken driving in July 2006 after crashing his car in Seaside Park, an Ocean County beach community. When ordered to take a drug test days later, Wietecha listed the medications he was on, as required by state regulations.
One of those drugs was testosterone.
The young officer’s use of an anabolic steroid raised a red flag with Peter Stoma, an assistant prosecutor who oversees the internal affairs bureau in the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office.
“We started an investigation into his use of steroids to verify that they were in fact medically prescribed,” Stoma said.
Colao assured investigators the prescriptions were valid and necessary. At the time, Stoma said, there was no reason to doubt him.
“He was a licensed medical doctor,” the prosecutor said. “There were medical records, and it was the doctor’s opinion Andrew Wietecha was a candidate for hormone replacement therapy.”
Wietecha, suspended after his arrest, never returned to the force. In the early morning hours of Aug. 15, 2006, as he tried to steer his motorcycle around a slow-moving truck on a North Bergen street, he crashed into the back of a car and died.
Warnings Ignored
For two decades, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and a handful of academic experts have urgently warned about the growing use of steroids in law enforcement, calling it a problem that puts both users and the public at risk.
Those warnings have largely been ignored.
“I really believe if it’s not the most commonly abused drug in law enforcement, it’s damn close,” said Larry Gaines, a former executive director of the Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police and now chairman of the criminal justice department at California State University.
There is no way to determine how many law enforcement officers or firefighters use steroids, a class of substances Harvard Medical School researcher Harrison G. Pope Jr. calls “the most secret of all illicit drugs.”
No agency keeps track of steroid-related suspensions or arrests, and surveys, where they exist, are considered unreliable.
In the absence of hard data, researchers rely on anecdotal evidence. They haven’t had to look very hard to find it.
From New Jersey to California, in departments large and small, scores of law enforcement officers have been arrested, suspended or reassigned to desk duty in just the past few years for buying steroids or growth hormone without a prescription. In some of those cases, officers were selling the substances to colleagues.
Left unanswered is the question of how many officers and firefighters obtain the drugs with the aid of doctors who fabricate diagnoses, as Colao is alleged to have done.
Experts say those transactions, conducted with the veneer of authenticity in private clinics and offices, are almost certainly on the rise, the result of a booming anti-aging movement that hypes hormones as the antidote to aches, wrinkles and sagging bodies.
Random testing for steroids might provide a better understanding of the problem’s scope, but few departments across the country have put screening in place, and unions that represent officers and firefighters generally oppose it.
In New Jersey, law enforcement officials and union leaders said they were not aware of any agencies that randomly test employees for steroids, as they do for cocaine, marijuana and other illicit drugs.
Some chiefs cite the extra expense.
“It’s cost-prohibitive,” said South Brunswick Police Chief Raymond Hayducka, a vice president of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police. “For a large department, the money’s just not there to do these tests.”
In Phoenix, the first big-city force to introduce steroid-testing four years ago, adding a screen for just the most common steroids tripled the price the department paid to test each officer, from $35 to about $100, said Commander Kim Humphrey, one of the policy’s architects.
Gaines and other experts acknowledge the higher cost, but they suspect there’s more to it, contending most police chiefs choose to look the other way.
“They don’t want their people to be on steroids, but they seem to feel they have a public relations obligation not to bring this problem into the open,” said Hoberman, the University of Texas professor. “You show me the police chief who wants it all over the front page that God knows how many of his cops are on steroids.”
Under guidelines issued by the state Attorney General’s Office, department leaders and county prosecutors are authorized to order employees to undergo testing if there is a “reasonable suspicion” of drug use, but the guidelines do not include the word “steroids,” and chiefs appear reluctant to bring such cases.
Over the past decade, departments in New Jersey have taken disciplinary action against officers for steroid use in just a handful of cases. Most cases involved a legal challenge brought by the accused officers or by police unions.
Jersey City Police Chief Tom Comey’s efforts to deal with steroid use illustrate the complications. The details are found in legal documents stemming from a suit filed against the chief by seven of his officers.
In February 2008, as the New York Health Department’s investigation into Lowen’s Pharmacy approached its peak, an internal affairs captain with the New York City Police Department contacted Comey to ask for a list of his officers. Up to two dozen members of the NYPD, including a deputy chief, had received steroids or growth hormone from Lowen’s, a development that would lead to random testing there within months.
The captain told Comey he suspected Jersey City officers were customers, too.
Comey turned over the list. He soon learned at least 40 of the department’s 834 officers had filled prescriptions for steroids through Lowen’s and that at least 36 had obtained HGH from the pharmacy.
Within days, Comey ordered an unknown number of officers to provide a urine sample to be tested for elevated levels of testosterone, a hallmark of steroid use.
Comey would not discuss the test results or provide details of the probe. Legal papers show at least 20 officers were relieved of their weapons and placed on modified duty. Of those, most returned to full duty two months later, after undergoing follow-up tests.
One officer, Nicholas Kramer, continued to show a high testosterone level during a retest. He was later declared unfit for duty and served a 159-day suspension without pay. Kramer, now 33, returned to the force in January of last year. He declined comment.
Kramer and six other officers later filed suit against the department and Comey, claiming the chief had violated their constitutional rights.
The plaintiffs included Victor Vargas and Michael Stise, accused of brutality in the federal lawsuit brought by Jersey City resident Mathias Bolton, and Brian McGovern, the officer who had filled 20 prescriptions and who was charged with assault in Point Pleasant Beach last year.
U.S. District Justice Peter G. Sheridan dismissed the officers’ suit this June, ruling police officers, given the sensitive nature of their jobs, have a diminished expectation of privacy and that the public must be protected from those who could be prone to aggression.
“Chief Comey acted quickly to ensure that JCPD officers were not using steroids that would make them dangerous and unfit for duty,” Sheridan wrote in his opinion, adding that the mental health of officers is “of the utmost concern.”
In response to questions from The Star-Ledger, Comey issued a statement calling the internal probe “a difficult situation to deal with” and saying the department was working to develop a policy “to ensure the integrity of the agency moving forward.”
He refused to say if that policy involves testing for steroids.
Jerry DiCicco, president of the Jersey City Police Officers’ Benevolent Association, which represents more than 700 of the department’s officers, said in a statement the union would immediately challenge a steroid-testing policy based on health care privacy laws and constitutionality issues.
He also defended the officers involved, saying they have “outstanding personal records” and that they did nothing inappropriate.
Coming Undone
Gladys Nieves believes Joseph Colao saw the end coming. Part of her wonders if he embraced it.
The physician’s chronic heart condition appeared to be worsening. He had failed a stress test in the spring of 2007, but rather than slow down, he continued to work 12- and 14-hour days, often missing lunch. He also sometimes skipped his prescribed doses of Plavix, which helps prevent blood clots that can lead to heart attacks, Nieves said.
Colao’s financial adviser became a frequent visitor to the office. The pair met with Nieves, arranging for her to receive about $7,000 more in benefits. Colao told her he wanted her to be taken care of when he was gone.
“You know I’m going to die soon,” she said he told her.
The walls were closing in professionally as well.
Medicare had conducted a fraud investigation in 2006. Now Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield was demanding to see records. The insurer would later file a $900,000 notice of claim against Colao’s estate, alleging he falsified diagnoses to prescribe growth hormone, a Horizon spokesman said.
Lowen’s Pharmacy, Colao’s chief hormone supplier, was suddenly in the news. New York state health investigators conducted their first raid on Lowen’s in May 2007, and the pharmacy’s records had Colao’s name all over them. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office would soon join the case.
There also was renewed interest from the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, which had first made contact with Colao after the arrest of North Bergen police officer Andrew Wietecha following his Ocean County car crash.
Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said an incident involving a second officer in late 2006 again led to Colao. DeFazio would not describe the incident or name the officer, but he said it aroused suspicion.
“One plus one made two,” he said.
Because the matter involved questions of medical judgment beyond the expertise of criminal investigators, DeFazio said, he referred the case to the state Board of Medical Examiners, which licenses and disciplines doctors.
The board opened an investigation into Colao in March 2007, though it did not contact him in the five months before his death, spokesman Jeff Lamm said.
Before confronting Colao, board investigators were trying to determine if the doctor’s voluminous prescriptions for steroids and HGH extended to New Jersey pharmacies, Lamm said.
As the summer of 2007 wore on, the increasing pressure weighed on Colao, Nieves said.
“You could feel the stress in him,” she said. “Things in the office were bad. With all of the hormones, I think he was getting disgusted by it. I think he wanted to go back to the normalcy of it all, his pain patients.”
It was Colao’s fiancée, Bianca Triggiani, who found his body Aug. 8. He’d collapsed in the kitchen. A medical examiner determined the cause of death to be hardening of the arteries.
The weeks that followed would be frustrating ones for Ken Kolich, the county homicide investigator.
He had received phone calls from two investigators — one with New York’s Department of Health, the other an assistant attorney general who worked with the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners — alerting him that Colao had been suspected of giving steroids and growth hormone to police officers under false pretenses.
Suddenly, the flood of calls from officers on the day Colao died made sense to Kolich. It also alarmed him.
“The last thing you want out there is cops on steroids,” he said in a recent interview. “They get into a fight and steroid rage takes over.”
Kolich wanted to look deeper into the steroid angle, but his supervisor at the time, Capt. Vincent Doherty, ordered him to stop, the detective said.
“We’re supposed to take care of our own,” Kolich said Doherty told him.
Doherty, who has since retired, denied telling Kolich police officers must be protected. He said he couldn’t remember any specific disagreements about the case, but he said he and Kolich sometimes butted heads about the homicide division’s resources.
“My interest wasn’t in conducting that type of investigation. That’s why they called it the homicide division,” said Doherty, 64. “Whether we should have done some more work, maybe we should have. I don’t know. Whether I put a kibosh to it, maybe I did. I don’t know.”
Every criminal investigation into Colao was now at an end. For the law enforcement officers and firefighters who thronged Colao’s practice, the flow of drugs was cut off.
And the search for a new doctor was on.
Next Stop: High Crest
High Crest Health, lodged in an imposing Georgian-style building in Fairfield, offers the public what it bills as an integrative medical experience.
Clients can choose from chiropractic care, personal training, nutritional counseling, colon hydrotherapy and hormone replacement therapy, among other services.
In the wake of Colao’s death, High Crest became a busy place.
The facility’s former medical director, James Goodnight, and its former hormone educator, Robert Ortiz, estimated 800 of Colao’s patients became new clients there.
A “good majority” of them were law enforcement officers and firefighters, Goodnight said. And almost all of them seemed to want testosterone, stanozolol or growth hormone.
To Goodnight, a plastic surgeon and anti-aging doctor now in private practice, more shocking than the number of patients was the expectation they could use their insurance to pay for HGH, as they said they had done with Colao.
“We told them no flat-out,” Goodnight said. “That’s insurance fraud.”
Goodnight said the patients had been brought to High Crest by Victor Biancamano, Colao’s former office manager. Biancamano worked as a sort of rainmaker at High Crest, drumming up business, Goodnight said.
“People have certain skills,” the physician said. “He’s got connections. He knows people. That’s his skill.”
Biancamano, a former bartender who emerged from personal bankruptcy in 2003, had another connection that would later lead to some discomfort for Goodnight. He recommended the doctor use Lowen’s Pharmacy for his hormone business, Goodnight said. The physician agreed.
“Victor brought up that he had used that pharmacy in the past, and he introduced one of their people to me,” Goodnight said. “I didn’t know anything about them at the time. You don’t want to get involved with a pharmacy that does anything shady. I just wanted good service and good quality prices.”
After authorities raided Lowen’s, Goodnight said, he was questioned by a detective and an assistant district attorney from Brooklyn. He was cleared of wrongdoing and later testified before the grand jury investigating the pharmacy. He left High Crest shortly afterward.
High Crest’s owners, Neelendu and Stephanie Bose, did not return calls for comment.
Goodnight said he still has about 50 law enforcement officers and firefighters in his North Haledon practice, which he calls “Dr. Goodnight’s Center for Everlasting Beauty.”
He is one of at least five hormone specialists identified by The Star-Ledger who continue to treat Colao’s patients.
Roger Lallemand Jr., an orthopedist and anti-aging doctor who has offices in Old Bridge and Asbury Park, treats several hundred uniformed public servants, according to officers and firefighters familiar with his practice.
The others are Bonnie Chen, an internist in Watchung; Henry Balzani, a gynecologist who practices anti-aging medicine in Clifton; and Robert Ortiz, who once worked with Goodnight at High Crest Health.
Ortiz, who holds the title of medical educator at the Active Center for Health and Wellness, with offices in Westwood and Hackensack, is not a physician. He said a doctor on the center’s staff examines his hormone recommendations to patients and makes final decisions about prescriptions.
Lallemand declined to comment. The others said they prescribe hormones only when necessary.
They also downplayed the risk of increased aggression, saying such side effects are extremely rare as long as testosterone supplementation does not exceed physiologic levels, or levels the body has already seen at an earlier age.
Pope, the Harvard Medical School researcher who studies the psychological side effects of steroids, said he agrees aggressive reactions are more likely at higher levels, but he said research has shown bad reactions can result from even modest doses of steroids, such as those found in testosterone creams.
“You cannot predict one way or the other whether someone is going to have one of these reactions,” he said. “If that person is a police officer, they might have an inappropriate reaction.”
In the Aftermath
On Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City, it’s as if Colao had never died. Two signs still sit outside his office, announcing his practice. Inside the building, his office and apartment remain locked and undisturbed, frozen in time.
They will stay that way until his fiancée and his ex-wife, Marybeth Colao, the mother of Colao’s 19-year-old son, resolve a bitter fight for control of his estate. Shortly after Colao's death, the estate was valued at $4.9 million, according to court papers. For all of his last-minute financial planning, Colao died without a legally recognized will.
Marybeth Colao declined to comment about her ex-husband. Triggiani, the fiancée, said she refused to drag Colao’s name “through the mud.”
Those who worked with Colao have moved on to other jobs. Nieves and Lehar work for different medical practices. Leon Colao now serves as office manager for his late brother’s close friend, Stephen Waldman, a pain-management physician in Millburn.
Victor Biancamano, the office manager who left Colao’s practice shortly before his death, went into business last year with Henry Balzani, co-founding Total Life Rejuvenation, the anti-aging clinic in Clifton. Two months ago, Biancamano resigned from the practice to work with a group of anti-aging doctors elsewhere. He declined to name them.
For Kolich, now with the special victims unit of the prosecutor’s office, one final riddle remained. Since the day of Colao’s death, he has wondered how the news spread through the law enforcement grapevine so quickly.
The doctor’s prescription records provide a clue: One of the officers to respond to a 911 call from Colao’s apartment that morning happened to be a steroid patient.
The officer, who had filled a prescription for testosterone through Lowen’s, was soon on the phone, alerting other officers and firefighters.
Kolich said the officer didn't mention being Colao's patient, even as they stood over the body of the doctor the cops had called their own.
Staff writer Ted Sherman contributed to this report.
N.J. Officials: Hard to Spot Cops on Steroids
BY RICHARD COWEN and DENISA R. SUPERVILLE
The Record, Herald News
North Jersey officials say they have no good means of detecting use of potentially hazardous steroids among public safety officers, in light of a published report that nearly 50 officers in Bergen and Passaic counties obtained steroids and other drugs from a Jersey City doctor.
Meanwhile, a company owned by the principal investor in a downtown Passaic redevelopment project is named as owner of a business that resumed supplying steroids to law officers after the doctor died.
An investigation by The Star-Ledger revealed that the doctor, Joseph Colao, often wrote prescriptions that enabled cops, firefighters and corrections officers to obtain illegal muscle-building drugs. The report said there were 248 firefighters and law enforcement officers who obtained the drugs -- and 48 of them worked for departments in Bergen and Passaic counties.
Colao provided performance-enhancing drugs to 18 members of the Passaic County Sheriff's Department, and seven officers in the Bergen County Sheriff's Department. He also provided drugs to seven members of the Paterson Police Department, the report said.
Steroid use in a police officer is considered particularly dangerous because steroids cause mood shifts and aggressive behavior. Despite the danger, the state Attorney General's guidelines don't call for drug testing for steroids -- only recreational drugs like marijuana and cocaine.
Part of the reason is that steroid testing is expensive -- about $10,000 per test, a Passaic County official said. And steroids also have legitimate medical applications that help police officers and firefighters recover faster from job-related injuries.
"It is a very expensive test," said Bill Maer, a spokesman for the Passaic County Sheriff's Department. "And if the individual has a prescription from a doctor, then it would appear to be legitimate."
Bergen County Sheriff Leo McGuire said without a random testing policy for steroids, it's legally risky to single someone out just because they have big muscles. McGuire said the published report didn't name names of the alleged steroid users.
"There were no specific allegations made against any officers," McGuire said. "And I, certainly as the person in charge of the sheriff's office, cannot go on a witch hunt just because of blanket allegations.
When Colao died in 2007, about 800 of his patients went to High Crest Health, a Fairfield-based facility that specializes in holistic medicine, according to the published report. A "good majority" of those patients were in law enforcement and firefighters, according to the clinic's former medical director, James Goodnight.
The owner of High Crest Health, Neelendu Bose, wants to open a similar operation in the City of Passaic. Bose is the head of a newly formed investment group, Trinity Partners, LLC, which last month submitted the lone bid for the former bank building located at 663 Main Ave.
In that proposal, Trinity Partners stated that High Crest Health generates a net profit of $120,000 a month. Bose did not return a phone call on Monday seeking comment.
The Passaic County Prosecutor's Office attempted to smash a steroid ring involving more than a dozen police officers who worked out of a gym in Wayne in 2004. But the undercover operation was foiled in August of 2004 when word leaked out about a pending raid.
James Avigliano, who was the Passaic County prosecutor at the time, subsequently ordered 15 police officers to undergo drug testing. The unions fought the drug test order in court, but Avigliano prevailed.
None of the 15 officers tested positive for steroids. Five of the officers later sued Avigliano for invasion of privacy in U.S. District Court. Four years later, the case has yet to be resolved.
Colao, who died at age 45 of a heart attack, used a pharmacy in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn to distribute the drugs, which were manufactured in China, the report said. Although steroids are often used to treat injuries, the report noted that Colao would often prescribe mega-doses doses of steroids and human growth hormone to cops and firefighters who simply wanted to grow big muscles quickly.
By the time of his death, Colao was under investigation by numerous agencies, including the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners, the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office, and several health insurance companies.
Colao's best customers were with the Jersey City Police Department (40 prescriptions) and the Jersey City Fire Department (27 prescriptions).
Dopers in Uniform: Cops on Steroids
by John Hoberman, Ph.D.
Author of "Testosterone Dreams: Rejuvenation, Aphrodisia, Doping"
Professor of Germanic Studies
University of Texas at Austin
May 22, 2005
As the U.S. Congress prepares to renew its assault on anabolic steroid use among professional athletes at a hearing scheduled for May 18, longtime observers of doping control initiatives will recognize the selective indignation that continues to sensationalize the use of these drugs by athletes. The fact that certain groups of steroid consumers have been spared the special opprobrium reserved for sports heroes who fail to serve as proper "role models" for youth demonstrates once again how arbitrary and politically motivated the formulation and enforcement of drug laws can be.
One of the remarkable anomalies of the anti-steroid campaign of the past two decades is that it has virtually ignored the many reports of steroid use by police officers in the United States and in other countries. Unknown but clearly significant numbers of policemen have imported, smuggled, sold, and used anabolic steroids over this time period. According to an article that appeared in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin in 1991: "Anabolic steroid abuse by police officers is a serious problem that merits greater awareness by departments across the country." (1) In 2003 another expert offered a similar assessment. Little research has been done on the use of steroids by police, said Larry Gaines, former executive director of the Kentucky Chiefs of Police Association. "But I think it's a larger problem than people think.".(2)
A segment of the CBS-TV program "60 Minutes" had already made that point on November 5, 1989. "Beefing Up the Force" presented interviews with three officers whose use of steroids had apparently caused the hyper-aggressiveness that had gotten them into serious trouble. The worst case involved what one psychiatrist called "a real Jekyll and Hyde change" in the personality of a prison security guard in Oregon who had kidnapped and shot a woman who made a casual remark he didn't like. He got 20 years in prison, and she was paralyzed for life. The personality he presented during his prison interview made it seem utterly improbable that he would have been capable of such an act. But his testosterone level when he committed the crime was 50 times the normal level. This broadcast conveyed the message that steroid problems were lurking in many police departments across the country, and that police officials were turning a blind eye to a significant threat to public safety.
It was no accident that the "60 Minutes" segment paid special attention to a "hard core group" of steroid users on the Miami police force. Two years earlier the Miami Herald had run a long article on steroid-using police officers. The seven notorious Miami "River Cops", who in 1987 were on trial for alleged crimes including cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to commit murder, included Armando "Scarface" Garcia, a weightlifter who had publicly admitted to taking steroids. "There's a great potential for an officer abusing steroids to physically mistreat people," said the police chief of nearby Hollywood, Florida, who had told his investigators to be on the lookout for officers who looked like "small mountains." (3) The Miami Herald article may have been the first of the tiny number of analytical treatments of this subject that have appeared in American newspapers since the 1980s.
It is not surprising that police officials spent the 1980s more or less oblivious to the steroid issue. The notoriety and eventual demonizing of the anabolic steroid followed the Ben Johnson Olympic scandal of September 1988, which initiated the transformation of the social (and then the legal) status of these drugs. The Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990 made unauthorized possession of steroids a criminal offense, and from that point on the anti-steroid crusade was gradually annexed by the larger War on Drugs that Richard Nixon had launched in 1969. The BALCO "designer steroid" indictments announced by the Department of Justice in February 2004 gave the federal takeover of the anti-steroid campaign an official status it had never had before.
Prohibiting police officers from using anabolic steroids would appear to be self-evident given what is known about how these drugs can produce hyper-aggressive behavior. But understanding the use of these drugs by police officers and other men whose professional roles involve physical strength and assertiveness requires us to examine the two opposing arguments that have been advanced to favor or oppose the use of steroids by law enforcement personnel. The functional argument holds that the physical and psychological effects of steroids promote the safety of the officer and, therefore, public safety, as well. The deviance argument holds that, on the contrary, both the physical and emotional effects of the drugs endanger the public and expose drug-taking officers to serious legal risks resulting from their dangerous drug-induced behaviors.
The idea that steroids might actually play a functional (and therefore legitimate) role in preparing police officers to do their jobs was not beyond the pale in 1987. For example, the Miami Herald exposé prompted a former Miami police chief, Ken Harms, to make the following comment: "It's probably time that the department makes a conscious decision about whether it's acceptable for officers to take steroids." (4) The sheer political incorrectness of this statement, when judged by today's standards, speaks volumes about how the social status of these drugs has changed in the interim. Although Chief Harms did not go on to parse the pros and cons of steroid-taking by police officers, it is not difficult to imagine what he might have said.
Large numbers of men around the world consume steroids because their professions or criminal activities require physical self-assertion and self-confidence. A 1996 report from Scotland, for example, identifies policemen, firefighters, military personnel, and private security guards as steroid consumers. (5) In Australia the list includes prison guards and the elite troops who in 1998 were discovered to be "using steroids to bulk up, boost stamina and self-esteem and to recover more quickly from injuries they have sustained." (6) In Britain, Australia and some European countries, nightclub bouncers use the drugs to produce the "frilled neck lizard response" that intimidates unruly customers. (7)
"The thinking is that big is better than small, tough is better than weak," says Gene Sanders, a former police officer and a longtime police psychologist in California. "There is sort of an underground, unspoken tradition among several departments that I've worked with that if you really want to bulk up, this is the best way to do it." (8) A website maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports the same attitude toward functional steroid use by police officers: "Law enforcement personnel have used steroids for both physical and psychological reasons. The idea of enhanced physical strength and endurance provides one with 'the invincible mentality' when performing law enforcement duties." (9)
Steroids are also used by criminals as aggression-enhancing drugs. In Oslo, Norway, enforcers known as "torpedoes" take combinations of steroids and amphetamines to produce the psychopathic state that enables them to kill and maim their victims. (10) Danish motorcycle hoodlums put methyl testosterone capsules under their tongues before gang fights to work themselves into a rage. (11) Such vignettes from the steroid underground suggest how little we know about the overall social effects of the black market that serves an international market of action-oriented males that includes a growing number of recreational athletes of all ages.
The functional argument thus proposes that steroid use is an essentially rational and practical strategy to deal with the special challenges and hazards of certain kinds of physically demanding work. From this perspective, these action-oriented professionals -- "[o]ccupational users such as doormen [bouncers], police and prison warders … have a definite objective; often feeling threatened by aspects of their work they believe they must increase their size and aggression both to threaten and protect others." (12)
Russell Dobash, a professor at Manchester University, has also pointed to the practical attitude of some steroid users: "Bodybuilding is most often the entrée to taking steroids, but people who take the drugs often do it because they see their body as important to their job. Some people have the stereotypical image of a bodybuilder as unemployed. But in a sample of steroid-users that we looked at, there were a range of occupations, particularly among professions where your body can be instrumental to your job." (13)
The conflict between the functional and the deviance models of steroid use can be seen in "the stereotypical image of [the] bodybuilder" as a socially dysfunctional (unemployed) type whose deviance lies in the social disorientation that has left him with no economic role in society. His functional (and socially useful) counterpart is someone who puts drugs to "instrumental" use. We have already seen that the use of steroids by police officers has been regarded as instrumental pharmacology of this kind by at least a segment of the profession. However, given the long tradition of prohibitionist thinking about "drugs" in modern societies, it is hardly surprising that condemnation based on the deviance model of police steroid use has been more influential than the functionalist rationale for steroid-boosted law enforcement.
The deviance model assumes that steroid use already indicates a character defect in the drug-taker. This viewpoint was applied to military doping in December 2004 when the executive director of the Australian Defence Association criticized the functionalist view of doping soldiers. "The Australian people spend a lot on defence," he said, "and they want value for their money, and they want a defence force that is physically fit and mentally capable. If you're using perception-altering substances or steroids you're hardly likely to be physically or mentally fit." (14) When Copenhagen's Police Station No. 1 was hit by a steroid scandal in 2000-2001, the city's chief of police stated: "Combining strength training with the use of doping drugs is so sick that it simply doesn't belong on a police force. It is sad that young, well-built people feel too frail and weak to serve on the force, so they fill themselves with that kind of poison and bulk up to the point where they are revolting to look at." (15)
The deviance argument has also appeared in American commentaries on steroid-using policemen. In 1987, for example, Dr. Philip Greenberg, the psychiatrist for the Miami Beach Police Department, put it as follows: "Any policeman taking something … to build up muscle tissue would have to be a very confused specimen to begin with." (16) When the police chief of Boca Raton, Florida, was asked in 2003 what could cause an officer to use steroids, he replied: "Stupidity and self-absorption and an egocentric mentality." (17)
Stupidity, self-absorption and an egocentric mentality are certainly compatible with the racism that a few steroid-using policemen have demonstrated, and not only in the United States. The Danish cops who were indicted for steroid possession in 2000 were also found to be in possession of written materials that included a plan to castrate accused Muslim rapists. (18)
Postulating a correlation between steroid use and racist eccentricity goes straight to the heart of our society's unresolved conflict over the meaning of androgenic drug use. Does the choice to augment oneself with this illegal drug signal a broader propensity to embrace unwholesome beliefs or engage in antisocial behaviors? The current anti-steroid sentiment being promoted by politicians and many others with media access assumes this is the case. It is, therefore, striking that when the serial killings of black men by a white, steroid-using police officer made headlines in 1989, the authorities who might have done so made no effort to connect these deadly events with the drugs that may well have played a role in provoking them.
This case of allegedly steroid-fueled police violence comes from Texas. Over a period of seven years during the 1980s, a Houston police officer named Scott Tschirhart shot to death three black men in circumstances that led to protests and a grand jury investigation. Cleared by the grand jury, Tschirhart was eventually fired by Houston's black police chief shortly after the third killing in 1989. (19)
It was well known to his fellow officers that Tschirhart was a user of anabolic steroids, and they had watched the drugs transform him as a bodybuilder and as a policeman. "The bigger he got … the worse he got about strutting around and bragging," a veteran officer recalled. "You could really see him changing." (20) But the Houston Police Department had no policy against steroid use, so no one intervened until the third fatal shooting provoked the department to investigate this officer's unusually violent career.
Even the appearance of sequential racial killings by a known steroid user and reputed bigot did not put the issue of cops and steroids on the national agenda. Nor did the "60 Minutes" segment broadcast shortly after Tschirhart's firing ignite any further interest in the major media that might have put this issue on the national agenda. In 1985 Dr. Robert Kerr, a notorious provider of steroids to thousands of elite athletes and other customers, had testified in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles that he had written steroid prescriptions for 500 law enforcement personnel in the Los Angeles area. And nothing happened. (21)
A realistic approach to the use of steroids by police officers must also be prepared to depart from the deviance model for the purpose of recognizing those cases where it becomes difficult or impossible to distinguish between therapy and enhancement. For example, a policeman's use of steroids can have a medical rationale. A model Ohio county deputy and Gulf War Marine Corps veteran convicted of steroid possession in 2003 said he had imported the drugs from Yugoslavia as an effective therapy for his chronic fatigue syndrome. "I never wanted to look like Arnold," he said. "I was tired of being tired. I wanted to feel better." (22)
How can we explain our society's current steroid policy, which treats the drug use of a baseball player as more reprehensible than that of a police officer?
First, there is the importance of image. Athletes who double as entertainers do not benefit from the halo effect that wraps public safety personnel in a presumption of innocence, regardless of whether this aura is firmly rooted in reality. We are accustomed to the idea of the police confiscating steroids, not injecting or ingesting them.
Second, there is the matter of logistics. Subjecting America's half million police officers to systematic steroid screening would impose huge additional costs on city governments that already face chronic deficits. Similar budgetary considerations have drastically limited the drug testing of the nation's school children, despite the court decisions that have legalized such procedures. Forcing a miniscule number of elite athletes to serve as our society's pharmacological virgins is a far more practical way to pledge allegiance to the illusion of a "drug-free" society.
Finally, there is our society's profoundly ambivalent attitude toward male hormone drugs that produce tangible benefits. The new social acceptability of bodybuilding, embracing its worship of muscularity and its unabashed ethos of self-improvement, represents an unmistakable, if camouflaged, acceptance of synthetic testosterone drugs and their desired effects, ranging from sculptured torsos to sexual self-confidence. In a similar vein, significant numbers of sports fans already accept athletic doping drugs as acceptable enhancements that make possible the performances they want to see. Finally, popular hormone-based "anti-aging" therapies employ the same drugs that could put a steroid-using policeman in prison.
The problem for those monitoring police forces for steroid abuse is that some steroid users will not display obviously disordered behaviors. In the absence of systematic drug testing, the most promising policy would be to investigate every case of hyper-aggressive behavior by police officers and employ targeted drug testing in such cases. Above all, officials must keep an eagle eye on those members of the force who find special fulfillment in competitive bodybuilding, including those bodybuilding competitions that are sponsored by police departments. (23) As police authorities in Berlin found out in 2002, it is likely that a disproportionate number of these people should not be entrusted with power and a gun. (24)
John Hoberman is Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His most recent book is TESTOSTERONE DREAMS: Rejuvenation, Aphrodisia, Doping (University of California Press, 2005). Readers are encouraged to send their comments on this essay to the author at hoberman@mail.utexas.edu.
Leave feedback and rate this article.
Footnotes
(1) Charles Swanson and Larry Gaines, "Abuse of Anabolic Steroids," FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin (August 1991): 19.
(2) Stephen Hudak, "Steroids: a threat to police officers," Cleveland Plain Dealer (July 25, 2003).
(3) Angie Cannon, "Steroid-Using Police Causing Brutality Fears," Miami Herald (May 18, 1987).
(4) Angie Cannon, "Steroid-Using Police Causing Brutality Fears," Miami Herald (May 18, 1987).
(5) Doug Gillon, "Questions for House – 'Explosion' in Numbers Abusing Steroids," Glasgow Herald (April 15, 1996).
(6) "Elite soldiers face charges as 'police uncover drug use'," Sydney Morning Herald (July 24, 2002).
(7) Mark Dunn, "Three groups pinpointed as steroid users," Herald Sun [Australia] (July 18, 2003).
(8) "Cops accused of using steroids to bulk up and give themselves an edge," Associated Press (February 4, 2005).
(9) "Steroid Abuse by Law Enforcement Personnel" [Drug Enforcement Administration]. See
(10) "Torpedomiljø hardner," Aftenposten [Oslo] (November 7, 2000).
(11) Interview with a Danish physician with anti-doping experience, Odense, Denmark, January 14, 2005.
(12) R.T. Dawson, "Drugs in sport – the role of the physician," Journal of Endocrinology 170 (2001): 57.
(13) Jon Ungoed-Thomas, "Police taking steroids to counter thugs," The Sunday Times (December 6, 1998).
(14) Brendan Nicholson, "Defence force strikes legal hitch on drug tests," The Age [Melbourne] (December 24, 2004).
(15) "Politidoping: Sigtede betjente bliver i tjeneste," Jyllands-Posten [Denmark] (November 24, 2000).
(16) Angie Cannon, "Steroid-Using Police Causing Brutality Fears," Miami Herald (May 18, 1987).
(17) Pamela Perez, "Steroid cases worry Boca police," Palm Beach Post (July 15, 2003).
(18) "Fem betjente sigtet," Jyllands-Posten (December 23, 2000).
(19) "Researchers say police steroid use a dangerous trend," Houston Post (November 18, 1989).
(20) "Officer more aggressive since steroids, colleagues say," Houston Post (November 17, 1989).
(21) Mark Wangrin, "Steroid use by law officers raises fears," Austin American-Statesman (November 5, 1989).
(22) Stephen Hudak, "Steroids: a threat to police officers," Cleveland Plain Dealer (July 25, 2003).
(23) For example, the 1st Annual Nation's Capitol Police and Fire Bodybuilding Championships were held on June 7, 2003, at Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland. See www.bodybuildbid.com/articles/newsevents/2003policfirebodybild.html. Accessed February 4, 2005.
(24) "Polizei-Doping erschreckt Körting," die tageszeitung (June 25, 2002).
THE DRAGONATER WINS IN TRAFFIC COURT AT DEALS GAP, RAISES SPEED LIMIT TO 65 MPH ON THE DRAGON - NOLLE PROSEQUI BY BLOUNT COUNTY ATTORNEY GENERAL. NO TESTIMONY, HEARING NOR TRIAL WHATSOEVER. 60 MPH SPEEDING TICKET DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE, COSTS PAID BY THE STATE, IN BLOUNT COUNTY GENERAL SESSIONS COURT WITH JUDGE BREWER. THP TROOPER RANDALL HUCKEBY ADMITTED ON VIDEOTAPE DURING TRAFFIC STOP THAT ALL SPEEDING TICKETS NORTHBOUND ON US129 AT MILE MARKER 0.5 ARE FEDERAL JURISDICTION, NOT STATE JURISDICTION (VIDEO BY THE DRAGONATER). TDOT ADMITTED IN WRITING THAT THE MANDATORY TRAFFIC ENGINEERING SURVEY SPEED AUDIT WAS NEVER PERFORMED, IN VIOLATION OF TN CODE, THUS THE POSTED 30 MPH SPEED LIMIT ON THE DRAGON REVERTS TO THE DEFAULT 65 MPH IN TN CODE. THE DRAGONATER ALSO MADE VIDEO OF TROOPER HUCKEBY SPEEDING UP TO 60 MPH ON THE DRAGON IN A 30 MPH ZONE, WITHOUT MANDATORY EMERGENCY LIGHTS NOR SIREN, IN VIOLATION OF TN CODE, AND PERJURY IN HIS PERSONNEL FILE, WHICH SHOWED HIS $100,000+ SALARY. 2007 TDOT SAFETY AUDIT REPORT CONFESSED THAT THP'S JOB IS TO BAN ALL COMMERCIAL BUSINESSES ON THE DRAGON, SO THP TICKETS INCREASED 11,400% IN BLOUNT COUNTY. THP'S STALKER RADAR OPERATOR MANUAL CONFESSED THAT RADAR CANNOT MEASURE THE SPEED OF VEHICLES WITHIN 18 MPH OF ACTUAL SPEED. WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FULL EVIDENCE FILE. UPDATE 7 MARCH 2011
