Ex-Cop Blames Ex-Wife's Lesbian Affair for helping airport drug ring

Ex-cop Michael Brady blames ex-wife's lesbian affair for helping Westchester airport drug ring
The Journal News by Jonathan Bandler  -  May 9, 2012
Michael T. Brady, a Westchester County police officer assigned to the county airport, was among 20 people arrested in an alleged conspiracy to distribute oxycodone, authorities said Tuesday. 

Westchester County, NY -  A former Westchester County police officer is blaming his ex-wife’s lesbian affair for his role in helping a prescription drug ring get proceeds of sales through the Westchester County Airport. Michael Brady’s lawyer has asked for a reduced prison term of just over one year when his client is sentenced in U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., today. “He is a good, in fact, exemplary man, who, in part because of upheaval in his family life, committed an aberrational bad act,” lawyer Joseph Sorrentino wrote in a sentencing memo. But federal prosecutors want Brady sent to prison for nearly four years, saying he wasn’t just a police officer but one protecting an airport. “Brady was a corrupt officer, who in exchange for money broke the law and endangered national security,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rahul Kale wrote to the court. Brady, 38, pleaded guilty in February to bribery and extortion charges, admitting that he took $20,000 to help one of the drug dealers get through airport security with large amounts of cash after he had delivered painkillers to sources in Connecticut. He was one of 20 people arrested last year in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Operation Blue Coast that targeted oxycodone trafficking between Florida and Connecticut. Others included a Florida state trooper and three Transportation Security Administration agents, including one who was also based at the county airport. Sorrentino said that two months before Brady began assisting the drug dealer, he learned that his wife was having an affair with another woman. Brady filed for divorce. “The news of the fundamental betrayal was overwhelming,” Sorrentino wrote, adding that his client then “lost his way” and met the drug dealer when he was “most vulnerable.” “He could not fathom his life without his wife and two young daughters and he could not imagine how he could pay for increased living expenses caused by divorce and the maintenance of two residences,” he continued. Brady worked for the county Police Department for 11 years until his resignation in November, two months after his arrest. He had previously worked for three years as a police officer with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. He is a longtime member of the Mount Kisco Volunteer Fire Department and the Mount Kisco Volunteer Ambulance Corps.