NYPD's Steroid Scandal

The Village Voice reports:

Over the past 18 months, the NYPD has apparently experienced a rare epidemic in which a cluster of young, muscular cops have suffered a malady that usually strikes men over the age of 60: hypogonadism, or low testosterone.

The Voice has learned that the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office knows of 29 cops and at least 10 NYPD civilian employees—all well under the age of 60—who have received prescriptions for hypogonadism.

The treatment for it just happens to be steroids.

Baseball's steroids scandal has broken wide open with last week's release of former senator George Mitchell's report on players who may have broken the rules of the sport by bulking up. That probe, which currently revolves around New York City, in part because of the alleged involvement of a Mets clubhouse employee, has spilled over from Queens into Brooklyn into the NYPD, where an investigation of steroid use by New York City cops is bubbling under the surface.

How closely the two drug scandals may be linked isn't known, but personal trainer Brian McNamee, who told the Mitchell commission that he injected Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens and other players with steroids, is a former NYPD cop who left the department in 1993 and later embarked on a career as a personal trainer who allegedly injected star athletes with drugs, according to ESPN.com.

As for the cop-steroid scandal, when the story first broke in October, NYPD officials repeatedly said that only six officers were believed to be involved. Spokesman Paul Browne has maintained that none of the cops were selling steroids and none will be arrested, though they may face departmental discipline.

Unlike baseball, the NYPD does not test its officers for steroids, but it's a little early for department officials to make sanguine predictions. Brooklyn D.A. Charles "Joe" Hynes's office is still in the middle of its investigation and, according to law-enforcement sources, will present a case to a grand jury sometime within the next several weeks.

Unlike baseball players, the NYPD's cops are forbidden to talk to the press without permission. But people close to the probe, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say that in the probe of cops' steroid use, investigators from the State Department of Health have given the D.A. almost a dozen boxes of records gathered during three raids at Lowen's Pharmacy in Brooklyn. Officials have also seized millions of dollars of human growth hormone (HGH) and steroids from that Bay Ridge pharmacy. The most recent raid was on December 3. Hynes won't comment other than to confirm that there is an investigation.

Great moments in government.