Law enforcement

Sex, drugs & lies: DEA agents stay on job despite serious misconduct, internal records show

It's next to possible to get fired from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, official records show. Since 2010 agents have escaped with warnings or brief suspensions after distributing drugs, attending sex parties, associating with criminals and falsifying records.

Of the 50 employees the DEA's Board of Professional Conduct recommended be fired following misconduct investigations opened since 2010, only 13 were eventually terminated, the records indicate. But after a federal appeals board intervened the drug agency was forced to take some of them back, it turned out. 

"If we conducted an investigation, and an employee actually got terminated, I’d be surprised," a former DEA internal affairs investigator, Carl Pike, told USA Today. "I’d be truly, truly surprised. Like, wow, the system actually got this guy."