After cop arrests, FLPD needs to clean house

If what the authorities, including the FBI, are saying is true, then here's what those three arrested Fort Lauderdale cops did: 

The three officers -- Sgt. Michael Florenco and detectives Matthew Moceri and Geoffrey Shaffer -- allegedly chased down a petty criminal in a car, beat him up to a bloody mess, lied about it, then tried to put away the suspect for life on a bogus attempted murder charge alleging he had tried to kill them. 

Let's see, breaking chase policy, using unnecessary violence, lying and pinning false charges on a suspect. That's pretty much sums up a bad cop. 

The scary part is that this isn't an isolated incident with the FLPD or the officers' notorious street unit, called the Northwest Raiders. Two of the three arrested, Florenco and Moceri, were already suspended with pay because of their ties to another criminal investigation in which two more Raiders, Billy Koepke and Brian Dodge, were arrested on charges of kidnapping, grand theft, and racketeering charges. 

Taken together, if the allegations are true, this is a unit rife with lying and thieving thugs, plain and simple. And if that's true, then you're talking about a culture, not a couple of bad apples. Considering the notorious history of the Northwest Raiders, that doesn't seem a stretch either. 

Remember, this is the police department that sold out to Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, who showered officers, including Chief Frank Adderley, with favor. Florenco was one of the officers paid by Rothstein on his special detail. Even after that scandal, there's been no significant cleaning house, just knee-jerk defense mechanisms. It's time to get serious about fixing the FLPD.