THORNWOOD, N.Y. – Former
Westchester County Police Officer Michael Brady was sentenced to just over four
years in prison Thursday for his involvement in a drug smuggling ring at the
Westchester County Airport.
“This defendant, while a sworn
law enforcement officer, took cash from an individual he barely knew in exchange
for aiding his passage through airport security,” U.S. Attorney David Fein said
in a statement.
Brady, a Thornwood resident,
accepted around $20,000 to allow drug traffickers to pass mass quantities of
the painkiller Oxycodone through the airport while Brady was stationed there as
a county police officer from December 2010 to April 2011, according to sworn
court statements.
Members of the Drug Enforcement
Agency say the drugs were smuggled through the airport from Florida and
distributed throughout Connecticut. Brady pleaded guilty to charges of
extortion under the color of right and receipt of a bribe by a public official,
both federal offenses.
In addition to 37 months in
prison, Brady was sentenced to three years of supervision upon his release and
ordered to forfeit the $20,000 he accepted in the bribes. The sentence was
handed down in federal court in New Haven.
Brady was arrested last
September and resigned from the Westchester County Department of Public Safety
after being indicted in November. Twenty other individuals were arrested on
charges related to the drug smuggling ring.