This morning's Ithaca Journal has a long article on Ithaca Police Office Jason Lansing's resignation after evidence grew of his using drugs and associating with convicted drug dealers. Dryden turns up in passage like:
Lansing told investigators he had abused hydrocodone -- which a Dryden doctor had prescribed for his injured knee -- to the point that he ran out of the drug, suffered withdrawal symptoms and had to miss work....
He began seeing the Dryden doctor after injuring his knee while arresting an intoxicated student, Lansing said. While wrestling the student to the ground, the student and his partner fell on his knee, he recalled....
The following Sunday they talk a few times while driving to meet each other somewhere on Route 13 near Ithaca.
"I passed the f___ing state police," Laganiere says as they're driving toward each other. "Alright well I just passed the pigs."
They met at the office of Lansing's Dryden doctor and took Laganiere's limo, driven by a Hispanic male, to Turning Stone Casino, according to Lansing's interview.
The "Dryden doctor" remains anonymous, and it sounds like some of why Lansing contacted Laganiere was because the doctor stuck to the limits on prescribing the drugs. The Ithaca story is also a Tompkins County story to some extent because Lansing's father, Ken Lansing, is running for sheriff. The Journal quotes Ken Lansing a bit as well:
Reached for comment on Thursday, Lansing called his drug-abuse problem a disease and said he's been sober for months. He didn't tell the department about it because he and his father decided to handle the problem "in the family," he explained....
Ken Lansing said he had no comment, other than to say that Jason resigned from the department for personal reasons. His son is 29 years old, and he has no right to speak for him, he added.
The story's drawn lots of comments, most of them seeming to question the timing of the article.
Posted by simon at September 24, 2010 12:18 PM in Ithaca Journal , crime , emergency services , politics (local)