A Seattle vice cop went bad, but days before he was to be tried, a top-level decision was made to pay him off and kill the case, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in a three-part series. The cop is George Daniel Ring, for 26 years a sheriff’s deputy, most of them spent in the shadowy sex-for-money world. The newspaper said he couldn’t separate his work life from his sex life, and the consequences would embarrass the Sheriff’s Office and enrage many of his former colleagues.
After facing down two internal investigations and several criminal charges, Ring walked away all but unscathed, with nearly two years of paid leave, a $10,000 cash payment, almost $200,000 for attorney’s fees and a $3,500-a-month pension for life — all from taxpayers. “I can scrape by on that,” he says with a smile. In the series, the Post-Intelligencer tells about the case that was made against Ring and how he beat it.