Police are not typically in the news for any criminal charges that they are facing. However, police are human too and can be charged with a crime, just as anyone else can. Recently in Indiana, a police officer pleaded guilty to a drunk drivingcharge.
The police officer of 12 years was sentenced to a year in jail, with the time being suspended. He was also ordered to serve probation and given orders to enroll in alcohol treatment programs. The officer apparently took months to decide on a plea because of issues pertaining to the amount of jail time he might have to serve in relation to another DUI case he was involved in.
The same officer was involved in a drunk driving accident in 2010 and was sentenced this past fall to 16 years in prison with three of those years suspended. In that case, he was in his patrol car when he hit a group of motorcyclists. One of the bikers was killed and two others were injured in that crash.
The second drunk driving charge this man faced didn't result in more jail time on top of the jail time he was sentenced to for the deadly crash a few years earlier. When a person is awaiting a decision on one charge in an Indiana criminal court and a second incident leads to more charges in the meantime, the cases can get complicated. Anyone facing a drunk driving charge who then proceeds to be charged with the same offense again may benefit from knowing how additional charges can and can't play a role in a case against them.