Operation Guard Shack was a two-year
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
(FBI) investigation into
corruption within the law enforcement of
Puerto Rico.
The operation came to a conclusion on 6 October 2010, with a series of pre-dawn raids that led to over 130 arrests of members of the
Puerto Rico Police Department and the
Puerto Rico Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
The Puerto Rico Department of Correction and Rehabilitation () is the law enforcement executive department of the government responsible for structuring, developing, and coordinating the public policies in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territ ...
as well as other individuals.
The operation began at 3 a.m., when 65 tactical teams, including SWAT and the Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), fanned out across the island in a series of sneak attack arrests. On hand were a range of FBI personnel—crisis negotiators, evidence response team members, canines and their handlers, and 80 medical personnel from first responders and nurses to a trauma surgeon and a veterinarian.
The central thread of the corruption was law enforcement officers providing protection and other services to drug traffickers. Over 1,000 agents of the FBI conducted the raids. Many of them were flown in secretly. The agency characterized the action as, "likely the largest police corruption case in the FBI’s history."
Indictments announced on 6 October included:
# 61 officers from the Puerto Rico Police Department
# 16 officers from various municipal police departments
# 12 officers from the Puerto Rico Department of Corrections
# 44 others associated with agencies including the
US Army,
Puerto Rico National Guard, and the
Social Security Administration
The accused officers faced a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
See also
*
Operation Lost Honor
References
*
2010 in Puerto Rico
Federal Bureau of Investigation operations
Police misconduct in Puerto Rico
Political corruption investigations in the United States
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