The Amazing Race 16 contestant Louie Stravato, the mustachioed half of the detective team, “has been taken off the streets in the wake of an internal investigation into a major cop-operated cocaine ring,” TMZ reports. Citing Rhode Island State Police, TMZ reports he “has been put on ‘desk duty’ — after his name came up in a ‘four month’ investigation into a ‘large-scale’ cocaine distribution operation.”
The Providence Journal’s has a full report on the arrests and sting, which involved the arrest of three officers–not including Stravato–for their involvement in and protection of “a high-level drug ring operated by a Providence supplier who was also the brother of one of the accused officers.”
Without naming names, the paper reports that “Investigators are looking at several other ‘persons of interest,’ including some other police officers” but quotes state police Supt. Brendan P. Doherty, who said “this was an isolated incident” by a “few rogue officers who compromised the trust that the citizens of Providence and Rhode Island put in them.”
3 Providence officers arrested in drug sting [Providence Journal]