Officer charged with stealing inmates' credit cards

PHILADELPHIA - October 11, 2011 (WPVI) -- 30-year-old Charles Jacoby, a 10-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department, took an oath to protect and defend people from crime, but according to authorities, he was committing crimes himself.

"And certainly committing crime is not part of what a police officer ought to be doing so this is a crime and hopefully he's prosecuted to the fullest extent," Commissioner Charles Ramsey said.

According to authorities, from in or about January through about April 5th, Jacoby devised a scheme in the 22nd police district to steal the debit and credit cards of people who had been placed under arrest on his watch.

They say he would then take the cards to a Wawa in Philadelphia to buy gas for his personal vehicle and various items for himself and then destroy the cards.

Ultimately one of the victims would complain leading police to conduct an internal investigation.

That investigation later revealed that there was a pattern of such thefts at the 22nd district and that a trail of paper and electronic evidence would allegedly lead them to Jacoby.

They turned the case over to the feds where a plea deal is said to be in the works.

"We got some people who don't deserve to be members of this department and I've said time and time again that we have several investigations that are under way and that was one of them," Ramsey said.

Since 2009, under Commissioner Ramsey, there have been 34 officers charged with a crime.

Tonight, the commissioner signaled there could be more down the road.

"Where I expect there will be some times where we have officers either get criminally charged or they'll be discharged by me for various things. It's not representative of the entire department, but we do have some bad eggs and we will root them out," Ramsey said.

Incidentally, authorities say Jacoby targeted people that he thought had acted rowdy or disruptive.

He has been suspended from the police department for 30 days with the commissioner's intent to dismiss him.

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philadelphia, pennsylvania, fraud, police, crime

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