Soft sentences

We're not impressed when crooks say they're sorry. They're always sorry after they're caught; yet if they were really sorry they wouldn't have committed the crimes in the first place.

Such were our feelings as former Richmond County cops Stoney Turnage and Roderick Berry apologized in U.S. District Court Monday for conspiring to extort money from a felon who brought strippers and prostitutes to Augusta - in short, taking payoffs to look the other way.

But the officers were also guilty of something else - violating the public trust. This, in our view, makes their crime worse than if they were ordinary citizens and should require enhanced sentencing.

Turnage, 47, who was a lieutenant with 25 years on the job, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, three years of supervised release, 100 hours of community service and fined $7,500. Berry, 44, an investigator with 14 years in local law-enforcement, was sentenced to six months in prison, three years of supervised release, 150 hours of community service and a $2,500 fine.

These are awfully light sentences for corrupt cops who at one point were looking at a five-year prison term. But given what they pleaded guilty to, and the sentencing guidelines federal Judge Dudley Bowen Jr. was bound by, they got about what was expected.

Bowen went a little softer on Berry than the guidelines called for because the assistant U.S. attorney said he provided "valuable information to us right from the start" and could be useful in other investigations, hinting there may be more to come in this scandal.

Turnage could have received up to 30 months in prison, but Bowen figured he was not a big enough fish in the department to warrant the maximum term, so he cut it to 18 months - a judgment we understand but disagree with.

However, we commend Bowen for turning back Turnage's lawyer's contention that his client's sentence should have been reduced even more because it was unreasonable to define as a "victim" the Atlanta felon who paid the bribes. That's not the point - the law-officer's honesty and integrity is.

The most damaged victims in this case are the families of Turnage and Berry. It must be a terrible shock to learn that instead of being the proud kin of respected law-enforcement officers, they had had been disgraced by them.