Cayuga County Sheriff Peter J. Pinckney is being charged by the state Attorney General's Office in connection with $4,000 worth of missing cash seized indrug arrests and other crimes involving abuse of the public trust.

No doubt the sheriff's friends and supporters, as well as most people in Cayuga County, would like to believe that the sheriff is innocent or, at worst, that he's just "one bad apple in the barrel." What they may not realize though, is that, in some ways, Sheriff Pinckney is a victim himself.

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