It wasn’t me
Chiropractor denies providing substance
POLICE | Bruce Rushton
A Springfield chiropractor denies that he prescribed or otherwise supplied a banned diet supplement to city police officers or anyone else.
“I’ve never prescribed anything to anyone,” says Sean McCaffrey. “I can’t.”
However, Loren Pettit, a police officer who lies at the center of a legal battle between the police union and the city, said in sworn testimony late last year that McCaffrey prescribed human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) for him as a diet supplement as recently as 2012, after the substance was banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as an over-the-counter diet aid on the grounds that it isn’t effective.
Pettit in November referred to McCaffrey as a doctor and also testified that Chief Kenny Winslow and the chief’s secretary used HCG obtained from the same source.
“I had talked to Chief Winslow on many occasions about HCG because he used it, and one of his secretaries…she used it, and had lost a whole bunch of weight on HCG from the same doctor,” Pettit testified.
The transcript shows that Winslow was present when Pettit testified. During his sworn testimony, the chief was not asked whether he had used HCG, and the arbitrator concluded that HCG use was “common” in the department. In an interview with Illinois Times for a story published May 7 (“Cops on drugs? No problem”), Winslow denied ever using HCG.
In concentrated form, HCG boosts testosterone levels lowered by steroid use, and the city during the November hearing pointed out that HCG use was the basis for a 50-game suspension served by former Los Angeles Dodgers star Manny Ramirez in 2009. In diluted form, the substance is used as a diet supplement, but the federal government banned such use absent a prescription in 2011.
Pettit testified that he used HCG and other substances in an effort to lose weight.
Investigators found HCG in Pettit’s patrol car after his live-in girlfriend accused him of domestic violence in 2013 and suggested that steroid use might have provoked him. Pettit tested positive for clenbuterol, an asthma drug banned as a performance enhancer in several sports and the Olympics, and nandrolone, a steroid that is on the department’s banned list that is contained in the city’s collective bargaining agreement with the police union.
Pettit acknowledged taking pills and injecting himself with a substance obtained from a gym operator who is now deceased, but he insisted that he didn’t know that the substances contained anything illegal. The city fired Pettit, but the arbitrator ruled that he must be reinstated. The city is now suing the union in an effort to overturn the ruling.
McCaffrey says that Pettit was once a patient but he has not seen the officer for several years.
“There’s no way he could have gotten it (HCG) from me,” McCaffrey says. “By April of 2011, he (Pettit) was done with us. You’re not going to have anything from me three years later. We don’t do needles, we don’t do syringes, we don’t do prescriptions.”
It’s illegal to provide HCG for weight loss absent a prescription. McCaffrey said that no law enforcement agency has asked him about accusations that he had provided the substance to Pettit or anyone else.
“You would think, hey, if I’m the one supplying this stuff, they (police) would be all over me,” McCaffrey said. “That just tells me that there was nothing there. … The cop who got busted for domestic abuse and injecting stuff with needles is probably not the one telling the truth here.”
Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.
