Troy police officer suspended without pay for involvement in drug buy (UPDATED, PART III)

     Third update is at the end.

Troy Police Officer Michael Johnson has been suspended without pay for off duty conduct.

Capt. John Cooney, the department public information officer, would not comment on the conduct in question. An internal affairs investigation is ongoing, he said.

Police officers, as per union contract, can be suspended for up to 30 days without pay and then they must be put back on the payroll while the disciplinary process plays out.  

More information as it becomes available.

According to the Times Union, Johnson was arrested in Hudson when a woman he and his brother were with purchased heroin. Johnson was driving the car at the time.

In 2012, Johnson was stabbed in the leg while on patrol near the Martin Luther King apartment complex. He stopped to talk to a group of three males who were acting suspiciously. Johnson was stabbed in the leg before the men fled and he did discharge his weapon. The men were never apprehended and the circumstances surrounding the stabbing remains under question.

At the time, Johnson's story about approaching the three men in a questionable neighborhood just to check out what they were doing was suspect. The three men in question were never apprehended and while Johnson did fire multiple times at the fleeing suspects, he did not hit any of the suspects or anything else.

The military veteran who was involved in combat in Iraq, never backed off his story, however, and since police brass could not disprove it, they had no choice but to believe it. But, since few believed it transpired as he described - with some even wondering if he stabbed himself - I'm told by reliable sources other officers were wary of working alongside him.

That year, he won the "Officer Assaulted Award" for the Jan. 4 incident - an honor I've never heard of but the Police Benevolent Association gives out a slew of awards every year so I don't know if this one was made up to tweak Johnson or not.

Another question I have about Johnson is why he wasn't arrested by Hudson police. Seems to me, if I drive a woman to buy heroin and she actually buys it and then gets in my car and I drive away, I'm as culpable - or close to it - as she is.