Calvin Kevin Shoj, 28, hid his face from the media and ran to a car after he was sentenced. Photo: Albert McKnight.
A sworn police officer from NSW took cocaine himself before he was caught selling a bag of the same drug to an undercover cop in a Canberra nightclub.
Calvin Kevin Shoj, a 28-year-old former constable with NSW Police, pleaded guilty to a charge of supplying a drug of dependence before he faced the ACT Magistrates Court for sentencing on Monday (29 September).
He was caught with two bags, each containing about 0.8 grams of cocaine, at a Canberra nightclub in May 2024 after he sold one bag to a stranger, who was actually an undercover police officer, for $300.
Shoj went on to tell a psychologist he “impulsively” sold the drugs after a friend asked him to.
The court heard he refused a drug test that night and was stood down from his role in the police force, then was suspended a few days later before resigning the following month.
“To put it bluntly, the defendant jumped before he was pushed,” Magistrate Amy Begley said.
“His termination from the police force was inevitable.”
Prosecutor Sofia Janackovic said the matter warranted significant condemnation as it involved a police officer enforcing the law by day, but then breaching that very same law by night.
“At the end of the day, he profited by providing that cocaine to an undercover police officer,” the prosecutor said.
Ms Janackovic also argued that Shoj must have known that by selling drugs into the community, it was a foregone conclusion that he would lose his job and career as a police officer.
Shoj’s barrister, Tim Lowe of Frederick Jordan Chambers, said his client had been a proactive and talented officer with NSW Police and this incident had been “a significant fall from grace”.
He now lives and works as a barber in Sydney.
Mr Lowe said Shoj had been drinking enough alcohol to become drunk about four or five times a week and had been taking cocaine around the time of the offence, including on the night of the incident. But he hadn’t used cocaine since then and had significantly reduced his drinking.
He said his client told a psychologist about the nature of police incidents he was exposed to, and those incidents continued to cause him distress.
Mr Lowe also said Shoj had no prior criminal history, suffered from mental health challenges and was remorseful as “what he did brought shame to his family, brought shame to himself”.
Magistrate Begley said that, as Shoj was a police officer, the offence was more serious than if it had been committed by a person not in such a position of trust.
“The defendant swore to uphold the law and he failed to do so,” she said.
She spoke directly to him to say, “You let yourself down, you let your family down and you let the community down”.
“You need to understand how close you have come to serving a period of imprisonment. You have made an impulsive and incredibly stupid decision.”
She did note he had shown remorse and it was a one-off transaction involving a small amount of drugs.
Shoj was convicted and sentenced to an 18-month good behaviour order with a $2500 fine.
The main scoop is what he was endorsing. The Fabian Socialists over there are even worse than those… View