From Danville comes this latest report of scandalous police activity: a Contra Costa Sheriff's deputy has admitted to being party to some of Private Investigator, Reality TV hopeful and Soccer Mom-employer Chris Butler's shenanigans. Per the Chronicle's report,

Deputy Stephen Tanabe, 47, told a reserve sheriff's deputy on patrol with him the night of Jan. 14 that a drunken-driving arrest the two were making outside a Danville bar was a "setup" and that the target needed to be "dirtied" for a future court date, a sheriff's investigator wrote in a search warrant affidavit.

Tanabe was working with a private investigator [later identified as Butler] who had been hired by the target's wife for $5,000, the affidavit said. The deputy is suspected of receiving "financial benefits" for the arrest, the document said.

As if being on the take wasn't enough, Deputy Tanabe was arrested last Friday on "suspicion of drug and weapons crimes" including possession of an illegal assault rifle which he had asked another deputy to hold on to, fearing his home would be search after the arrests of Butler and CoCo County Drug Czar Norman Wielsch last month. Perhaps not surprising: all three men are veterans of the Antioch Police Department and served together in the late 1990's. Tanabe is currently out on $260,000 bail.

Previously on SFist: Contra Costa Narcotics Czar, MILF-Employing Private Investigator Busted for Dealing Drugs
[Chronicle]