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A judge in California has dismissed overtime fraud and wage theft cases against California Highway Patrol officers because (As Anna Russell would say, "I'm not making this up, you know.") the judge felt that fraud and theft were ordinary behavior of members of the CHP.

Yes, the judge literally bought the, "It's not a crime if everyone is doing it," defense:

California Highway Patrol officers stationed in East Los Angeles grew so accustomed to uneventful overtime shifts that they set up a room with six beds where they could sleep while on duty, according to investigative reports prepared by the department.

Photos of the beds, set up in a room nicknamed “535 Inn” after the station’s identification number, appear in reports that formed the basis for the CHP to fire many of the officers and, early this year, for Attorney General Rob Bonta to charge 54 of them with fraud and felony wage theft of about $267,000.

The criminal charges followed a CHP audit and investigation that found officers exaggerated the overtime hours they had worked on late-night Caltrans details, reporting full shifts when in fact they spent only a few hours, or none, at work sites. The East L.A. office was the smallest in CHP’s Southern Division but accounted for nearly three times as much reimbursable overtime as the largest office in the division, according to a summary of CHP’s initial audit.

By Thursday, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge had dismissed charges against nearly all of the officers — over objections from Bonta’s office — in a deal that allowed them to repay Caltrans for the unworked hours without admitting guilt. Fifty-two of the 54 officers agreed to the deal, while two planned to proceed to trial.

………

The accused officers claimed, in court documents prepared by attorneys, that East L.A.’s overtime practices had been the same or similar for nearly 20 years before the audit, were supported by a written policy, were approved by managers and were common at CHP offices throughout the state.

The practice of leaving work early and then receiving full pay starts at CHP’s training academy, and is so common that officers often stop working after filling traffic ticket or DUI quotas, even if their shift isn’t over, the accused officers claimed in the court documents.

………

“The conduct they engaged in was perfectly legal; it was an accepted practice for decades,” said Steve Cooley, a Los Angeles-based attorney who represented the officers in administrative proceedings and in preliminary Los Angeles County legal proceedings.

The big story is not the judge throwing out the charges, it is that there is credible information suggesting that the entirety of the CHP routinely engages in fraud and wage theft.

Fire them all.