The end to Fullerton police officer Todd Major’s career came when internal affairs investigators showed up at his Seal Beach apartment and he appeared to be so high that he couldn’t speak without slurring.

The slurred speech and dozens of empty prescription drug bottles found in his apartment and at his police department desk betrayed a hidden habit that led him to steal from the city and even his wards in the Police Explorer program.

Those who worked with Major, 30, say he was a great cop with a good heart. People who crossed paths with the lanky school resource officer liked him so much they emailed the police department to tell his superiors what a great job he was doing.

Major spent nearly every Tuesday night running the department’s Police Explorer program, a division of Boy Scouts of America, preaching to teenagers about what it means to be a police officer. The son of Mike Major, the former head of investigations for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, Todd Major grew up entrenched in the thin blue line.

But in September 2010, Major’s double life began to unravel when the Fullerton Police Department started looking at how he spent city money, according to court documents and interviews.

The state Attorney General charged Major in March with 14 felonies and three misdemeanors, accusing the six-year veteran of misusing a city credit card repeatedly last summer, forging a city check and stealing from two Troy High School administrators, 11 of his Fullerton police explorers and the Fullerton Car Show.

Major had been on sick and furlough leave for more than a month when Fullerton’s internal affairs investigators found him in the alley behind his apartment, showing objective signs of “possible narcotic analgesic intoxication (slurred speech, droopy-eyelids, slow movements),” according to search warrant documents.

Even though he hadn’t been working, Major still had the City of Fullerton credit card his captain had given him to pay Explorer-related expenses. Instead, investigators suspected, Major used the card to pay for prescription painkillers and to buy Visa gift cards as a way of concealing how he was spending the city’s money.

Detectives removed 30 empty pill bottles, including ones that had held oxycodone, along with baggies of hydrocodone – both strong narcotics – and other white pills from his apartment, according to search warrant documents. Some of the pills were prescribed for Major; some were prescribed for other people. Investigators also found two hydrocodone bottles in his department desk, filled one day apart, along with drug and Visa gift card receipts and medical wristbands.

Major was also caught on store surveillance tape using the city credit card to buy gift cards and oxycodone. He admitted to internal affairs investigators that he had made the transactions and told them where to find the receipts and any unused cards; beyond that he refused to cooperate, according to search warrant documents.

Major resigned in January.

While internal affairs continued its investigation, Fullerton police asked themselves whether they missed any signs about Major or how they could have done to prevent a good cop from becoming a criminal.

Major, who was hired as a police officer after pleading guilty to driving with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit when he was 20, pleaded guilty last month to two felonies – fraudulently using a credit card to steal and embezzling from the city of Fullerton. An alcohol-related driving conviction is not an automatic disqualifier for being hired as a Fullerton police officer, but it is at other law enforcement agencies.

Major’s plea agreement specifically prohibits him from using illegal drugs or unauthorized prescription drugs, a provision included only in cases where drugs are involved either in the crime or as a motive for the crimes. Major must also submit to drug testing and is prohibited from associating with drug dealers or users, according to court papers.

A judge ordered him to serve 180 days – a sentence he is serving through a community work program taking out trash at the Theo Lacy Jail complex in Orange five days a week, eight hours a day. He goes home at night, Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman John McDonald confirmed.

Prosecutors dropped the other 15 charges in exchange for the two guilty pleas.

The Register has tried to contact Major repeatedly, leaving messages with his probation officer, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department who is overseeing his sentence, and his attorney, Michael D. Schwartz. Neither Major nor his attorney has responded to repeated requests for comment.

The abuse of prescription painkillers is America’s second most rampant illegal drug problem, falling only behind marijuana, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The problem has been seeping into America’s law enforcement agencies, in some cases blurring the lines between cop and crook.

Former Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Allan Waters appeared to be intoxicated at his sentencing in June for driving under the influence of prescription drugs and injuring a 78-year-old woman in an off-duty collision. His condition prompted Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel to revoke a plea deal, citing a concern for public safety.

The 14-year veteran was ultimately given 32 months in prison Friday after pleading guilty to 12 felonies, including that he sold fake cocaine to buy prescription drugs and lied to eight doctors for more than a year to get prescription painkillers.

Anaheim police officer Kevin Noel Schlueter resigned last March after being charged with driving under the influence of a cocktail of prescription drugs for the third time in less than a year.

Helping law enforcement officers deal with their addictions isn’t easy.

Federal health privacy laws along with police union and California state law protections for police officers prevent departments from even knowing what medications officers are taking, much less whether they are addicted. Often, law enforcement officers are left to battle addiction on their own.

“It’s an issue we’re very concerned about,” said Assistant Sheriff Mike James of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “People with legitimate, often on-duty injuries get prescribed these very powerful medications and they get addicted. And it’s on the rise – across the country and in law enforcement.”

The Sheriff’s Department is working toward putting together an educational video with testimony from former deputies who lost their careers to prescription drugs in the hopes of preventing others from following the same path of destruction.

“People who suffer from drug dependence often act unwisely and inappropriately while neglecting their responsibilities in the workplace. It not only affects personal relationships with family and friends, it can lead to behaviors that cause the person to do almost anything in order to use the substance,” said Fullerton Police Chief Michael Sellers, whose officers investigated Major.

“This is the true tragedy because rarely does anyone think ahead of time about the consequences for their dependency behaviors.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-7829 or kedds@ocregister.com