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Police corruption is a complex phenomenon, which does not readily
submit to simple analysis. It is a problem that has and will continue
to affect us all, whether we are civilians or law enforcement officers.
Since its beginnings, may aspects of policing have changed; however,
one aspect that has remained relatively unchanged is the existence of
corruption. An examination of a local newspaper or any police-related
publication on any given day will have an article about a police
officer that got busted committing some kind of corrupt act. Police
corruption has increased dramatically with the illegal cocaine trade,
with officers acting alone or in-groups to steal money from dealers or
distribute cocaine themselves. Large groups of corrupt police have been
caught in New York, New Orleans, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles.
Methodology: Corruption within police departments falls into 2
basic categories, which are external corruption and internal
corruption. In this report I will concentrate only on external
corruption because it has been the larger center of attention recently.
I have decided to include the fairly recent accounts of corruption from
a few major cities, mainly New York, because that is where I have lived
for the past 22 years. I compiled my information from numerous articles
written in the New York Times over the last 5 years. My definitional
infornmation and background data came from various books cited that
have been written on the issue of police corruption. Those books helped
me create a basis of just what the different types of corruption and
deviances are, as well as how and why corruption happens. The books
were filled with useful insite but were not update enough, so I relied
on the newspaper articles to provide me with the current, and regional
information that was needed to complete this report. In simple terms,
corruption in policing is usually viewed as the misuse of authority by
a police officer acting offically to fulfill personal needs or wants.
For a corrupt act to occure, three distinct elements of police
corruption must be present simultaneously: 1) missuse of authority, 2)
missuse of official capacity, and 3) missuse of personal attainment.
(Dantzker, 1995: p 157) It can be said that power inevitably tends to
corrupt, and it is yet to be recongnized that, while there is no reason
to suppose that policemen as individuals are any less fallible than
other members of society, people are often shocked and outraged when
policemen are exposed violating the law. The reason is simple. There
diviance elicits a special feeling of betrayal. "Most studies support
the view that corruption is endemic, if not universal, in police
departments. The danger of corruption for police, and this is that it
may invert the formal goals of the organization and may lead to "the
use of organizational power to encourage and create crime rather than
to deter it" (Sherman 1978: p 31) General police deviance can include
brutality, discrimination, sexual harassment, intimidation, and illicit
use of weapons. However it is not particularly obvious where brutality,
discrimination, and misconduct end and corruption begin. Essentially,
police corruption falls into two major categories-- external corruption
which concerns police contacts with the public, and internal
corruption, which involves the relationships among policemen within the
works of the police department. The external corruption generally
concists of one ore more of the following activities: 1) Payoffs to
police by essentially non-criminal elements who fail to comply with
stringent statutes or city ordinances; (for example, inviduals who
repeatedly violate traffic laws). 2) Payoffs to police by individuals
who continually violate the law as a method of making money (for
example, prostitutes, narcotics addicts and pusshers, &
professional burglars). 3) "Clean Graft" where money is paid to police
for services, or where courtesy discounts are given as a matter of
course to the police. "Police officers have been involved in activities
such as extortion of money and/or narcotics from narcotics viloators in
order to aviod arrest; they have accepted bribes; they have sold
narcotics. They have known of narcotics vilolations and have failed to
take proper enforcement action. They have entered into personal
associations with narcotics criminals and in some cases have used
narcotics. They have given false testimony in court in order to obtain
dismissal of the charges against a defendant." (Sherman 1978: p 129) A
scandal is perceived both as a socially constructed phenomenon and as
an agent of change that can lead to realignments in the structure of
power within oraganizations. New york, for instance, has had more than
a half dozen major scandals concerning its police department within a
century. It was the Knapp Commission in 1972 that first brought
attention to the NYPD when they released the results of over 2 years of
investigations of alleged corruption. The findings were that bribery,
especially amoung narcotics officers, was extremely high. As a result
many officers were prosecuted and many more lost their jobs. A massive
re-structuring took place aftewards with strict rules and regulations
to make sure that the problem would never happen again. Be that as it
may, the problem did arrise once gain... Some of the most recent events
to shake New York City and bring attention to the national problem of
police corruption was brought up begining in 1992 when five officers
were arrested on drug-trafficing charges.
Michael Dowd, the suspected 'ring leader', was the kind of cop who
gave new meaning to the word moonlighting. It wasn't just any job that
the 10-year veteran of the New York City force was working on the side.
Dowd was a drug dealer. From scoring free pizza as a rookie he
graduated to pocketing cash seized in drug raids and from there simply
to robbing dealers outright, sometimes also relieving them of drugs
that he would resell. Soon he had formed ``a crew'' of 15 to 20
officers in his Brooklyn precinct who hit up dealers regularly.
Eventually one of them was paying Dowd and another officer $8,000 a
week in protection money. Dowd bought four suburban homes and a $35,000
red Corvette. Nobody asked how he managed all that on take-home pay of
$400 a week. In May 1992 Dowd, four other officers and one former
officer were arrested for drug trafficking by police in Long Island's
Suffolk County. When the arrests hit the papers, it was
forehead-slapping time among police brass. Not only had some of their
cops become robbers, but the crimes had to be uncovered by a suburban
police force. Politicians and the media started asking what had
happened to the system for rooting out police corruption established 21
years ago at the urging of the Knapp Commission, the investigatory body
that heard Officer Frank Serpico and other police describe a citywide
network of rogue cops. (New York Times, March 29, 1993: p 8) To find
out, at the time, New York City mayor David Dinkins established the
Mollen Commission, named for its chairman, Milton Mollen, a former New
York judge. Last week, in the same Manhattan hearing room where the
Knapp Commission once sat, the new body heard Dowd and other officers
add another lurid chapter to the old story of police corruption. And
with many American cities wary that drug money will turn their
departments bad, police brass around the country were lending an uneasy
ear to the tales of officers sharing lines of coke from the dashboard
of their squad cars and scuttling down fire escapes with sacks full of
cash stolen from dealers' apartments. (New York Times, April 3, 1993:
p. 5) The Mollen Commission has not uncovered a citywide system of
payoffs among the 30,000-member force. In fact, last week's testimony
focused on three precincts, all in heavy crime areas. But the tales,
nevertheless, were troubling. Dowd described how virtually the entire
precinct patrol force would rendezvous at times at an inlet on Jamaica
Bay, where they would drink, shoot off guns in the air and plan their
illegal drug raids. (New York Times, Nov. 17, 1993: p. 3) It was
"victimless crimes" problem which many view was a prime cause in the
growth of police abuse. Reports have shown that the large majority of
corrupt acts by police involve payoffs from both the perpetrators and
the "victims" of victimless crimes. The knapp commission in the New
York found that although corruption among police officers was not
restricted to this area, the bulk of it involved payments of money to
the police from gamblers and prostitutes. (Knapp Commission Report,
1973: pp 1-3) ``The cops who were engaged in corruption 20 years ago
took money to cover up the criminal activity of others,'' says Michael
Armstrong, who was chief counsel to the Knapp Commission. `` Now it
seems cops have gone into competition with street criminals.''
(Newsweek, Oct 21,1992: p. 18) For cops as for anyone else, money works
age for crooked police. Gambling syndicates in the 1950s were protected
by a payoff system more elaborate than the Internal Revenue Service.
Pervasive corruption may have lessened in recent years, as many experts
believe, but individual examples seem to have grown more outrageous. In
March authorities in Atlanta broke up a ring of weight-lifting officers
who were charged with robbing strip clubs and private homes, and even
carrying off 450-lb. safes from retail stores. (Washington Post, Jan
18, 1993: p. 11) The deluge of cash that has flowed from the drug trade
has created opportunities for quick dirty money on a scale never seen
before. In the 1980s Philadelphia saw more than 30 officers convicted
of taking part in a scheme to extort money from dealers. In Los Angeles
an FBI probe focusing on the L.A. County sheriff's department has
resulted so far in 36 indictments and 19 convictions on charges related
to enormous thefts of cash during drug raids -- more than $1 million in
one instance. ``The deputies were pursuing the money more aggressively
than they were pursuing drugs,'' says Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven
Bauer. (Washington Post, Jan 18, 1993: p. 11) When cities enlarge their
police forces quickly in response to public fears about crime, it can
also mean an influx of younger and less well-suited officers. That was
a major reason for the enormous corruption scandal that hit Miami in
the mid-1980s, when about 10% of the city's police were either jailed,
fired or disciplined in connection with a scheme in which officers
robbed and sometimes killed cocaine smugglers on the Miami River, then
resold the drugs. Many of those involved had been hired when the
department had beefed up quickly after the 1980 riots and the Mariel
boatlift. ``We didn't get the quality of officers we should have,''
says department spokesman Dave Magnusson. (Carter, 1989: pp. 78-79)
When it came time to clean house, says former Miami police chief Perry
Anderson, civil service board members often chose to protect corrupt
cops if there was no hard evidence to convict them in the courts. ``I
tried to fire 25 people with tarnished badges, but it was next to
impossible,'' he recalls. (Carter, 1989: pp. 78-79)
The Mollen Commission testimony could also lead to second thoughts
on the growth of community policing, the back-to-the-beat philosophy
that in recent years has been returning officers to neighborhood patrol
in cities around the country, including New York. Getting to know the
neighborhood can mean finding more occasions for bribe taking, which is
one reason that in many places beat patrolling was scaled back since
the 1960s in favor of more isolated squad-car teams. The real test of a
department is not so much whether its officers are tempted by money but
whether there is an institutional culture that discourages them from
succumbing. In Los Angeles the sheriff's department ``brought us the
case,'' says FBI special agent Charlie Parsons. ``They worked with us
hand in glove throughout the investigation.'' (Washington Post, Jan 18,
1993: p. 11) In the years after it was established, following the Knapp
Commission disclosures, the New York City police department's internal
affairs division was considered one of the nation's most effective in
stalking corruption. But that may not be the case anymore. Police
sergeant Joseph Trimboli, a department investigator, told the Mollen
Commission that when he tried to root out Dowd and other corrupt cops,
his efforts were blocked by higher-ups in the department. At one point,
Trimboli claimed, he was called to a meeting of police officials and
told he was under suspicion as a drug trafficker. ``They did not want
this investigation to exist,'' he said. (New York Times, April 3, 1993:
p. 5) It was at this time that New York City police commissioner, at
the time, Raymond Kelly announced a series of organizational changes,
including a larger staff and better-coordinated field investigations,
intended to improve internal affairs. His critics say those changes
don't go far enough. Much of that happened after Kelly's reforms had
been announced. The Mollen Commission is recommend the establishment of
an outside monitoring agency, a move that Kelly and other police brass
have expressed some reservations about. ``No group is good at policing
itself,'' says Knapp Commission counsel Armstrong. ``It doesn't hurt to
have somebody looking over their shoulder.'' An independent body,
however, might be less effective at getting co-operation from cops
prone to close ranks against outsiders. ``You have to have the
confidence of officers and information about what's going on
internally,'' says former U.S. Attorney Thomas Puccio, who prosecuted a
number of police-corruption cases. (New York Times, April 3, 1993: p.
5) Getting that information was no easier when officers were encouraged
to report wrongdoing to authorities within their own department. In
many cities that have them, internal affairs divisions are resented
within the ranks for getting cops to turn in other cops -- informers
are even recruited from police-academy cadets -- and for rarely
targeting the brass. ``One of the things that has come out in the
hearings is a culture within the department which seems to permit
corruption to exist,'' says Walter Mack, a one time federal prosecutor
who is now New York's deputy commissioner of internal affairs. ``But
when you're talking about cultural change, you're talking about many
years. It's not something that occurs overnight.'' (New York Post, June
14, 1993: p. 28) Dowd, who was sentenced prison on guilty please, put
it another way. ``Cops don't want to turn in other cops,'' he said.
``Cops don't want to be a rat.'' And even when honest cops are willing
to blow the whistle, there may not be anyone willing to listen. (New
York Times, Mar. 29, 1993: p. 14) Is there a solution to the police
corruption problem? Probably not because since its beginings, many
aspects of policing have changed, but one thing that has not is the
existence of corruption. Police agenies, in an attempt to elminate
corruption have tried everything from increasing salaries, requiring
more training and education, and developing polices which are intended
to focus directly on factors leading to corruption. What have all these
changes done to eliminate or even decrease the corruption problem?
Little or nothing. Despite police departments' attempts to control
corruption, it still occurs. Regardless of the fact, police corruption
cannot simply be over looked. Controling corruption is the only way
that we can really limit corruption, because corruption is the
by-product of the individual police officer, societal views, and,
police environmental factors. Therefore control must come from not only
the police department, but also must require the assistance and support
of the community members. Controling corruption from the departmental
level requires a strong leadership organization, because corruption can
take place any where from the patrol officer to the chief. The top
administrator must make it clear from the start that he and the other
members of the department are against any form of corrupt activity, and
that it will not be tollerated in any way, shape, or form. If a police
administrator does not act strongly with disciplinary action against
any corrupt activity, the message conveyed to other officers within the
department will not be that of intimated nature. In addition it may
even increase corruption, because officers feel no actions will be
taken against them. Another way that police agencies can control its
corruption problem starts orginally in the academy. Ethical decisions
and behavior should be promoted, because failing to do make officers
aware of the consequences of corruption does nothing but encourages it.
Finally, many police departments, especially large ones, have an
Internal Affairs unit which operates to investigate improper conduct of
police departments. These units some times are run within the
department or can be a total outside agency to insure that there is not
corruption from within the Internal Affairs unit, as was alleged in the
1992 NYPD corruption scandal. Such a unit may be all that is need to
prevent many officers from being tempted into falling for corrupt
behavior patterns. Although the police agaency should be the main
source of controling its own corruption problem, there also requires
some support and assistance from the local community. It is important
that the public be educated to the negative affects of corruption on
their police agency. They should be taught that even 'graitudes' (the
most basic and common form of police corruption) is only a catalyst for
more and future corruption. The community may even go as far as
establishing review boards, and investigative bodies to help keep a
careful eye on the agency. If we do not act to try and control it, the
costs can be enormous, because it affects not only the individual, his
department, the law enforcement community as a whole, but society as
well. Police corruption can be controlled; it just takes a little extra
effort. And In the long run, that effort will be well worth it to both
the agency and the community. (Walker, 1992: p. 89)
The powers given by the state to the police to use force have
always caused concern. Although improvements have been made to control
corruption, numerous opportunities exist for deviant and corrupt
practices. The opportunity to aquire power in excess of that which is
legally permitted or to misuse power is always available. The police
subculture is a contributing factor to these practices, because
officers who often act in a corrupt manner are often over looked, and
condoned by other members of the subculture. As mentioned from the very
begining of this report the problem of police deviance and corruption
will never be completely solved, just as the police will never be able
to solve the crime problem in our society. One step in the right
direction, however, is the monitoring and control of the police and the
appropriate use of police style to enforce laws and to provide service
to the public.
Works Cited
Beals, Gregory (1993, Oct 21). Why Good Cops Go Bad. Newsweek, p. 18.
Carter, David L. (1986). Deviance & Police. Ohio: Anderson Publishing Co.
Castaneda, Ruben (1993, Jan. 18). Bearing the Badge of Mistrust. The Washington Post, p. 11.
Dantzker, Mark L. (1995, ). Understanding Today's Police. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
James, George (1993, Mar. 29). Confessions of Corruption. The New York Times, p. 8.
James, George (1993, Nov. 17). Officials Say Police Corruption is Hard To Stop. The New York Times, p. 3.
Sherman, Lawrence W (1978). Scandal And Reform. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Simpson, Scott T. (1993, June 14). Mollen Commission Findings. New York Post, p. 28
Walker, J.T. (1992). Briefs of 100 leading cases in the law enforcement. Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing Company.
Weber, Bruce (1993, April 3). Confessions of Corruption. The New York Times, p. 5.
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