Police corruption
Police corruption is a form of police misconduct in which a law enforcement officer breaks their political contract and abuses their power for personal gain. A corrupt officer may act alone or as part of a group. Corrupt acts include taking bribes, stealing from victims or suspects, and manipulating evidence to affect the outcome of legal proceedings. Police corruption challenges the human rights of citizens, and can undermine public trust in the police when uncovered or suspected.
Types
Soliciting or accepting bribes in exchange for not reporting organized drug or prostitution rings or other illegal activities and violations of law, county and city ordinances and state and federal laws.Bribes may also include leasing unlawful access to proprietary law enforcement databases and systems.
Flouting the police code of conduct in order to secure convictions of civilians and suspects—for example, through the use of falsified evidence. There are also situations where law enforcement officers may deliberately and systematically participate in organized crime themselves.
Selective enforcement
In most major cities there are internal affairs sections to investigate suspected police corruption or misconduct, including selective enforcement, but there are situations where Internal Affairs also hides departmental and individual corruption, fraud, abuse and waste by individual officers, groups of officers or even unwritten departmental policies. There are also Police Commissions who are complicit in the same cover-ups, often to hide internal and departmental problems, both from public view, and also from inter-departmental reviews and investigations. Certain officers can be fired, then rehired by petition after they accrue enough signatures, often from the very criminals and violators from whom corrupt officers have garnered previous favors in exchange for officers "turning a blind eye", resulting in selective enforcement of violations being deterred, but actually promoted.
Similar entities include the British Independent Police Complaints Commission. Police corruption is a significant widespread problem in many departments and agencies worldwide.
It is not possible to measure the level of corruption in a country. Surveys of police officers, citizens and businesses can be used to provide estimates on levels of corruption. These are often inaccurate, as respondents involved in corruption are reluctant to provide any information implicating themselves in criminal activity. Despite this limitation, information collected from International Crime Victim Surveys and surveys conducted by the Global Corruption Enumerated Barometer can be used to estimate the level of police corruption.
Corrupt acts
have several opportunities to gain personally from their status and authority as law enforcement officers. The Knapp Commission, which investigated corruption in the New York City Police Department in the early 1970s, divided corrupt officers into two types: meat-eaters, who "aggressively misuse their police powers for personal gain", and grass-eaters, who "simply accept the payoffs that the happenstances of police work throw their way."There are multiple typologies of police corruption that have been asserted by academics. However, common corrupt acts that have been committed by police officers can be classified as follows:
- Death in custody: Murder of an accused or convicted person in custody by way of a beating. Corrections Officers who engage in this behavior are known as a “beat up squad.” Officers disabling Bodycams are often involved.
- Corruption of authority: When police officers receive free drinks, meals, and other gratuities, because they are police officers, whether intentionally or unintentionally, they convey an image of corruption.
- Extortion/bribery: Demanding or receiving payment for criminal offenses, to overlook a crime or a possible future crime. Types of bribery are protection for illegal activities, ticket fixing, altering testimony, destroying evidence, and selling criminal information. Bribery is one of the most common acts of corruption.
- Theft and burglary is when an officer or department steals from a suspect, victim or corpse. Examples are taking drugs for personal use in a drug bust, and taking personal objects from a corpse at the scene of a crime. A theft can also occur within a department. An officer can steal property from the department's evidence room or property room for personal use.
- Shakedowns: When a police officer is aware of a crime and the violator but accepts a bribe for not arresting the violator.
- "Fixing": Undermining criminal prosecutions by withholding evidence or failing to appear at judicial hearings, for bribery or as a personal favor.
- Perjury: Lying to protect other officers or oneself in a court of law or a department investigation.s.
- Internal payoffs: Prerogatives and prerequisites of law enforcement organizations, such as shifts and holidays, being bought and sold.
- Overtime Fraud: Obtaining large sums of overtime without being at work.
- The "frameup": The planting or adding to evidence, especially in drug cases.
- Ticket fixing: Police officers cancelling traffic tickets as a favor to the friends and family of other police officers.
Behavior
- Psychological paradigm: The psychological paradigm suggests that behavior is based and structured through an individual's early stages of life. Those attracted to the police occupation tend to be more "authoritarian". The authoritarian personality is characterized by conservative, aggressive, cynical, and rigid behaviors. Corruption may involve profit or another type of material benefit gained illegally as a consequence of the officer's authority. Psychological corruption can be a part of a department's culture or from the certain individual.
- Sociological paradigm: The sociological paradigm focuses on individual exposure to a police training academy, regular in-service training, and field experience all shape occupational character. Police learn how to behave, discretion, morals and what to think from their shared experiences with other police officers. New recruits develop definitions with their peers either positive or negative. These definitions are then reinforced, positively or negatively, by the rewards or punishments that follow their behavior. For example, a new recruit may be given an order by his peer to arrest an individual sitting in the passenger seat for a DUI. This action can end up negatively or positively for the officer depending on how the situation is perceived by the court later on.
- Anthropological paradigm: When an individual's social character is changed when an officer becomes part of the occupational culture. The term culture is often used to describe differences among large social groups where they share unique beliefs, morals, customs, and other characteristics that set them apart from other groups. Within the police culture, officers learn to be suspicious of the public. Police culture can also be quite racist, and shot through with assumptions about the criminal tendencies of certain minority groups, such as African Americans, or the competency of fellow officers from minority backgrounds, which can lead officers to make corrupted choices for personal benefits or gains.
Prevalence
Where corruption exists, the widespread existence of a Blue Code of Silence among the police can prevent the corruption from coming to light. Officers in these situations commonly fail to report corrupt behavior or provide false testimony to outside investigators to cover up criminal activity by their fellow officers. The well-known case of Frank Serpico, a police officer who spoke out about pervasive corruption in the New York City Police Department despite the open hostility of other members, illustrates how powerful the code of silence can be. In Australia in 1994, by 46 votes to 45, independent politician John Hatton forced the New South Wales state government to override the Independent Commission Against Corruption and the advice of senior police to establish a ground-breaking Royal Commission into Police Corruption However, in a number of countries, such as China, Pakistan, Malaysia, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil or Mexico, police corruption remains to be one of the largest social problems facing their countries.