America's Plague of Bad Cops
By
Joseph D. McNamara
( Former San Jose Police Chief. )
Los Angeles Times - September 17, 1995
Citizens are having trouble distinguishing the good guys from the
bad.
Retired LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman spouts venomous racism and brags to an
aspiring screenwriter about torturing, beating and framing
suspects. Cops across
the country murder people, pull armed robberies while in
uniform, sell dope,
steal drug-buy money, shake down criminals, accept bribes and
falsify evidence
against criminal defendants. The standard defense coming from law enforcement is
that only a relative handful of the 400,000 cops nationwide go bad. For several
reasons, the public is not reassured.
First, the number of reported cases of
bad cops is rising. Some L.A. County
deputy sheriffs get caught robbing and extorting money from drug
dealers. In New Orleans, a uniformed cop is accused of
murdering her partner and shop owners
during a robbery committed while she was on patrol. In Washington,
D.C., and in Atlanta, cops in drug stings are arrested for
stealing and taking bribes. In Boston, two white cops frame a
black man for murdering a white woman. New York
State troopers falsify evidence that sends people to prison. In San
Francisco,
counterfeit evidence means hundreds of drug convictions are likely to be
overturned. Similar evidence tampering forces the prosecution to reopen many
cases in Philadelphia.
It's not just the
rank and file, either. The former police chief of Detroit
is in prison for stealing drug-buy money. In a small New England
town. the chief
steals drugs from the evidence locker for his own use. A number of Southern
sheriffs are convicted of being in league with drug smugglers.
Agencies thought to be
untouchable are suddenly reaping as many bad headlines
as the perennially troubled New York City Police Department. The Drug
Enforcement agent who arrested Panama's Gen. Manuel Noriega on drug- trafficking
charges is in jail for stealing laundered drug money. The FBI catches one of its
agents taking drugs from the evidence stockpile and trying to market them to
regional drug dealers.
Of course,
police corruption is not new. The heritage of cops in America
includes corruption, racism, and abuse of power for political
purposes. The
urban police forces started in the 1840s followed the orders of political
machines like Tammany Hall. Aficionados of Raymond
Chandler's private eye,
Philip Marlowe, will recall his good luck in encountering an occasional honest
cop as he roamed Southern California in the 1930s. Ironically, it was the
LAPD-whose
recent problems have amplified police departments'- sins nationwide-under the
leadership of William IL Parker, that first gained its freedom from
politics to
become a professional force.
One, of the
fundamental problems of American policing is the conflict between
law-enforcement duties and maintaining order in the streets. For example, the
Los Angeles Police Department is probably the most arrest-happy department in
the country. By contrast, cops in other cities send drunks home, overlook
minor
violations and seek to keep the streets calm without resorting to arrest. Also,
the LAPD, as well as other police forces, maintain control by
aggressively
policing minority communities. Resisters are taught a lesson and, if necessary,
punished physically, especially if they show "contempt of cop".
Politicians and
officials whose careers depend on tough-on-crime rhetoric are reluctant to ask
too many questions about what the cops are doing.
Indeed.
public fear of crime has made it increasingly difficult for the
relatively small number of police chiefs who really care to get civil-service
commissions to uphold discipline in their ranks. And the few district attorneys
willing to prosecute cops for unnecessary use of force find it difficult to get
juries to convict officers, especially when the victim of a police beating is a
minority. After all, in a war, you cannot tie your soldiers' hands when the
"enemy" is so dangerous.
True,
American policing has greatly improved since the civil rights movement
directed attention to police abuses. But the recent outbreak of bad-cop problems
has cost police forces a lot of the credibility they had gained among
minority
groups with good policing. Still. there is one silver lining in the cloud of
distrust created by the Fuhrman tapes and the plethora of police
scandals: more
self scrutiny.
We should not, however, make the mistake of getting lost in debates about
such reform mechanisms as civilian-review boards, community policing and
special prosecutors. Rather, the essential task is to create within police agencies an
incentive to break the code of silence among the rank and file and encourage
cops to police themselves. A corrupt, racist or brutal cop will abstain from
misconduct only when he looks at the cop next to him and believes that the
officer will -blow the whistle if he hits the suspect. The police value system
is what permits the kind of behavior that gets bad .headlines. Real
reform is
possible only when that value system changes and cops come to realize that they
must police themselves.
For
mayors and chiefs, the first step is to stop telling cops they are
engaged in war. Next, they and rank-and-file cops must also stop using the
"few
bad apples" defense to obscure the fact that the code of silence among honest
cops is allowing crooked and racist cops to flourish. Finally,
leaders should be
honest and acknowledge that good cops are now punished, instead of
rewarded, if
they expose bad cops. Politicians and chiefs must recognize that it is not
negative publicity to weed out misfits; it actually demonstrates to the
public
that it can trust the police to police themselves.
Only when the
community can tell the good guys from the bad will we be able
to get tough on crime. Then, people will report crime to the police,
serve as
witnesses and, when they sit on a jury, believe police testimony.
Justice is not
served when juries spend as much time judging the police as determining the
guilt or innocence of the person on trial.
See
Also:
SJPD
- A Chief with Opaque Policies
Article
by Dr. Chris Ehrentraut
|
