Analysis of Police Corruption

Analysis of Police Corruption

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