Police corruption in New York City - Research Paper Example

?Sur Lecturer Police corruption in New York Introduction Police corruption is a type police misconduct through which police officers seeks personal advantage or gain like career advancement or money, through abusing power, e.g. accepting inducement or bribes in exchange for selectively pursuing or not pursuing and arrest or investigation. Accurate or precise information concerning the prevalence of corruption by police is not easy to come by because the corruption practices happen in private and secrets, in addition, police departments have very little incentive to publish corruption information. Researchers as well as police officials have argued that in most state police departments, large scale police corruption not only prevail, but have also been institutionalized. Some of the general police corruption acts prevalent in police state departments include: corruption of authorities, kickbacks, opportunistic thefts, shakedowns, protection of illegal activity, fixing, direct criminal activities, internal payoffs, police hazing, frameup, and ticket fixing among others. New York is one state where police corruption has been noted in masses, and therefore this paper seeks to discuss the police corruption in New York City. Examples of police corruption activities and event in New York City include: NYPD subway sodomy scandal; kidnapping, robbery and torture of drug dealer; NYPD Muslim surveillance controversy; NYPD rape cops scandal; the 2011 ticket fixing scandal; Tompkins Square Park riot; Mafia cops; and various shooting and arrests among others (Hopson 12). Corruption incidences in New York City Since the founding of New York Police Department in 1844, scandals of corruption have warranted investigations by commissions about every twenty years right at the beginning by the 1894 Lexow Committee, the 1914 Curran Committee, the 1932 Seabury Commission, the 1949 Helfand Commission, the 1970 Knapp Commission, and the 1993 Mollen Commission. Almost until 1980's, police corruption often involved some form of extortion or vice consisting of payments to officers in order to escape arrest or prosecution for a crime or a violation. In the early 1970s and late 1960's, narcotic police corruption emerged. Police officers discovered that the small amounts of money relatively obtained from the shakedown were almost nothing in comparison to the hundreds and thousands of dollars obtained from narcotics shakedowns. In practice, the large amounts of money temptation available from drug trafficking is a major challenge facing the New York Police Department and the New York City entirely. This has prompted numerous discoveries of possible solutions to the predicament: having more supervisory positions within the police department would increase the oversight of subordinate officers; hiring procedures and practices with ability to screen out all but the best police candidates maximize the pool of police officers with good conduct and character; higher salaries for police officers would reduce the attraction to drug money; and increased external and internal police monitoring would increase the awareness of the tempted police officers of the likelihood of detecting corrupt behavior and severely punished. However, the police corruption acts are still witnessed and detected in New York City (Lawrence 14). New York Police officers have experienced allegations of taking bribes recently in order to help family and friends get out of traffic and parking violations by losing their paperwork. For reasons of various police corruption cases that arise, NYPD has reallocated into police department, lawyers responsible for trials against New York police officers. The over 400 police officers indicted in these allegations apparently accused of throwing away summons paperwork in order to prevent tickets from ending up at the adjudicating agencies. The paperwork often vanishes mysteriously over night shifts before processing, which kills the trail of the ticket. In some cases, documents are changed in order to reflect different driver’s license or car license plate number, and quite often, such police officers avoid showing up in court of law and then speeding of the violation of tickets is dropped. Another recent prevalent police corruption case in New York City that involved over eight current and former police officers involved conspiracy to smuggle cigarettes and gun trafficking (Einstein 17). The allegations stated that these police officers (three retired and five still on the force) illegally transported more than a dozen M-16 assault rifles, handguns and shotguns. These officers were allegedly arrested by the investigators from the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and in their homes. These allegations of gun-trafficking strike the heart the New York Police Department’s robust and most hard-fought initiative. This currently is the central theme of the Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration: getting guns off the street of New York City. Even as this paper looks into the police corruption in New York City and measures to curb the vice, but first, what amounts to police corruption? Police corruption is an illegal use of legitimate power and/ or authority. Any particular behavior that abuses and crosses the parameters of police power amounts to corruption. Police force corruption entails redirecting contraband to the personal police officer’s accounts, robbing of drug dealers, perjuring in order to protect a fellow corrupt police officer, planting drugs in order to frame individual citizens, falsifying police reports, and hosting misconducts that violates the police oath of protecting the citizens. For example, five officers were officially convicted for misappropriating drug bust funds, falsifying police reports, and framing innocent citizens of drug possession in the 39th precinct in Philadelphia. The convictions led to about sixty overturned cases of fake drug charges. This kind of police corruption, however, is not exclusive to New York. This suggests that something is inherent about police work leading a particular police officer to break the law. Suggestively, part of this police corruption may be attributed to budgetary incentives and police officer training (Hopson 36). NYPD Corruption Police corruption in the police departments is not a very new issue of discussion. It has always been in existence since the beginning. Just to flashback to only seventy years back in the 1920s and the 1930s, there are very many incidents of police officers looking past the prohibition violations for a payoff. For example, New York Police Department was involved in planting and falsifying drug evidence; this went unbridled until after Officer Serpico testified for the Knapp Commission. In fact in Officer Serpicos’s last statements, he gave a cautioned to the commission on the only way to prevent corruption in the police department: “have an ever-present commission looking over the shoulders of local departments” (Tim, “Understanding and preventing police corruption: lessons from the literature”). The commission however, never heeded the caution, and today the police department is in the height of police corruption. Let us look at a case example, “a fifty-three-year old African-American grandmother of a suspected murderer, sitting in her house knitting. Two police officers knock on her door to ask about her grandson. She lets them in to tell her what she knows, like any law-abiding citizen. Ten minutes later she is being led out to the police car in handcuffs. She was arrested for possession of controlled substances. Now fast forward three years when she is being released because it has been discovered that the very officers that knocked on her door planted the drugs in her home. When asked why this woman was a target, the officers replied that they were trying to get to her son” (“It was the ‘day of judgment’ for rogue cops in Philadelphia,” Associated Press). This incident actually happened to a fifty-three-year old Betty Patterson in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Betty was actually released in 1994 after being imprisoned in 1988 to 1991, a clique of four police officers in Philadelphia’s 39th district scarf $100,000 from the drug dealers and led an innocent person to prison. The officers in question breached the trust of the public. However, the question is, how can we prevent such behavior? Possible causes of police corruption in New York City Training of police officers and budgetary incentives may be the attributions of police corruption in New York City. The view of training of police officers in a small police department of a would-be peace police officer is very scary and dark. This form of police training may corrupt police officers in my opinion. The very first rule in training police officers is the safety period of police officers. Whether a crime is being committed, a suspect flees, or a civilian ends up a victim; the police officer’s safety at that particular scene is paramount. In case there is a decision between whether or not a police officer go home safe and taking care of one of the aforementioned circumstances, police officer safety wins all the time. This sounds a little harsh; however, that is just how it is. Could it be that this kind of training taints police officers’ mind and lead them to corruption? Certainly this form of police training has implications on the thinking of police officers. There is a police statement that says “police officers are more important than those they have sworn to protect.” The danger of this statement is perfectly articulated by New York City police officers. For example, during the Mollen Commission hearing, Bernard Cawley, a New York City police officer was asked if he beat up those he arrested, he answered, “No, we just beat people up in general if they’re on the street hanging around drug locations. It was a show of force. We had no interest in stopping the drug trade, but profiting from it” (Di Rienzo, Paul. “Mollen Commission Says Cops Can’t Police Themselves”). This brings up the question, where do police officers learn this kind of behavior? Is it in the academies, the departments, or is it personal defects or a small group of police officers who attended the Academy together? This cannot be a product of the police career itself; certainly all police officers would be corrupt. Researchers have documented clearly that corrupt police officers work in small cliques, such as the example in Philadelphia (Colonel 19). Police officers leaving Academy quickly realizes that all the principles they learned in the police academy are that every police department has its own procedures and policies that police officers must adjust to. Even though these policies and principles are universal, they trump procedures of the departments and custom all the time. The bottom line is not in most cases, reached until an investigation is conducted by the Internal Affairs; therefore, what is critical is the prior behavior. The police officers in the field often tell newcomers that everything learned in the Academy has nothing totally in common with the reality, and that the Academy teachers are not aware of how they perform their duties or who in particular is in the streets (DeLattre, “The New Police Officer: Integrity and Temptation”). Certainly, this form of field training of police officers is unfair to the newcomers, and may be illustrates why police officers engage in corruption activities. Reasons for resisting corruption temptations must come down to personal character and integrity. Rationalizing police corruption in New York City Police officers take money from the drug bust; happened in the 39th Precinct, in New York, in Ohio, in Los Angeles, in New Orleans, in Officer Serpico’s department, and across the United States. In addition, the number of state, federal and local law enforcement officers in prison has significantly increased five times between 1994 and 1998: 107 to 548 imprisoned in 1994 and 1998 respectively (Einstein 21). From these observations, it therefore appears that police officers find it very difficult to resist any temptation to increase their earning. Police officers look at themselves, the dealers, and then the money; this becomes rational to them to share a piece of the pie. When a war on drugs is declared by the U.S. President and the police are on the side of the innocent, it takes no big leap to realize that police officers think it is unjust for the enemy to keep all the spoils. This is the kind of thinking over which police officers succumb to each particular day. Police officers should not be blamed for being tempted, however, they should be held responsible for acting on such temptation. Definite incentives are in place for police officers for arresting more drug dealers and planting evidence on the suspects alleged to know the occurrence of drug deals. The incentives are particularly in form of annual budget supplementation translating to higher wages, higher rate of success in convictions, and better equipment. For example, when the police officer in charge of equipment approaches the chief concerning the inadequate funding allotted for of equipment in the budget, and the police chief angrily reply that he expects the funds to be made from drug busts; a tremendous incentive is automated to confiscate drugs contraband whether legally or not. In essence, this kind of abuse of authority and power reflects abuse of police power and authority. In this respect, the police officers view themselves to behave in this manner for the sake of the department, and ask themselves why police department should be the single beneficiary although it is individual police that are in the trenches. They hence think they too need to benefit from the seized contraband and not just the police department. Such policies can resultantly change very honest police officers to crooks, and therefore such pitfalls should be completely avoided (Colonel 30). Preventing and counteracting police corruption in New York City It is a totally tall order to prevent police corruption. However, various measures can be adopted in order to significantly reduce police corruption. There are some few essential ideas that could be put in place to curb police corruption. In New York Police Department, there are three major areas that need to be emphasized: the police officer training, the incentive program, and the police officers’ personal characters. In my opinion, when these are followed, the police corruption cases in New York City can be reduced significantly (Lawrence 20). The initial step of fighting police corruption is to recruit police officers of good personal character. This could be difficult for various reasons: police officers are also human. The power possessed by the police can be overwhelming, and therefore one can predict what may happen as demonstrated by history. It is predicted that some of the police officers will definitely be corrupt, what is not anticipatable is what may happen to particular police officers. A better prediction is that most of the police officers will execute their functions of which they were hired honestly. Therefore, there is need to implement a stricter method of screening in order to decrease the possibility that a potential recruited police officer will become corrupt. Such screenings should be strict and ensure that if a recruit successfully completes all the obstacles of integrity, then such a person is much more likely to be honest at work. In contrary, no particular police department has successfully created tests that predict reliably the conduct of police officers, generally because policemen are human. However, the police department can take measures of and reinforce ethical behavior through example, similar to the manner in which they reinforce the idea that the teachers in the Academy do not know what the streets is like (Colonel 32). Another preferable police corruption measure is that, once police officers are recruited, the police department needs to embark on ethics promotion at work. The safety of police officers is extremely important. In case a police officer is incapacitated, surely no one will be left to protect citizens in the future. Ethical indoctrination is therefore paramount along with such indoctrination. The police department must also master that the public trust that the police officers are ethical and it will be unjust to breach that kind of trust by citizens. People look at the police officers and their conduct consistently, and any form of police corruption in the force eases rationalization of unlawful acts by citizens. This is from arguments such as if police officers who are allegedly the law pillars defy the law, why can’t the public paying for services of the police do so? This results into vanishing of police credibility. This is because any particular corrupt officer cannot effectively express very well why other citizens need to obey and up hold the law due to lack of credibility and consistency. The incentive program, in which police chiefs uses promises of contrabands funding sub-departments that have insufficient funds in the budget, results into more incentive to plant evidence in order to make a whole estate contraband, but also to let them rationalize their own pockets. Countering the planting of evidence activities so as to seize large properties may be dissolved by stopping or fractionating the percentage of the contraband going to the police sub-department. Lining police own pockets may be countered via trainings in ethics. A large percentage of contraband that is funneled to community centers, crime prevention and crime intervention programs, and drug rehabilitation hospitals as advised by the Mollen Commission would seem to curb the corruption (DiRienzo, Paul) ensures that corrupt police officers find zero incentive for planting evidence. The Police departments therefore need to do what they have always done in order to create budget cuts and solicit the money from the city. In addition if the contraband money is channeled into the community centers, the popular grants rationed by the cities to eager community programs can be channeled into the police departments. Conclusion In summary, the police corruption situations, particularly police officers planting evidence, falsifying police reports, and channeling contrabands to individual accounts, is incredible. This paper has highlighted some of the case examples and measures to curb corruption. I also believe that if police officers are trained well in the Academy and the field, strictly screened, taken through ethical indoctrination, and not faced with any form of incentive program, there would be a tremendous decrease in the level of police corruption. However, since police corruptions have existed in police departments since ad infinitum, it is conceivable that all or some of the methods mentioned in this paper have been tried to some capacity. I therefore recommend that the federal government change the whole system and ideology of punishment and policing. Works Cited “It was the ‘day of judgment’ for rogue cops in Philadelphia”, Associated Press, April 1995 Colonel F, Police, Politics, Corruption: the mixture dangerous to freedom and justice, New York: SAGE, 2010. DeLattre, Edwin J., “The New Police Officer: Integrity and Temptation”, Beretta Leadership Bulletin. 1994 Di Rienzo, Paul. “Mollen Commission Says Cops Can’t Police Themselves,” http://www.mediafilter.org/MFF/Mollen.html Einstein, S. Police corruption: paradigms, models, and concepts : challenges for developing countries, New York: Office of International Criminal Justice, 2003 Hopson J. Breaking the Blue Wall: One Man's War Against Police Corruption, New York: Prentice Hall. 2012 Lawrence W. Scandal and Reform: Controlling Police Corruption, Califrnia: Univ. Calif. Press 2003. Tim N. “Understanding and preventing police corruption: lessons from the literature”, Police Research Series Read More