Corporate Crime - Theme: Police Corruption - Essay Example

So rampant and common have these activities become that nowadays the notion of bad cops has been met with a resigned indifference by the public who have also started to manifest hesitation in trusting even good cops. What is police corruption? Is it when police beat up their suspects? Is it when they intentionally forget to remind you of your rights in the interrogation room? Maybe it is when they perpetrate rape or burglary. Police corruption should not be confused with police misconduct or simple police criminality.

Police misconduct is, by definition, limited to individual officers creating or committing offenses that are usually street crimes in the form of brutality or constitutional violation. Others argue that police misconduct is the use of or misuse of force or fabrication of agenda. Rosoff et al. distinguishes police corruption from police misconduct by noting that the latter definition is limited to individual police offenses while police corruption is driven by the pursuit of personal gain. (Downing, 2009) Corrupt police officers also abuse their authority to benefit themselves, like corrupt public officials.

However, where politicians deal with white-collar criminals, these group of law enforcers rub elbows with conventional criminals and offer them protection from the law. On the other hand, “official authority” distinguishes police corruption from simple police criminality and thus excludes street crimes such as rape or burglary, even though such offenses may be (and have been) committed by police officers.” (Rosoff et al., 2007) In studying the types of police corruption, several categories have been identified.

Corruption of authority is when gifts in kind are given to police officers. Of course there will be times when these gifts honestly mean gratitude. The problem arises because incidents like these may be the foundation of compromising situations in the future. Kickbacks