Police Corruption

Police corruption may be viewed as a distinct mode of police transgression, which involves the misuse of police power for officers' benefit or managerial advantage. Police corruption activities include taking bribes in exchange for not reporting incidents of crimes by drug syndicates, traffic violators, and prostitution rings and other illegal activities such as involvements in forging evidence against defendants, false arrest, false confession, intimidation, and police brutality. Officers themselves may be involved in illegal distribution of illicit drugs for financial and personal gains. These behaviors are generally not reported because of the police code of silence rooted in secrecy.

Historically, African Americans, and in some cases, Latinos, have suffered soaring levels of lethal force by the police, bogus arrests, harassment, and maltreatment.

When compared to many other criminological pathologies in vogue today—violent crimes, white-collar crimes, terrorism, gangs, prison overcrowding, illegal immigration, environmental crimes, and drug syndicates—police corruption generally lags behind on the radar screen of criminologists, policymakers, and the public. However, this form of criminogenic pathology thrives in a democracy and affects the everyday lives of the populace, especially the minority population. Surprisingly, theoretical criminology has not focused suitable attention on the malady of police corruption as it has done in other areas of criminological themes. The reason may be that the symptoms of police corruption do not offer fascinating theoretical questions. Additionally, police officers are ordinary human beings perceived to be providing essential services to society and working in jobs that are professed to be dangerous. Moreover, such corruption is characterized by multifaceted incidents that make it a difficult target for scrutiny. Politically, the trend toward a “get tough” philosophy may blind politicians from objectively examining the pertinent issues of police corruption and misconduct, which come in different forms with different meanings.

As in other areas of human endeavor such as corporations, criminal gangs, school classes, and some dictatorial regimes, secrecy in policing maintains group identity and supports camaraderie among members of the group. Preservation of secrecy can foster corruption in a police organization and acts as an elemental rule among the cadre or a tightly knit group of professionals. This is especially true in the area of the narcotics trade, where police officers have been recorded to have engaged in cocaine deals by distributing the illegal product or coalescing with drug dealers for profit. Individual officers, as well as groups of police officers, have been caught and prosecuted, under the rubric of internal and external corruption, in cities such as New York, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.