Code of Silence

The code of silence, as it is known among police officers, is the unwritten rule that a police officer does not report, complain about, or testify against a fellow police officer. It is also commonly referred to as the “thin blue line.” Any police officer who reports, complains about, or testifies against a fellow police officer is said to have crossed that line.

This Chicago police sergeant was heckled by spectators when he testified in defense of his fellow officers at a Senate Civil Liberties Committee hearing in Washington, D. C, on July 1, 1937, after the killing of 10 steel strikers in what became known as the Memorial Day Massacre. The code of silence may make it difficult for police officers in similar situations to testify against their fellow officers.

Those police officers who cross that line are usually tagged with various different names, all of them derogatory in the criminal justice lexicon. Some of these names are rat, squealer (with rather contradictory connotation to the 1960s and 1970s nickname for cops as “pigs”), whistle blower, and Serpico. Frank Serpico, as many people in the criminal justice field are aware, is the name of a famous New York City Police Department detective who reported widespread corruption involving New York City police officers and was subsequently not backed up on a drug raid, resulting in Serpico's being shot. Serpico had crossed the line and alienated himself from his fellow police officers because he had reported the corruption. Serpico and his actions have been immortalized in a book and a movie starring Al Pacino, yet it is still usually an insult when a police officer calls another police officer a Serpico.

It is interesting to note that organized crime or the Mafia have an almost identical code for the conduct of their members. This code of silence is called omerta. Members of organized crime or the Mafia are expected to keep quiet about their associates and activities when they are questioned, arrested, charged, tried, or convicted for their activities. The usual punishment for a crime family member who broke omerta was death, with the body being dumped in a location where it was certain to be found with a canary or a pigeon stuffed in the mouth. This was a warning to other members of the crime family who were considering breaking omerta.

Police officers, like organized crime and the Mafia, will punish fellow police officers who cross the thin blue line. Although being killed is not one of the usual retaliations brought against a police officer for crossing the line, the results can be just as devastating, as demonstrated by the experience of Frank Serpico. Retaliation against a police officer who crosses the line usually involves lack of backup on dangerous calls, assignment to [Page 281]undesirable jobs within the department, denial of promotion even if the applicant receives the highest score on the promotional examination, and discipline for minor infractions that other police officers would not be disciplined for.