Essay on
Police Corruption
(First 3 Pages)
Police corruption is a
complicated fact, which does not easily accede to simple resolution. It is a
dilemma that has and will carry through to affect us all, whether we are
civilians or law enforcement officers. Since its inception, may bearings of
policing have replaced; however, one countenance that has prevailed somewhat
unchanged is the reality of immorality. Police corruption has increased
dramatically with the unlawful cocaine trade, with officers acting alone or
in-groups to swindle money from dealers or dispose cocaine themselves.
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Corruption within
police departments goes under two primary categories, which are external
corruption and internal corruption. In this report I will pay attention only on
Knapp commission on Public corruption because it has been the larger center of
attention recently. It can be said that power eventually tends to corrupt. It is
yet to be recognized that, while there is no rationale to suppose that policemen
as individuals are any less erroneous than other members of society, people are
often stunned and disgraced when policemen are unveiled breaking the law. The
inference is simple. Their deviance invokes a special outlook of deception. The
hazard of corruption may overturn the formal goals of the organization and may
lead to the use of organizational power to bolster and formulate crime rather
than to preclude it. General police deviance can encompass unfeeling attitude,
discrimination, sexual harassment, extortion, and illicit use of weapons.
The Knapp Commission asserts that police officers have been implicated in
activities such as extortion of money or narcotics from narcotics delinquents in
order to elude imprisonment; they have accepted bribes; they have sold
narcotics. It was the Knapp Commission in 1972 that first brought focus to the
NYPD when they discharged the results of over two years of investigations of
alleged corruption. The findings were that bribery, particularly among narcotics
officers, was very high. As a result many officers were litigated and many more
lost their jobs. An extensive re-structuring took place afterwards with stern
rules and disciplines to make sure that the issue would never occur again. Be
that as it may, the issue did ensue once gain. Some of the most recent events to
shake New York City and bring attention to the national problem of police
corruption was brought up starting in 1992 when five officers were charged on
drug-trafficking charges.
“Virtually every law enforcement agency in the country has been touched by some
form of drug corruption. Corruption of police by the illegal drug market has
become a major concern for law enforcement administrators. Drug-related police
deviance may take several forms. Officers may use drugs on- and off-duty. In
their efforts to "win" the war on drugs, some officers subjugate the rights of
defendants by violating criminal procedure or department rules by committing
perjury or planting evidence. Officers become involved in "traditionally
conceptualized" drug deviance when they seek personal gain by accepting payoffs,
keeping drugs or money found on arrestees, robbing narcotics traffickers, or
stealing drugs and other items from police property rooms. Another form of
drug-related police deviance revolves around police use of violence. Here,
officers may use physical force to extract information from suspects or may
threaten the use of violence against drug users or dealers. Perhaps no case
better illustrates the many forms of drug-related police deviance than that of
the Buddy Boys. In that case, a group of officers from the NYPD's 77th Precinct
became involved in a variety of deviant activities. Officers used illicit drugs
and other substances on- and off-duty, they routinely subjugated the rights of
drug suspects, and it was common for them to use violence against drug dealers
and users. Yet the Buddy Boys became most notorious for robbing drug dealers.
Officers stole money, drugs, and anything else of value from small-time,
street-level dealers in the precinct.” (Chapter Summary)
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