Arguments Against Police Corruption

Corruption is the illegal use of legitimate authority. Any behavior that abuses and therefore crosses the parameters of one’s power can be classified as corruption. Corruption applied to a police force entails the robbing of drug dealers, redirecting of contraband into the personal accounts of officers, perjuring oneself to protect a corrupt officer, falsifying police reports, planting drugs to frame citizens, and a host of other misconduct that violates the oath of protecting the people.

Prohibition made police corruption that much easier. The outlawing of alcohol combined with the fact that the overwhelming majority of urban residents drank and wished to continue to drink not only created new opportunities for police corruption but greatly changed the focus of that corruption. During prohibition lawlessness became more open, more organized, and more blatant. Major cities like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia has upwards of 20,000 speakeasies operating in them. Overlooking that level of publicly displayed crime required that corruption become total. But most important to policing, Prohibition marked a change in how corruption was organized.

Officer safety is extremely important. If police are incapacitated, who will be left to protect the people in the future? Along with such indoctrination, ethical indoctrination is paramount. The department must understand that the citizens trust the police to be ethical, and a breach of that trust is unjust. Further, it is not practical to act unethically. People eye the police and their behavior constantly. Corruption in the force makes it easier for a citizen to rationalize acting unlawfully, which just creates more work for the police. If a police officer, who is suppose to be the face of the law, can defy it, why cannot the citizens who pay for the police services? The credibility of the police