When the subject of police corruption comes up, most people think
about crooked cops taking bribes to protect drug dealers, or cops
accepting, or demanding, sexual favors from female suspects. While
these two examples certainly are forms of police corruption, they're only
the result of a more profound and systemic cycle of corruption that
emanates from the top down.
You're entering your police career during a time of change never before
experienced by past generations of police officers. In the late 1960's and
early 70's, police departments underwent major reforms. Departments
were modernized, and organizational systems were well conceived and
implemented. Police departments attained levels of efficiency and
accountability that had never previously existed.
Today…police departments are more politicized than ever before...and
that's going some. Police chiefs, and their obsequious minions, are
more interested in their self composed resumes describing their
numerous grand accomplishments and areas of expertise. One need
only divide the accomplishments and expertise by years of service to
realize that most resumes are simply autobiographical self delusions.
To be fair…not all police chiefs and those high ranking minions are
political hacks. After all, nothing is ever one hundred percent.
As a young person, you're not going to have a lot of patience. You're
going to want to move as fast as you can as far as you can. It's always
been that way, but things like seniority and actual requirements for
experience use to temper the overly ambitious, ensure continuity, and
keep change within manageable boundaries.
When a police department's foremost concern is continuity and
adherence to well organized systems of control, change can occur at a
reasonable and rational pace without wrecking continuity and those all
important systems of control. When change gets out of control,
continuity is lost, and systems are ignored. Think of continuity and
systems as a department's immune system. For a human being, once
the immune system is damaged, the body is susceptible to any number
of diseases. For a police department, a damaged immune system results
in its susceptibility to numerous forms of corruption.
When you hear a police chief invoke the phrase, "thinking out of the
box," stay as far away from that police department as possible. The
chief could be simply parroting the phrase, because it's popular these
days. However, if "thinking out of the box" is a philosophical center
piece of that police department, you can be certain that the department
is either operating in an environment of confusion or well on its way.
Once a police department is overly infected by politics — politics has
always been a destabilizing factor — destabilization will occur at a rapid
rate. You'll see frequent personnel reassignments within the command
structure and throughout the department; constant implementations of
"new ideas and initiatives;" slavish adherence to current politically
correct thought as it pertains to anything and everything, and a general
decline in competent supervision at all levels.
When it gets to the point where everybody is just making it up as they
go along, corruption, in every imaginable form, will flourish.
about crooked cops taking bribes to protect drug dealers, or cops
accepting, or demanding, sexual favors from female suspects. While
these two examples certainly are forms of police corruption, they're only
the result of a more profound and systemic cycle of corruption that
emanates from the top down.
You're entering your police career during a time of change never before
experienced by past generations of police officers. In the late 1960's and
early 70's, police departments underwent major reforms. Departments
were modernized, and organizational systems were well conceived and
implemented. Police departments attained levels of efficiency and
accountability that had never previously existed.
Today…police departments are more politicized than ever before...and
that's going some. Police chiefs, and their obsequious minions, are
more interested in their self composed resumes describing their
numerous grand accomplishments and areas of expertise. One need
only divide the accomplishments and expertise by years of service to
realize that most resumes are simply autobiographical self delusions.
To be fair…not all police chiefs and those high ranking minions are
political hacks. After all, nothing is ever one hundred percent.
As a young person, you're not going to have a lot of patience. You're
going to want to move as fast as you can as far as you can. It's always
been that way, but things like seniority and actual requirements for
experience use to temper the overly ambitious, ensure continuity, and
keep change within manageable boundaries.
When a police department's foremost concern is continuity and
adherence to well organized systems of control, change can occur at a
reasonable and rational pace without wrecking continuity and those all
important systems of control. When change gets out of control,
continuity is lost, and systems are ignored. Think of continuity and
systems as a department's immune system. For a human being, once
the immune system is damaged, the body is susceptible to any number
of diseases. For a police department, a damaged immune system results
in its susceptibility to numerous forms of corruption.
When you hear a police chief invoke the phrase, "thinking out of the
box," stay as far away from that police department as possible. The
chief could be simply parroting the phrase, because it's popular these
days. However, if "thinking out of the box" is a philosophical center
piece of that police department, you can be certain that the department
is either operating in an environment of confusion or well on its way.
Once a police department is overly infected by politics — politics has
always been a destabilizing factor — destabilization will occur at a rapid
rate. You'll see frequent personnel reassignments within the command
structure and throughout the department; constant implementations of
"new ideas and initiatives;" slavish adherence to current politically
correct thought as it pertains to anything and everything, and a general
decline in competent supervision at all levels.
When it gets to the point where everybody is just making it up as they
go along, corruption, in every imaginable form, will flourish.
Police
and
Corruption
and
Corruption
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