RB> Tom - listen to reason. You work in a small department with 147 cops.
 RB> I will  never deny that your department might be 100% free of any kind
 RB> of insidious  behavior. Perhaps this is largely due to your work.
First, I would not make the statement that my department is 100% free of
corruption. I would simply say that I am not aware of any corruption at this
moment. I would never be so naive to say that my department was 100% perfect
at any time during my career. Numerous officers have been fired or
disciplined during my career, for varying levels of offenses, from very minor
to very serious. Our officers called for and got a Grand Jury about 6 years
ago. The result was the indictment of several officers, (3) if I remember
correctly. Our officers were the witnesses. This is the way the system is
supposed to work, and it does in the vast majority of places. You will never
hear me say that there are no rotten apples in police work, just the
opposite. I'm just saying there is a concerted effort to root them out and do
what is right: 1) discipline; 2) prosecute; 3) terminate. The system works a
lot better than most would imagine in most jurisdictions.
 RB> Now, consider the police in a large city, like, Detroit, or Los
 RB> Angeles, where  there is a huge network of precincts, all with their
 RB> own career cops and  political in-fighting, all working within the
 RB> jurisdictions of an enormous  inner city. What I'm saying is that
 RB> perhaps your career experience is not  enough on its own to judge what
 RB> is going on at a national level.
You are correct, my experience with my own department would not qualify me to
be a judge of any other department. If corruption or abuse is proportional to
my department, 1 to 3 percent of the cops would be bad apples in the other
departments, depending on the time and place of the analysis. 3% could be a
fairly large number of bad cops on some of the large departments. 1 bad cop
is not acceptable, but it is not logical to assume that any profession could
police itself to the extent that all of them would be perfect. On a 5,000 man
police department, 3% would mean 150 bad cops. That would certainly represent
a large problem, one worth the resources needed to root them out. This is
unacceptable by anyone's standards, but one point still needs to be made.
The other 4,850 good cops on this department should not have to bear the
shame that the 150 deserved. You are also correct about a lack of meaningful
statistics on this subject. You would first have to classify what you think
is corruption and what is not corruption. Example: unnecessary rudeness on my
department is a violation which can result in discipline of the officer, but
I don't believe anyone would call this corruption. So, where did I get my 1
to 3 percent corruption rate and would it be valid? It would simply be an
educated guess, and it would not be valid.
Tom Rightmer - A Victims' Rights Advocate
... EXPERT - Some unknown drip under pressure.
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