For perhaps obvious reasons, government does not collect, compile and publish comprehensive data on police misconduct. The Cato Institute's "National Police Misconduct Reporting Project," attempts to deal with this gap.
I cannot comment one way or the other on the accuracy of their data. However, some caveats are in order: (1) a police officer who is arrested is entitled to the presumption of innocence, like all suspects. An arrest is not proof of guilt. (2) The media always tend to focus on the bad side of human behavior (e.g. "if it bleeds, it leads"). (3) the corrupt cop is no more representative of the profession than the murdering gun owner is represenative of gun owners in general. (4) Does anyone know of a website on the good things that happen in policing?
If law enforcement agencies can't be trusted to police (excuse the pun) their own internal affairs, then we have a huge problem. It seems that outside groups claiming to monitor peace officer misconduct fall into a trap of baseless witch-hunts. Such groups all too often dig for every tittle of negativity that can be publicized, regardless of how irrelevant the item. That said, it's true that public perceptions are driven by the few bad exceptions. This type of damage, however, is not unique to law enforcement and does occur with other licensed professions.
ReplyDelete44: Thanks for the comments. IMHO, by and large, history shows that most large law enforcement agencies cannot police themselves long-term. A high profile scandal bring media and public attention and commissions to study the problem. Then there is a flurry of activity (much of it make-believe solutions) and the problem sinks into the background and the prior status quo slowly re-establishes itself. This lasts until the next scandal. Part of the problem is leadership and part is a police subculture in many agencies that encourages many types of corruption and frowns on officers informing on other officers.
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