Police Corruption: Deviant and Consciously Avoided Them
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knowing full well in the past that parts of the organisation were deeply Police corruption: deviant and consciously avoided them. apples, barrels and Every cop faces some departure from rules and diverse opportunities for deviance. This seems to be a orchards reality shock for many; and one sees a range of adaptations. The grass- Maurice Punch investigates police and eaters passively accept the free meals organisational deviance, followed by a and discounted goods on offer. I wouldn’t classify this as corruption response from Stan Gilmour. but it does provide an environment for the serious stuff. The meat-eaters are proactive and go after the ‘graft’ (pay-offs) and regulate the relations with organised crime and its illicit In my work on police corruption I using ‘corruption’ – and perhaps we enterprises. Some carnivores are speak of ‘organisational deviance’ need a new conceptual vocabulary – predators who rip off dealers, steal TOPICAL ISSUES AND COMMENT where the organisation encourages for serious police misconduct which their drugs, and exploit criminals. or colludes in deviant behaviour. abuses the authority of office and The Dirty Harries, or noble-causers, There are no ‘individuals’ in betrays trust. Typically it is not break the rules to achieve ‘justice’ by organisations, I claim, and people individual but collective, involving arguing the ends justify the means. who enter them change identity. criminal conspiracies causing The birds are gentle creatures, And the pressures, rationalisations, considerable harm with multiple gliding on high and ignoring the and opportunities for deviance victims. It relates to discrimination, grime below. There are professionals – for or against the institution – are abuse of rights, excessive force, illicit determined to do sound work and always related ‘collectively’ to the deals with criminals, and interfering with integrity. Yet the professionals social nature of work, the diverse with the course of justice. The too can come unstuck by pushing cultures, and the structure of the offence or offences may include the boundaries and innovating to organisation. several categories at once. Say a achieve results. group of cops frequently use Typically this is group behaviour Police corruption occurs in almost excessive force against young males and not individual. Cops never do it every force at some time. It is not from minorities which is alone. The nature of the work turns universal, there are corruption- compounded by a cover-up with police into highly social animals free forces, but it can be a near false statements and perjury leading shaped by the collective. Behind permanent feature while it can to false imprisonment. Furthermore every bent cop, then, there are also reoccur either cyclically or such police crimes are frequently always others, including supervisors, episodically (Newburn, 1999). There associated with certain groups, units, who either took part or knew about was a 20 year cycle of scandals and segments of the police it. in New York and several decades organisation and can be recurring if Importantly those categories are of persistent deviance within the not systemic. They are then not monitored by codes of inclusion- Royal Ulster Constabulary. That sporadic and spontaneous but a exclusion and the powerful cycle and persistence indicate that it deliberate ‘SOP’ (Standard Operating occupational culture. Cops can even can’t just be the personnel because Procedure). move across categories. A fervent they have changed over time. How then does our ‘clean’ recruit meat-eater might become a pious Furthermore I’ve not encountered react when he encounters bird on promotion, suffering police recruits joining in anticipation malpractice? Newcomers soon instantaneous amnesia about a of deviant delights. Invariably they become aware of the clean and dirty murky past. In Hong Kong the are motivated to abide by the law, zones. Corrupt practices may not be wisdom is ‘you can get on the bus are even idealistic, and may be even universal and can exist close to [corruption], get off the bus but you excellent officers before becoming excellent policing with rituals of mustn’t stand in front of the bus’. You bent. In short, a bad cop was a good avoidance to maintain boundaries. will be tolerated if you step off cop first; so what makes him ‘bad’? The institution presents a maze of providing you do not confront the (Note: It is predominantly a ‘he’ clean and dodgy segments to be system. The social cement of through exclusion of women cops negotiated. Bob Leuci protested corruption is the code of silence with self-exclusion by women.) when allocated to a notoriously bent backed with threatened sanctions. By ‘corruption’ I don’t mean the unit of the New York Police (NYPD); And inclusion is based on being standard definition of doing or not he went instead to Narcotics where tested, fitting in, and not rocking the doing something against ones’s duty he soon became corrupted (Leuci, boat. If an officer wanted to become for personal gain. In contrast I’m 2004). Some retired officers recount a detective in certain forces he had 10 ©2010 Centre for Crime and Justice Studies 10.1080/09627250903569890 rCJM No 79.indd 10 01/03/2010 13:15:40 to be a heavy drinker, accept bribes, front-line policing, not easy to going gets tough it needs tough units engage in deviant practices (e.g. combat. to ‘do the business’. Often pockets of planting evidence, lying in court), Secondly, and allied to this, is a crude, heavy-handed policing are and keep his mouth shut. The first highly competitive stance posited on covertly accepted as a sort of ‘bung’ was a rite de passage to winning at all costs with the maxim Praetorian Guard for ‘real policing’ membership but also a test of ‘if you play by the rules you lose’. when the wheel comes off. compliance with the code. Frequently encapsulated in this is In practice, there are often clear Corruption was a condition of complete disillusion with the elements of encouragement, membership and silence was a criminal justice system and its putrid collusion, or wilful blindness, with condition of remaining a member. pomegranates (lawyers) and over-ripe benign or malign neglect, from Bent cops often recall that the mangoes (judges). This can be above in relation to deviant powerful desire to be included in an justified by cops as noble cause but practices. elite unit was stronger than their the sour alienation can easily turn to Typically this goes with weak reserve about taking that first bung. meat eating and predatory internal control, hostility to external Once in they were introduced to corruption. control, banishing the few bad wider patterns of deviance and slid Thirdly, however unctuous the apples but praising the gallant further down the slippery slope. rhetoric of the police organisation is, majority and, of course, no Whole parts of a force could there can be a coercive emphasis on organisational learning. Effectively become routinely and systemically results, on cutting crime ‘at all costs’ the hierarchy is tolerating crime TOPICAL ISSUES AND COMMENT corrupt. The defensive metaphor of and on solving key cases. Nudges within its own organisation and the ‘bad apples’ conveys an image of and winks from above convey ‘you evading accountability. This is a a few reprehensible individuals who, can’t make omelettes without perversion if not a pathology of if removed, will no longer breaking eggs’. For many inside and policing in a democracy where contaminate the otherwise healthy outside the organisation the core accountability is of the essence. Bent apples. But when Serpico went to the business remains combating crime cops and a bent force are blatantly NYPD Plainclothes Division only and that translates into hitting the not accountable and both form an one of the almost 500 cops was numbers. Too often only results affront to good policing. Corruption straight – Serpico himself, making count and not the methods. is fundamentally a betrayal – him the ‘deviant’ (Maas, 1974). And fourthly the police betraying the office, the organisation, When Commissioner Mark cleaned organisation is a 24 hour emergency the public, and fellow officers. up the Met in the 1970s he called agency that sometimes has to In brief, my message is that it’s the Detective Branch the most instantaneously shift from not a matter of bad people but of bad routinely corrupt organisation in decentralised functioning to or poorly functioning systems. Also London and threatened to replace all command-and-control mode. In a that corruption as serious organised 3,000 of them. major riot this might mean going misconduct is recurrent and resilient, This indicates bad barrels, or from ‘soft’ to ‘hard’ enforcement and shifts in its forms and over time and more appropriately rotten orchards, the institution may feel that when the adapts to control and to fresh and maybe even a contaminated fruit industry with infected apples at the bottom, plums in the middle, and cherries at the top. Why don’t we look up more often and scrutinise those shiny cherries? Crucially, how is this all possible? How can a form of organised crime exist within the police organisation? I will refer to four main factors, two from the occupational culture and two from the covert organisational value system. Firstly, there is often a strong macho culture in policing based on the demonizing of out-groups who become subjected to ‘just deserts’. Hence a ‘real villain’ deserves to be set up to get a conviction. Or if a suspect gives the police a hard time in a car chase he is likely to be treated roughly on arrest. These ‘operational codes’ are pervasive and, given the high autonomy of cjm no. 79 March 2010 11 rCJM No 79.indd 11 01/03/2010 13:15:41 opportunities.