Police Abuse in Modern America: A Few Bad Apples or a Spoiled Orchard?
Police corruption and police brutality seem to be rampant in American culture. Time and again, in case after case, police departments seem to deny corruption as endemic to police culture. After rallying around officers to protect them from charges, the police chiefs and mayors will only relent when officers are prosecuted for obvious and blatant felonies. Then in damage control mode, they will dismiss the problem as the work of a few "bad apples". But a more detailed look at contemporary police culture in America points to a systemic problem that suggests not a few bad apples but a spoiled orchard that spreads from city to city and department to department. The recent police brutality in Oakland against the Occupy Oakland demonstrators has drawn attention back onto the subject of police corruption and brutality.
Focus on Oakland: Crushing Dissent and Shooting Minorities
Long before the Oakland police wounded an Iraq War veteran with a flash grenade and another by lacerating his spleen in a baton beating, they had already established a reputation for brutality. More specifically, they have had a poor relationship with the black community in Oakland due to some high profile police killings. The city was outraged when an unarmed subway rider was shot and killed by an officer in 2010. Since then killings of unarmed black men have continued. Rather than protecting and serving the community, the police have become an occupying army in Oakland, a lesson that has now been learned by military veterans who themselves became victims when they demonstrated on the city's public streets during the Occupy protests. While Oakland has received the most attention the problem of police brutality against black citizens is a national problem plaguing departments from New Brunswick, New Jersey to Austin, Texas to Antioch, California.
Not Just a Local Problem: Police Corruption is Everywhere
Beyond acts of brutality and the use of lethal force, a culture of corruption seems to be infusing police departments everywhere. in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, police members of an elite crime fighting unit were arrested on charges including kidnapping, extortion, false imprisonment and racketeering. In New York City, over five hundred officers have been linked to crimes ranging from smuggling M-16 machine guns to fixing tickets to planting drugs. In Milwaukee, dozens of officers have violated the law with minimal consequences. Within the Los Angeles County Jail, an organized street gang of sheriff's deputies known as the "3000 Boys" routinely beats inmates and prison visitors with impunity. Corruption trials have rocked the departments of cities like Tulsa. Federal agencies like the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have also been involved in corruption including drug smuggling. In the past decade, dozens of federal officers have been arrested on corruption charges.
Systemic Abuse: More than a Few Bad Apples?
With so many cases appearing nationally, the "bad apple" theory is hard to sustain, especially when police departments routinely rally to defend those who commit misconduct. This does not mean every police agency in the country is corrupt to the core or that there are no public servants left among the rank and file of police officers. Many cops do serve their communities with integrity and honor. However, the level of police corruption and brutality in this nation is far too widespread to dismiss as simply a few fallen officers. When Sheriff's gangs boast about beating inmates in the nation's largest county jail and hundreds of officers are implicated in serious crimes within the nation's largest municipal police department, the theory that the orchard itself is rotten rather than just a handful of "bad apples" deserves consideration.
Keith Darling-Brekhus - Keith Darling-Brekhus is a political and social analyst. He has an MA in Sociology from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Join the Conversation