Police
...which does not
readily submit to simple analysis. It is a problem that has and will continue to affect us all,
whether we are civilians or law enforcement officers. Since its beginnings, may aspects of
policing have changed; however, one aspect that has remained relatively unchanged is the
existence of corruption. An examination of a local newspaper or any police-related publication
on any given day will have an article about a police officer that got busted committing some kind
of corrupt act. Police corruption has increased dramatically with the illegal cocaine trade, with
officers acting alone or in-groups to steal money from dealers or distribute cocaine themselves.
Large groups of corrupt police have been caught in New York, New Orleans, Washington,
DC, and Los Angeles. Methodology: Corruption within police departments falls into 2 basic
categories, which are external corruption and internal corruption. In this report I will concentrate
only on external corruption because it has been the larger center of attention recently. I have
decided to include the fairly recent accounts of corruption from a few major cities, mainly New
York, because that is where I have lived for the past 22 years. I compiled my information from
numerous articles written in the New York Times over the last 5 years. My definitional
information and background data came from various books cited that have been written on the
issue of police corruption. Those books helped me create a basis of just what the different types
of corruption and deviancies are, as well as how and why corruption happens. The books were
filled with useful insight but were not update enough, so I relied on the newspaper articles to
provide me with the current, and regional information that was needed to complete this report.
In simple terms, corruption in policing is usually viewed as the...
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