COMMENTARY: When the Good Guys Go Bad

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.) (UNDATED) The cover story of a recent issue […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.)

(UNDATED) The cover story of a recent issue of The New York Times Magazine illustrates how, in the world of cops and robbers, the difference between the good guys and the bad guys isn’t always easy to discern.


The article, “One Bad Cop,” tells the sordid tale of Rafael Perez, an officer in an elite LAPD anti-gang unit whose “golden boy” image provided the perfect cover for his descent into criminal behavior including drug dealing, false arrests and attempted murder.

Sadly, however, the account chronicled in “One Bad Cop” isn’t limited to one policeman or even one police department. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the number of law enforcement officials in federal prisons alone currently exceeds 500. While this is only a tiny fraction of the nation’s collective police force, it represents a 500 percent increase since 1994.

The numbers only hint at the havoc a few bad seeds can wreak.

For example, revelations of official corruption by fewer than a dozen officers in Philadelphia’s 39th Police District _ including planting drugs on suspects, extorting money from drug dealers and giving false testimony in court _ prompted judges to overturn more than 160 criminal convictions. The city shelled out more than $5 million in wrongful arrest settlements.

In New York City, evidence of drug dealing and brutality by police led to the arrests of a number of officers, the formation of a special panel, known as the Mollen Commission, to investigate allegations of corruption, and the dispensing of more than $80 million in taxpayer money to aggrieved citizens as the result of court judgments against the NYPD.

In one example uncovered by the investigation, it was learned an officer had earned up to $15,000 per week selling cocaine from his police car, and had been known to snort cocaine off the car’s dashboard.

Yet beyond the eye-opening headlines lies an even more insidious truth: The entire criminal justice system, however unwittingly, is often complicit in such corruption.

The scandal surrounding Los Angeles police officer Rafael Perez provides a textbook example. According to The Times article, the police substation out of which Perez worked “was its own police department with its own rules.” These rules included planting false evidence against suspected criminals, and shooting unarmed gang members while “(making) up stories to justify the shootings.”


For his part, Perez felt justified in his actions.

“These guys don’t play by the rules,” he was quoted as saying. “We don’t play by the rules.”

Nor did the actions of the city’s prosecutors and judges encourage Perez and his colleagues to “play by the rules.”

“Judges showed an almost total lack of skepticism about whether the officers had made legitimate arrests,” while the city attorney was focused on increasing the rate of convictions.

In addition, according to the article, “Corrupt police officers have been protected by laws, ballot initiatives and court decisions that have tipped the scale against defendants.”

The result, according to one attorney: “These changes in the criminal justice system have made it easier for police to lie and get away with it.”

As one who works in the criminal justice system, allegations of police brutality and corruption reach my ears. Hardly a day goes by without my hearing from one or more inmates that they were “set up” or abused. While the tendency of some may be to disregard such complaints, statistics suggest that where there is smoke, there is often fire.


The reality is that many complaints of abuse are true, and all of us are paying the price for it.

Of course, many believe the criminals are getting what they deserve. But don’t the rest of us deserve better?

DEA END ATCHISON

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