Radley Balko at The Agitator already has the story of three Atlanta narcotics cops who goofed bigtime, killing 92-year-old Kathryn Johnson in a botched drug raid and then trying to cover it up. The three were caught, prosecuted and sentenced:
U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes sentenced former officer Gregg Junnier to six years in prison, Jason Smith to 10 years in prison and Arthur Tesler to 5 years in prison.
Not much for a dead 92 year old woman. Not much for planting drugs. Not much for violating their oath. But hey, they were just trying to do their job, protecting us by getting those bad guys. Stercus accidit.
What stood out, and demanded further notice, was one paragraph quoted by Radley from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article :
Tesler said when he saw Smith about to plant baggies of marijuana inside Johnston’s home to make it look like a drug house, he shook his head in disapproval. Tesler said he falsified the police report and later lied about the raid because Smith told him to follow the cover-up script. Tesler said he wasn’t about to “rat” on a senior officer.
Radley attributed this mindset to the War on Drugs. I wish I could pass it off so lightly, but I can’t. Were there no war on drugs, the blue wall would still stand, as impermeable as ever. Sure, drug raids have been a huge source of police crime, providing vast opportunities for theft, abuse and error. But the problem is as old as the free cup of java at the corner grocery store.
This brotherhood amongst police officers has been the subject of many commentaries here and elsewhere. There is a belief that flows through law enforcement that no matter what else happens, no cop can rat out another cop. No, it doesn’t mean that they all desire to be dirty, or that they aren’t well intended in the performance of their duty, though some are every bit as much the criminal as any “mutt” on the street. But so rare is the officer who will stand against his brothers that it’s movie worthy.
At its core, the death of Kathryn Johnson is a reflection of the sloppiness in policing that is now being encouraged by our Supreme Court in the name of expediency. We can’t demand too much of our cops and prosecutors, or it would be a burden. Sorry, Mrs. Johnson, that you had to die so that cops weren’t unduly burdened.
My purpose in pursuing this obvious line is to clarify that the Blue Wall, in and of itself, must come down before there will any chance of changing police culture. As long as the “us versus them” attitude permeates law enforcement, and the prime directive remains that no cop shall rat out another, no matter how bad he may be, nothing will change.
This is not a product of the ill-conceived war on drugs, though it certainly offers much opportunity for rampant wrongdoing and, therefore, concealment. This is a culture war between police and everyone else, and it is critical that this not be forgotten.
Until the culture of police demands that they uphold the law within their own ranks, there will be no change.
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Good point.
I once got into an argument with a hip-hop artist about “Stop Snitch’n” at a conference on the use of drug informants. He said he would never cooperate with police under any circumstances, even if he’d witnessed the murder of an innocent person.
I told him that was nuts. His reply:
“Maybe. But isn’t the ‘Blue Wall of Silence’ just another name for the most successful Stop Snitch’n campaign of all time?”
He had a point.
The line in the story that I just can’t get out of my mind — and I’ve been trying: “Carnes also ordered all three former officers to reimburse Johnston’s estate the $8,180 it cost to bury her.”
This must be another example of the “increasing professionalism” permeating police departments that Scalia noted in Hudson v. Michigan. Increased cooperation in conspiracies to cover mistakes, and sharpened ability to identify “those people” requiring some extrajudicial non-punishment before they are charged and convicted.
Ouch. I think Nino just got pwned.
Are there any police or emergency response departments either in this country or internationally that come to mind as exemplary or at least “not-horrible” in terms of transparency, ethics, and low rates of murdering nonagenarians?
I know, for instance, that Iceland and the other scandanavian tend to imprison a lot fewer people, but I’m not sure how they would rate from a civil libertarian’s point of view.
“…the prime directive remains that no cop shall rat out another…”
The prime directive is plainly listed on the vehicles of many police agencies.
It is “to protect and serve.”
There just was not enough room to put “to protect and serve The Police.”
That is what is taught in law enforcement academies and during in-service training implicitly and sometimes explicitly.
Protecting and serving the public is also taught but it takes a back seat – sometimes in a station wagon.
It has nothing to do with the war on drugs, or race, or anything other than blue vs. non-blue combined with the potential in any human being to let power, selfishness, and greed corrupt one’s actions. It is just as pertinent responding to domestics or handling traffic stops or writing parking tickets.
It won’t change from within.
I know it’s like a broken record, but this is why we have to keep pounding this point home. This culture must be changed.
It’s the wrong question. There are certainly good departments, and good individual cops, across the country, but that doesn’t change the inherent nature of cops protecting other cops. The question is too one-dimensional; real cops don’t fit within such a simple paradigm.
Does it work to re-frame the question as:
Are there public safety departments in the U.S. which have developed an institutional culture which conceptualizes ‘protecting other cops’ as ‘upholding professional standards’ such as restraint in use of force, transparency and honesty in testimony and evidence collection, and so forth rather than ‘covering and hiding malfeasance.’
Or, is there a department which has created a model of police culture which is not toxic and has escaped or altered the inherent nature of cops protecting other cops?
There are good cops out there. Bill Bratton, now ours in LA / once your in NYC’s Bill Bratton gets the wary approval of the southern California ACLU and is well regarded as a reformer by Angelenos. His reaction to the police crackdown of the May Day demonstration a couple years back gave at least the appearance of being severe — canning and demoting the officers-in-charge immediately, going some length to condemn and investigate police actions.
But the very fact that the violent beatdown of nonviolent protesters occurred is itself an indication that while Bratton may be a decent commander (or depending on what you think of ‘broken windows’ policing, merely not a utterly reprehensible commander) but he hasn’t been able to change the culture of the LAPD in a lasting, positive way.
The rousting of bums on skid row, the still-too-frequent police murders, the controversy about racial profiling, and the voices of the cops who serve under Bratton all add to this.
Consider the pseudonymous Jack Dunphy of the NRO.
“It’s widely believed that he’s more concerned with his own celebrity and political future than he is with his own cops. I wish he’d put as much energy into condemning criminals as he does into criticizing his cops. When he leaves, whenever that day comes, it won’t be celebrated like when Parks was ousted, but it won’t be lamented, either.”
Is there a department out there whose officers recognize (if not uniformly, then at least widely) (pun intended) that the chief’s responsibility is to answer to the elected officials and constituents first, and to cover his cops’ backs second.
And that by ‘criticizing his cops,’ Bratton *is* trying to build a more effective public-safety tool. Or is it a mishmash of good and bad cops behind the blue wall all the way down and all around.
My apologies if I’ve managed to misunderstand your point again, but with more words.
I am not aware of any major department that has managed to change the culture. Indeed, the LAPD reaction to a “star” reformer like Bratton proves the resistence he faces at street level. It’s a good question, and I am unaware of any that have overcome the problem.
From what I see (as an outsider with a larger peephole than many) the answer is a definite yes, and I think there are useful things to be learned from those, and that one of them is that good leadership of the type you’re talking about pretty much can’t be exercised from great altitude; it’s why, local-to-me, the better departments appear to me to include the small ones, where, for example, a retired assistant chief will, decades after the fact, still introduce a retired captain with pride, as one of his hires as a newbie cop.
But the further away the chief is from the rank and file, it’s pretty clear that even honest attempts to clean things up will be perceived by the privileged-class-who-think-they’re-oppressed at-the-bottom-of-the-badged-pyramid as attempts to find enough fall guys to make embarrassments go away.
I’ll give you two: yours and mine. (If you don’t think the MPD, with less than a thousand cops, is major, I won’t argue.) There’s clearly a huge difference between the blatant, widespread, culture of corruption that used to exist and the more subtle and ones that exist now.
That said, I’m not saying that the whitewash won’t be slathered about by the bucket there, as it was here, just last weekend, when somebody with a badge does something wrong and/or stupid, and the PD spokesman dons his flame retardant pants to dispense it.
I’m not claiming that there’s been near enough change, but I think there clearly has been change, and for the better.
I think you may be mistaking corruption for culture. These are not inherently corrupt police in the traditional understanding of the concept, but they are every bit as entrenched in the blue wall of silence as they have ever been.
And when needed, they will circle the wagons so quick it will make your head spin. Not because there is widespread corruption, but because they are cops, and that’s what cops do.
Yes, but how?
Just keep pounding away in the hope that it somehow sinks in.
Have you read or heard of the Baltimore City Police Department’s recently adopted policy of refusing to release the names of police officers involved in shootings? The City Council severely criticized the Police Commissioner for adopting the policy without informing the Council or seeking its input. After the Commissioner atoned by apologizing at a Council Meeting, the Council quickly approved the policy.