Corruption in Law Enforcement free essay sample

What ever happened to the righteous law enforcement officers who abided by what they enforced? Today the numbers of people who have been exposed to unnecessary force by police officers has begun to rise substantially. In 2002, large state and local law enforcement agencies received more that 26,000 citizen complaints. Statistics have shown that there is corruption in not only the officers themselves, but the law enforcement department as well. Most of the cases that are filed regarding inappropriate use of force from officers are either disregarded or written off. There are only about 8% of the complaints that actually are sustained and disciplinary actions taken against the subject officers. This trend is evident in all branches and divisions of the police department, from the municipal police, to the county police. These statistics were brought up by the 2003 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS), with sponsoring from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). We will write a custom essay sample on Corruption in Law Enforcement or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page They developed a method to come up with all of these statistics called the Police Public Contact Survey (PPCS). This questioned citizens about their interactions with police officers during the previous 12 months. After the survey, there were 26,556 citizen complaints about police received. 84% of those complaints were for the municipal department, 11% for the sheriffs’ office, and 3% for both the county police and the primary state law enforcement. Of all of these complaints from victims, only a mere 8% of the officers received disciplinary action. The complaints can be dismissed or voided due to several different reasons; if there was insufficient evidence, complaints were unfounded, the officer’s actions were found to be lawful and proper, or the complaint was simply withdrawn. This outrage is not just confined to solely the United States, there are similar things happening in Wales and England. At the end of March, 2003, the police in England and Wales received a total of 6,154 complaints alleging assault by officers. The law enforcement is abusing its power around the globe. When the civilians really began to complain there were some agencies that created a civilian complaint review board (CCRB). Those agencies that had one in their jurisdiction saw a greater amount of complaints coming in than those agencies that didn’t have a CCRB. There were 158 per agency that had a review bored versus 18 per agency that didn’t have one. With the dawning of 2003, 82% of large Municipal Police departments had an internal affairs unit; this proved to be a problem for those departments that contained one. The overall citizen complaints rate was much larger in those that had a unit rather than those that didn’t. The ratio was 54:5 which is quite a significant difference. However, one thing that the internal affairs unit did do was it made the complaints twice as likely to be found not sustained than in agencies without a unit. Finally in 2003, the municipal agencies began using personnel monitoring systems which were computer-based officer performance monitoring systems. One would assume that the rate of unnecessary force from police officers would begin to dissipate, but it didn’t. The overall rate of force complaints was higher on a per agency basis! Shortly afterwards, 53% of the large municipal police departments drew up a written policy of external investigation. The policy stated that all citizen complaints of inappropriate force receive separate investigation outside the commanding area of the accused officer. This just caused the number of complaints to go up once again. Administrative appeal was then introduced in attempt to give the accusing citizens justice. Those agencies that had an appeal saw a lower number of complaints that those that didn’t have one. Another method that was introduced in 2003 was collective bargaining; this would often cover disciplinary processes and, sometimes handle citizen complaints. That method was used by 73% of the municipal police departments and caused an unsurprising increase in the number of complaints from citizens. All of these methods were devised during 2003 in attempt to cover up the misuse of authority and power of law enforcement. All of them did now render the departments the results that they wanted. Only with time can we hope that the original and proper intents and actions of law enforcement officers will return and bring justice and peace to our communities once again.