What can be done to ensure that local police officers don't become organized criminals?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Police corruption manifests itself in a variety of ways, all of which require different types of anti-corruption interventions. Experience suggests that for anti-corruption strategies to be successful and comprehensive they need to be embedded in the broader framework of democratic institution-building. Such strategies usually integrate preventative approaches aimed at decreasing incentives for corruption with punitive approaches that increase the cost of engaging in corrupt practices.

Effective policing requires the combating of all forms of corruption in the performance of policing functions and the promotion of high standards of honesty, integrity, and ethical behavior for police officers and other employees of police forces/services.

It needs to start, of course, with a polygraph test and strict hiring requirements to assure honest police officers at the beginning of their careers. Then there must be quality controls put in place to continue to police the police. Police supervisors need to take citizens' complaints about anything. Besides being reactive, they need to have an extremely proactive philosophy to corruption prevention.

To guard against drug use by police officers, agencies need to do three types of drug screening: entry-level, random, and when a supervisor develops a reasonable suspicion of drug use. If a member refuses to take any one of the drug-screening tests, he or she should be considered to have failed the test. The penalty for failing a drug-screening test should be termination. There should be no counseling, no rehabilitation, and no second chance for illegal drugs. If you fail a test or refuse to take a test, your services should be terminated.

There should be integrity tests engineered by internal affairs (IA) that look like a situation a police officer might encounter any day on patrol. There should two types of tests: targeted and random. Targeted integrity tests would be appropriate when it is believed that an officer or a group of officers are engaged in some sort of serious misconduct or corruption. Internal affairs should set up a scenario that mimics what they believe the officers are doing.
Agencies should test every command throughout the city, seven days a week, and also test officers on a constant basis. They shouldn't reveal the exact number of integrity tests, to keep that information confidential, and should create the appearance of omnipresence.
Agencies should be proactive in prisoner-debriefing programs and ask prisoners about guns and drugs, and people committing crimes. The interviews should include questions about officers who may be corrupt, or officers who may be involved in misconduct.
Agencies should develop an enforcement program as part of a proactive approach to corruption control. IA investigators should target those offenses that have been traditionally corruption-prone. IA can concentrate efforts on those areas believed to be active narcotics locations, or areas where prostitutes may be congregating, where peddlers are known to be working, or where gambling activity is suspected.
Lastly, IA should work very closely with the local prosecutors, whether they are state or federal prosecutors, to work out plea deals with cooperators who are willing to work in integrity operations, to help build cases against corrupt officers or officers who are committing serious misconduct.