| Chapter 1
The
Crime Beat
By
Dave Krajicek
Evaluating
Your Agency
Consult outside experts about the reputation of your agency.
Is it known for doing something particularly well or poorly? What
is the agency's patrol strategy? Is it reactive, depending almost
entirely on 911 emergency calls, or has it incorporated proactive
policing? How does its response time stack up with comparable agencies?
Has it embraced community policing, problem-solving policing, the
"Broken Windows" paradigm or some other initiative? Is
it working there? What could be improved? Are commanders expected
to stay abreast of police innovations and "best practices"
research?
(Tip: Ask your news operation to assign you to accompany your
chief, sheriff or commissioner to law enforcement conventions, such
as the annual meeting of the International Association of Chiefs
of Police.)
Stories also can be drawn from simple demographics, including gender
and racial balance and average education of officers in your agency.
A Los Angeles newspaper recently compiled hundreds of demographic
details and statistics for a snapshot of that city's police department.
You can do the same for your agency. Click
here for excerpts from the piece.
Comparative pieces drawn from demographics can lead to compelling
stories about how your police agency stacks up against others. Consider
such figures as average age at recruitment and retirement; average
years of service at the various ranks, and job requirements, including
age, physique and education.
Comparative salaries also can make for interesting reading.
Example: A recent CJJ discussion list query bubbled up these
police chief salaries from a number of American cities: Indianapolis,
$82,600; Macon, Ga., $99,000; Milwaukee, $116,000; Omaha, $117,883;
Charlotte, $137,000; Phoenix, $157,414, and San Francisco, $178,000.
Indianapolis, the 12th-largest city in America with a population
comparable to that of San Francisco, had the lowest chief's salary
in the comparison.
The website of an Oklahoma firm, http://www.policepay.net,
is a good starting point for comparative salaries. The firm, a contract
negotiation consultant, offers information about police wages, in
addition to budget and personnel numbers. The firm's site can provide
quantification and comparative numbers at a single source if, for
example, you are writing a story about the relative pay of officers
in your city. Click here for
a policepay.net sidebar.
Corruption and Rogues
Remember that cops lie, cheat, steal and worse, just like the rest
of us. Police scandals or stories about bad cops can be challenging
but rewarding. Anecdotal and statistical evidence indicate increases
in law enforcement rogues.
The FBI reported the number of law enforcement officers in prison
increased from 107 in 1994 to 548 in 1998, and former FBI Director
Louis Freeh said police corruption was of "growing concern
to law enforcement personnel throughout the country."
A few examples:
- In 2002, the U.S. Border Patrol acknowledged that corruption
in the form of payoffs to agents was a burgeoning problem, even
as America worked to buttress its borders.
- In 2000, the U.S. Customs Service admitted that that many
of its agents were being compromised by drug money bribes.
- In Los Angeles, the Rampart police scandal enveloped 25 officers
and fouled hundreds of criminal cases. Politicians have floated
a $125 million price tag for lawsuits related to the corruption.
The scandal, in which cops in a special plainclothes unit robbed
drug dealers and planted evidence, came to light only after a cop
was caught stealing $1 million worth of cocaine from an evidence
locker.
- In 1998, the FBI reported in a document entitled "Misconduct
to Corruption" that police officials in each of 37 polled cities
acknowledged serious corruption problems.
- In the past decade, police corruption scandals related to
narcotics have come to light in Atlanta, Chicago, Indianapolis and
Washington, D.C., among many other places.
- During the mid-1990s, about a dozen cops in Philadelphia
were convicted on charges of stealing cash and property, planting
drugs on suspects, falsifying reports, shaking down offenders and
running a fencing operation. More than 100 convictions were overturned,
and the mayor appointed a task force to probe the problem.
- In 1998, 44 police officers and corrections officers were
charged with protecting cocaine traffickers in the Cleveland area.
- In 1997, six officers, including two police chiefs, were
arrested near McAllen, Texas, for allegedly helping to smuggle more
than 1,700 pounds of marijuana into the country from Mexico. That
case was particularly striking because it happened in Hidalgo County,
where, in 1994, Sheriff Brig Marmolejo Jr. was sentenced to seven
years in federal prison for taking $151,000 in bribes from a drug
trafficker.
Joseph McNamara, a Hoover Institution fellow and former San Jose
police chief, says journalists too often make the mistake of viewing
police work as a purely local concern, unrelated to what might be
happening down the road or across the country.
McNamara, author of Gangster Cops: The Hidden Cost of America's
War on Drugs, says the Los Angeles police scandal was part of
a national pattern in which police officers see themselves as victims
and rationalize their corruption: The entire criminal justice system
is corrupt, they reason, so why shouldn't I get a piece of the action?
In his book Character and Cops, author Edwin J. Delattre
explains that many cops fall victim to "noble cause corruption,"
a form of "Dirty Harry" Syndrome in which cops believe
that since they are the good guys anything they do must be for the
good.
Lessons Learned
Police screw-ups can come in many forms, some seemingly benevolent.
In 1996, Susan Sward and Bill Wallace of the San Francisco Chronicle
reported that scores of cops who were paid extra for mentoring rookies
had been sued or disciplined for serious misconduct, including use
of excessive force.
Many police agencies use mentoring systems, and the program generally
has been regarded as a positive step in law enforcement. But the
Chronicle story called into question the lessons learned by young
cops.
San Francisco's police mentors included a cop who "punched
a woman in a melee outside a tavern, another who smashed his girlfriend's
face into a windshield, a third who beat his stepdaughter and a
fourth who shot at a motorist's car after an accident," Wallace
and Sward wrote.
Among 298 field training mentors whose records were examined, the
paper found:
- 65 of the officers had been named in lawsuits alleging
assault and battery or excessive force. Thirty of those suits ended
in damage awards or settlements by the city.
- 102 were named in lawsuits that allege police misconduct
ranging from reckless driving to wrongful shootings. More than a
third of these suits ended in cash payouts by the city totaling
$1.4 million.
- 21 were brought before the Police Commission on disciplinary
charges, some more than once. Eighteen were suspended for periods
ranging from 20 to 105 days.
- Eight officers were charged with crimes including assault,
drunken driving, burglary and soliciting acts of prostitution.
Early Warning on Trouble
Cops
Every police administrator understands the concept of "problem
officers."
In a 2001 National Institute of Justice-funded study of the phenomenon,
authors Samuel Walker, Geoffrey P. Alpert and Dennis J. Kenney wrote:
"It has become a truism among police chiefs that 10 percent
of their officers cause 90 percent of the problems. Investigative
journalists have documented departments in which as few as 2 percent
of all officers are responsible for 50 percent of all citizen complaints."
The three men studied the effectiveness of "early warning
systems" for problem officers, a concept used in about half
of America's larger police agencies.
The criteria used for identifying potential trouble cops should
be of interest to journalists. As one might expect, such things
as citizen complaints, use-of-force reports, firearms discharges,
civil litigation, reprimands and suspensions are used. But other
considerations include high-speed pursuits, vehicular damage, commendations
and promotions.
The researchers wrote, "One disturbing finding was a slight
tendency of early warning officers to be promoted at higher rates
than control officers…Do some departments tend to reward through
promotion the kind of active (and possibly aggressive) behavior
that is likely to cause officers to be identified by an early warning
system?"
This may be a good question for crime reporters to consider in
the agency they cover.
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