An Ineffective Practice: How Greed and Corruption Ruin the Police Force

Whether you turn on the evening news, check your favorite online informational outlet, or read your local paper each morning, the chances that you will see an article about citizen protests or a police brutality case seem to be increasingly higher with each passing year. What do these violent cases say about the harsh realities of the world that surrounds us? Perhaps more importantly, what does this say about mankind? It seems as though many of the bodies put in place to protect us have been slowly crumbling beneath society’s feet for the past several years, and I’ve had just about enough of it. From the police forces to the higher authorities of law, greed and corruption seem to have surpassed the important values that these sectors should be enveloping and encompassing.

Let’s begin with the police force. The police force is a body of people hired by the state to enforce municipal law, protect citizens’ property, and hinder civil disorder. The Los Angeles Police Department’s motto is a perfect exemplification of these officers’ duties: “To protect and to serve.” In a perfect world, that would be the only thing police would need to know before they could be cast out into the streets to, well, protect and serve. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world, and a simple Google or YouTube search will yield thousands upon thousands of results about police brutality and abuse of power. Have these brave, local “heroes” forgotten their very purpose? In New York, much controversy has arisen over the “stop-and-frisk” program, which allows officers of the law to stop and question any pedestrian and search them for illicit contraband or weapons without probable cause or any reason whatsoever. In 2011 alone, more than 685,000 people were stopped and searched. Not only is this program unconstitutional, but it also promotes racial profiling and other amoral practices. As a citizen of the United States, one is free to travel without being stopped or questioned if there is no probable cause. As such, the stop-and-frisk practice is a precise violation of the U.S. constitution. Moreover, of the 685,724 New Yorkers stopped in 2011, 88% were completely innocent and 87% were comprised of minorities. Obviously something must be done to change these corrupt and immoral practices.

Similar to stop-and-frisk theory is civil forfeiture. In her shockingly expository article “Taken,” Sarah Stillman discloses the abuses and misuses of these laws in taking away citizen’s property. The basic application of civil forfeiture laws allows authorities to confiscate cash or property that has been “obtained through illicit means.” This newly acquired cash or property is reintroduced as income to the state department to aid in purchases of materials that directly relate to the fight against crime. While civil forfeiture seems logical in theory, its power is greatly abused in practice. For example, officer Barry Washington of the Tenaha police force often conducted illegal traffic stops based on profiling and his sense of smell (last year, the Supreme Court deemed those who used smell as a method of obtaining probable cause to be overstepping their rights as police officers as well as violating the rights of American citizens). Washington would then proceed to seize cash or other property (in one case, an iPod) from the driver because civil forfeiture laws enabled him to do so. Furthermore, when brought to court for one of these unjustified stops and asked if he had any evidence whatsoever that the seized property belonged to an organization of narcotics trafficking, Washington simply answered “I don’t have any evidence today.” These laws need to be fixed; it is clearly amoral for an officer of the law to seize cash or property from a law-abiding citizen perfectly within his or her rights. What was that thing about the police protecting civilian property again? Oh, that’s right, they’re supposed to protect the property, not steal it. Stillman goes on to comment that this is by no means an isolated incident. Cases of civil forfeiture have been on the rise as officers fueled by greed allow themselves to fall victim to the corrupt practice like a character out of Robert Penn Warren’s All The Kings Men.

Finally, arrest and ticket quotas pressure officers to give more meaningless tickets and make unjustified arrests so that they do not lose their jobs. These officers should be less concerned with traffic tickets and more concerned with protecting the people from real criminals. When I was about fourteen or fifteen years old, an officer stopped me while I was walking down Belle Meade Boulevard. Yep. For walking. Down my own street. In the middle of the day. She said I was lucky I did not get a ticket for “walking in the wrong lane.” Come on, Officer Howell, I know there has to be something better for you to do out there. Can you even issue a ticket for that? I digress. Meanwhile, a significant amount of robberies were taking place in the small township and the perpetrator was never found. Perhaps if more resources had been devoted to catching this serious threat to Belle Meade rather than stopping me, among others, for no apparent reason, something could have been done.

It isn’t that all police are bad. In fact, police forces sometimes do eliminate major threats to their respective municipalities. Unfortunately, more often than not, quota laws and procedures such as stop-and-frisk and civil forfeiture enable officers of the law to abuse their power for personal advancement at the cost of others’ freedom and their own moral fiber. Something needs to be done to reform these corrupt police practices. Perhaps if these jobs were rooted more in civil service than in turning profits for their respective departments, real change would start to take place. Please, officers, just do the right thing. Protect and serve.