Police_In_America

Police In America Police Corruption Police corruption is a problem that has and will continue to affect us all, whether we are civilian or law enforcement officers. An examination of any newspapers or police-related publications on any given day will have an article about a police officer that got busted committing some kind of illegal act. Since its beginnings, many aspects of policing have changed; however, one aspect that has remained unchanged is the existence of corruption within the police department. Corruption within police departments falls into two basic categories, external corruption and internal corruption. For an internal act to occur, three distinct elements of police corruption must be present: misuse of authority, misuse of official capacity, and misuse of personal (Dantzker 157). It can be said that power inevitably tends to corrupt, and while there is no reason to suppose that police officer as individuals are any less fallible than other members of society, people are often shocked and outraged when police officer are exposed violating the law. External corruption usually consists of one or more of the following: Payoffs to police by non-criminal elements who fail to abide by stringent statutes or city ordinances. Payoffs to police by individuals who repeatedly violate police, corruption, officers, new, york, money, commission, narcotics, cops, officer, department, problem, knapp, drug, control, 1993, years, times, one, never, james, given, force, within, sherman, scandal, payoffs, must, mollen, misuse, law, internal, individual, go, enormous