No room in society for dirty cops
There are dirty rotten cops.
The dirty rotten cops, however, are a mere street gang compared to the armies of good cops. Perspective is important when digesting the series “Betrayed by the Badge” from The Associated Press and carried by news sources across the country. But having said that, several messages are clear.
One is that despite the disproportionate ratio of good cops to bad — and in this series, only crimes of a sexual nature by law enforcement officers were considered — the likelihood that the problem is much greater than reports indicate is almost a certainty. As the series stated, not all states track the number of revoked licenses for people who work in law enforcement. In fact, two of the states with the largest pool of officers — California and New York — have no statewide system to decertify officers for misconduct. Further, even among states that provided records to The AP, some reported no officers were removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were identified from news stories and court records showing they had.
Compounding the under-reporting problem is an issue that has hit home in North Idaho, and elsewhere. That’s the non-disclosure defense uttered repeatedly when public employees come under fire for alleged misdeeds. State statutes in Idaho can, depending on their interpretation, block the public from accessing important personnel information that this newspaper believes the public has a right to know, including disciplinary action taken against public employees. Until the Legislature decides that the public’s right to hold its employees accountable is at least equal to those employees’ right to privacy, this injustice will continue.
No doubt, some readers and people in law enforcement will think The AP unfair in its yearlong quest to shed light on predator cops. Some will contend that the media is only making it harder for good cops to do their jobs, and for law enforcement to attract the very best candidates it can for these societally critical jobs. We think they’d be missing the point.
Among the rational conclusions from the series is that many of our law enforcement agencies aren’t being provided the resources they need to not only police the public, but themselves. Sufficient staffing should limit or eliminate lone patrols, for instance, and not just for the public’s safety; for the officers’ as well. Technology including body cams and other reliable recording devices is expensive but will encourage some officers to do the right thing when they might otherwise be tempted not to. Money is needed for advanced and ongoing training. The series also pointed out that in many areas, veteran, exemplary officers leave early for a variety of issues, some that could be mitigated through better compensation and other considerations that many taxpayers would be willing to provide. The tangible and potential losses to communities that take shortcuts on public safety are staggering. As the series showed, multi-million dollar lawsuits by victims of bad cops can cripple communities.
Nobody embodies power at the local level like someone wearing a badge who’s authorized to arrest or even kill. Police everywhere must be held to the very highest standards. But they need the right resources. Let’s do all we can to ensure only the best candidates ever rise to that position of trust, then do our best to keep them there.