Cases
In 1970, New York organized the Knapp Commission to hold hearings on the extent of corruption in the city's police department. Police officer Frank Serpico's startling testimony against fellow officers not only revealed systemic corruption but highlighted a longstanding obstacle to investigating these abuses: the fraternal understanding among police officers known variously as "the Code of Silence" and "the Blue Curtain" under which officers regard testimony against a fellow officer as betrayal.
After that the International Association of Chiefs of Police made a code of police conduct publication and rigorously trained police officers. In 1991 Rodney King was brutally beaten by multiple police officers of Los Angeles Police Department. The officers involved were expected to have been following the "blue code". They claimed that the beating was lawful, but it was not until a videotape of the incident was released when it was confirmed that the officers had collectively fabricated their stories.
In the Cleveland case alone, the FBI arrested 42 officers from five law enforcement agencies in 1998 on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. In a 1998 report to U.S. Congressman Charles B. Rangel, the federal General Accounting Office (GAO) found evidence of growing police involvement in drug sales, theft of drugs and money from drug dealers, and perjured testimony about illegal searches.
In 1992, the Mollen Commission, commissioned to investigate reports of police corruption in New York, noted that "The pervasiveness of the code of silence is itself alarming." One police officer from New York City said, "If a cop decided to tell on me, his career's ruined....He's going to be labeled as a rat." The following year saw the founding of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an all-civilian board tasked with investigating civil complaints about alleged misconduct on the part of the New York Police Department.
Read more about this topic: Blue Code Of Silence
Famous quotes containing the word cases:
“The world men inhabit ... is rather bleak. It is a world full of doubt and confusion, where vulnerability must be hidden, not shared; where competition, not co-operation, is the order of the day; where men sacrifice the possibility of knowing their own children and sharing in their upbringing, for the sake of a job they may have chosen by chance, which may not suit them and which in many cases dominates their lives to the exclusion of much else.”
—Anna Ford (b. 1943)
“... in all cases of monstrosity at birth anaesthetics should be applied by doctors publicly appointed for that purpose... Every successive year would see fewer of the unfit born, and finally none. But, it may be urged, this is legalized infanticide. Assuredly it is; and it is urgently needed.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“... and the next summer she died in childbirth.
That’s all. Of course, there may be some sort of sequel but it is not known to me. In such cases instead of getting bogged down in guesswork, I repeat the words of the merry king in my favorite fairy tale: Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)