Human nature and Corruption

This ambiguity can be clarified by examining corruption in law enforcement in terms of levels of culpability. At the introductory, "street cop" level, basic exchanges of extra-legal amenities (free meals, discounts) between public and police straddle grey areas between corruption and common sense. At the next level of corruption, also called "graft" when speaking of law enforcement, police officers come to expect those amenities as due them. The third level of corruption finds a systematic "tradition" within law enforcement units in regular acceptance of those amenities, an extension of the street-level corruption into supervisory levels. The forth level has corruption at the street and supervisory levels set up as an organized activity: services, assignments, amenities and penalties are set up according to the schedule of the graft organization. The final level of corruption takes the police, both officer and unit, into organized, active criminal activity in direct conflict with the law enforcement mandate

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eyond the strict definitions of the social contract. For the police officer to refuse the honest gratitude of the citizens served would set up unnecessary barriers to working with them on a daily basis. A half-price meal offered (the cafe owner likes to have cops sit in the establishment at night), police discounts on rentals and purchases, and so forth: these are often citizen-initiated expressions of gratitude to the law enforcement officer that, while harmless, are nevertheless not strictly acceptable for the officer to participate in from a legal (and possibly ethical) standpoint. It is easy to see, then, where the next level of corruption starts: with the assumption by the police officer that such gratitude from the citizenry is their responsibility, his due. This is a leftover attitude from centuries of pre- and developing-democratic society, when the law enforcement arm of government's major reason for existence was to enforce order imposed from above, much like that of an occupation army (which many times, in fact, it was). Robin Hood's mythical battles with the Sheriff of Nottingham were nothing less than the resistance of a subject (Saxon) peasantry to a ruling foreign (Norman) aristocracy which had achieved its
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ABSTRACT Human, Sheriff Nottingham, Department Florida, Rodney King, Los Angeles, Mollen Commission, law enforcement, York City, NYPD Yorker, Eddie Egans, police officer, Knapp Commission, level corruption, human nature, police officers, individual police, corruption law, corruption law enforcement, individual police officer, * *, street cop level, law enforcement arm, street cop, los angeles, third level corruption,
Approximate Word count = 2613
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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