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Answer from Tim Dees, Retired cop and criminal justice professor, Reno Police Department, Reno Municipal Court, and Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Police Department.
Certainly, people have a right to expect their police to live exemplary lives, on and off duty. Ideally, police will adhere to a similar high standard by not tolerating misconduct by their colleagues, by reporting it when they come to know of it, and God forbid, not engaging in misconduct themselves. Identifying people who will actually conform to this standard is an extremely difficult task. Humans are morally imperfect creatures, and police agencies have to recruit from that population.
I can't think of any group, occupational or otherwise, that has attained this standard of perfection. Priests, who molested children for generations with the knowledge of their peers, haven't done it. Physicians cover for one another, because they know they're going to screw up sooner or later, and they will want the same benefit.
There are at least three reasons people don't inform on one another. The first is compassion, the "there, but for the grace of God, go I" problem. Second is the quid pro quo. The potential informer may need the same courtesy some day. The third is the maintenance of your reputation. How one is perceived, within and without his peer group, is usually important. If you inform on a fellow accountant, the worst consequence might be that you have to eat lunch alone. Among cops, informing might mean you don't get the help you need to save your life when you call for it. What proportion of each reason drives an individual depends on the individual.
There is a criminological theory called "labeling." It says that criminal labels usually supersede any others, and thus force the person so labeled into further crime. We all acquire labels in life: high school or college graduate, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, atheist, athlete, Nobel laureate, journeyman carpenter, etc. If you acquire the label of "felon,""sex offender," or "murderer," it generally supplants all the others. It doesn't matter what you might have done before or since, that criminal label is how everyone knows you.
The label of "informer" is almost as bad. We were taught this as children: "Nobody likes a tattletale." We all knew of fellow students who had cheated on tests, had played a nasty prank at school, had been caught sucking face under the stadium bleachers during assembly. With rare exceptions, we kept our mouths shut. If you didn't, your social life at school was likely over with.
Perhaps the best-known police informer of all time is Frank Serpico. He may have been a national hero for revealing a widespread pattern of corruption and graft in the NYPD, but his fellow cops shunned him, and possibly set him up to be killed. He left the force on a medical retirement after being shot in the face. Ten years or so later, Robert Leuci (in the movie Prince of the City, his character was renamed Danny Ciello) did something similar. He didn't get shot or killed, but his name wasn't exactly gold during the rest of his NYPD career. He did better as a novelist and lecturer. Most recently, Adrian Schoolcraft has challenged the status quo at NYPD. His reward was to be taken off the street, forcibly committed to a mental ward for a week, and to be virtually unemployed while his lawsuit against the NYPD makes it way through the courts. I hope very much that he wins and gets huge barrels of money, but I think it's safe to say that his cop days are over. If a cop--especially one at the NYPD--considered informing on another cop, those legacies would certainly influence his decision.
In a perfect world, cops would simply not engage in misconduct, and those who did would not be allowed to hide behind the blue wall of silence (and, without question, it does exist). I'm not sure where to tell you to go to recruit people like this, however. Our military academies are among the most selective institutions in the country, where you have to be very smart, a high academic achiever, an athlete, and a leader in your community, and that's just to get in. About 17% of that elite group fail to graduate. Some don't do well enough academically, some fail as military men and women, and some are thrown out for misconduct, such as honor code violations. This is the only group I know of that mandates informing on one another through the "toleration clause" in their honor code: I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor will I tolerate anyone who does. They still experience the occasional cheating, rape, or other sex scandal. Further, their graduates easily and gladly leave the honor code behind, and engage in all sorts of misconduct like, well, like everyone else in positions of power and responsibility. I'm not saying that all military officers are bad people, only that they suffer from the same foibles and missteps that every other group does.
I think you should also consider how such a morally perfect cop would behave. He pulls you over for a speeding violation:
"How about a break, officer?"
"Think again, citizen. I am here to enforce the laws, not to excuse those who violate them."
Or, he finds a paper bindle,containing a white powder, that fell out of your pocket:
"Hey, it's just a little blow for personal use."
"You are in possession of a controlled substance that is manufactured and imported into this country by ruthless criminal cartels. Cocaine is addictive and potentially poisonous. Having such a thing in your possession is a serious felony."
If you are willing to cut him zero slack, don't expect him to be too compassionate about your misbehaving.
This doesn't mean that we shouldn't aspire to that standard. We should do what we can to encourage cops to follow the rules, and not to tolerate wrongdoing by their peers. This is best achieved through better training, and by ensuring that law enforcement is a desirable job that carries favorable social status and respect. Shouting "HANDS UP! DON'T SHOOT!" at cops as they try to go about their duties, or threatening triple penalties and public shaming for any law violations is not going to do that. Everyone makes mistakes, and if you choose to punish even the smallest violation of work rules with draconian penalties and immediate dismissal with loss of all benefits, you won't get any recruits to make any of those mistakes--or do anything else.
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