Keep Pressure on the Blue Wall

When New York City Police Officer Justin A. Volpe beat a handcuffed Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima in a patrol car and then, in a station house bathroom, sodomized him with a broom handle, he counted on the “blue wall of silence” to protect him from punishment. That wall cracked when fellow officers testified against Volpe, who has now confessed to torturing Louima. Any break in this unwritten police code is welcome, not just in New York but in Los Angeles and elsewhere. But there should be no notion that the officers’ speaking out in this horrific case somehow symbolizes the end of the deeply ingrained problem.

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, trying to put a good face on a terrible abuse of power, claimed that the long overdue testimony of the officers proved that the police code of silence was a myth. There is nothing mythological about officers protecting fellow officers accused of wrongdoing, as New York’s infamous Serpico corruption case demonstrated vividly in the 1970s and, until this week, the Louima case demonstrated in 1999.

Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney, should acknowledge the importance of federal intervention in the Louima investigation. The federal role increased the stakes because federal penalties are more severe than state punishment. The mayor should also appreciate the efficient federal prosecution of the assault on Louima, who was arrested in a disturbance at a Brooklyn nightclub.

The cops who took the stand in federal court have not explained publicly why, after initially denying what they knew to be true, they came forward. Their reasons should become part of the record to advance other investigations into police misconduct.

Criminologists believe the officers who testified against Volpe--and who are not themselves charged with any crime--were motivated in part by disgust at the nature of the brutality and in part by the warning of their police commissioner that the career of any cop who obstructed justice and got caught would be finished.

The officers’ unwritten code of silence is “perhaps the single greatest barrier to effective investigation and adjudication of complaints against cops,” said the 1991 Christopher Commission report on the Los Angeles Police Department, prompted by the videotaped police beating of Rodney G. King.

The New York police officers who testified provided overwhelming evidence against Volpe, who abandoned his denials and pleaded guilty to federal charges including obstruction of justice, witness tampering and violation of a civil rights protection that every person has--the right to be arrested and jailed without being subjected to excessive force.

Volpe now faces the possibility of 30 years to life in prison. At his sentencing, he is expected to ask for leniency. The savagery of his crime, his lies and his absolute authority over the brutalized prisoner argue strongly against it.