Crossing the (Blue) Line

Police corruption is nearly as old as policing. The current scandal roiling the Los Angeles Police Department, though it may have some slightly different twists, is not unique. There is even a historic pattern in the public response to such scandals: the hope that a commission of esteemed notables can investigate the incidents and cure the problem.

There have been two kinds of police corruption. The first, and ultimately the worst, is between the police and the political process, in which cops influence elections and political parties control access to police jobs. Police, in turn, look the other way at electoral misbehavior. This sort of corruption strikes at the core of democratic political systems but describes the situations in many 19th- and early-20th-century U.S. cities, where political corruption was a major problem.

The current LAPD crisis is an example of the second type of corruption: between police and criminal offenders, not their victims. Police officers allegedly victimized gang members, some of whom may have been criminal offenders. Prosecuting gang members is difficult, because their victims are often other gang members. They are reluctant witnesses, afraid of reprisals and perhaps as opposed to the police as to other gangsters. So police may fabricate evidence or lie in court--in New York City, in the 1990s, police officers called it “testilying.” A bad practice that began with ends justifying means can turn into corruption for profit instead of corruption for crime control.

In general, this second kind of corruption depends on the nature of vice, which has no complaining victims or outside parties to participate in the relationship between police and offenders. When a police officer arrests a person for prostitution or selling drugs, credibility is on the officer’s side, making it easy for the officer to lie and difficult for the offender to complain: Whom is the jury going to believe? If the “victims” of vice, dope dealers’ or prostitutes’ customers, were willing to complain and testify, vice control would be easier and the police would be in a poor position to lie.

New York City has been visible as a leader in many things good and bad. The tight connection between the police and the Tammany Hall political machine lingered into the 20th century. Political parties arranged for men to get policing jobs, ensuring their allegiance. Starting in the mid-19th century, the link involved both vice and politics. Here’s how it worked: Police officers collected payoffs from illegal vice or after-hours operations, in turn ignoring or going easy on illegal activities. Some of the money went into the political parties, some made officers rich. By the 1890s, there were officers like Alexander “Clubber” Williams, who policed the vice district in New York City. On a policeman’s salary, he managed to acquire an estate in Connecticut and a steam launch.

When public awareness of scandal comes to a boil, there is a traditionally accepted response: Create a commission to investigate. Composed of important people, commissions meet for a discrete purpose, take witness testimony, issue reports and disband. Los Angeles has had many, most recently the Christopher Commission in 1991. But the problem with these ad hoc groups is that they have little clout unless their recommendations are followed up by legislative action.

Why so little impact, given the prestige and expertise they command? Because the commissions are not stakeholders in the process; they do not live with the consequences of their recommendations. Their careers are not on the line, nor do they have continuing involvement.

Historically, two investigative commissions achieved particular notoriety. The first was prompted by a city so corrupt that no agency had the power and independence to investigate its police: the 1894 Lexow committee of New York state, which investigated police corruption in New York City. This investigation, while looking into real problems, was motivated by a Republican legislature seeking to gain control of Democratic New York City. This does not diminish the commission’s portrait of police corruption: how politicians used police to extract money from vice and to keep control of the polls. The police had become a direct part of the machinery used by political parties to stay in power. Though the Democrats lost the mayor’s office as a result, historian James Richardson concludes the resulting reforms were “not very impressive.”

The second important committee was the 1929 Wickersham Commission, which examined crime and criminal justice in the nation. Initiated during President Herbert Hoover’s administration, the commission produced a high-quality 14-volume report. One volume dealt with police corruption, abuse and torture of prisoners (euphemistically called the “third degree”). Its title gets the point across: “Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement.” But by the time of its publication in 1931, the country was in the Great Depression, which distracted the nation’s attention from its criminal-justice system.

The morals of this commission’s story: One, what happens after an event can completely alter its meaning and impact, and, two, police reform has frustrated some of the nation’s best minds.

Somewhat earlier than the national Wickersham Commission, the Crime Commission of Los Angeles tried to clean up L.A.’s corrupt police department by hiring Berkeley’s August Vollmer as a reform chief in 1923. All too effective, he lasted only one year. Vollmer attempted to apply the best “scientific” thinking to policing by convening a conference of police executives and university professors. The effort resulted in a report that, according to Joseph G. Woods, was the only such report since 1897 that the City Council filed and refused to publish. Published by Woods 50 years later, the report revealed that the LAPD’s racism, intolerance and ineffectiveness mirrored that of the larger society. Woods concludes that in “1924, August Vollmer was too advanced for Los Angeles, or any other American city. Police reform stopped when he left.” The report contained Vollmer’s recommendations for reorganizing the police. It is now best read as an example of how difficult it is to get much useful thinking about policing.

In the 1930s, L.A. officers were linked to the corrupt Mayor Frank L. Shaw in a manner similar to their counterparts in New York, with one major exception. Control of the electoral process was no longer operative. But Depression Los Angeles saw severe police corruption. The postwar reforms initiated by Chief William H. Parker were significant, creating a department that prided itself on its lack of political corruption. It is important to remember it has remained free of this taint.

Just because there is a pattern to police corruption does not mean there is a standard way to deal with it. Exhortation, investigation, better training and higher standards are all good ideas. But the fundamental fact is, police are in an odd situation: For the most part, they are not independently trained professionals, like doctors or lawyers, yet they have enormous power and responsibility. (The highly rated Los Angeles Police Academy is a seven-month program.) They are asked to make difficult decisions. Even in the best of times, there is not an exact guide to behavior for police officers, so individual discretion adds up to hard-to-control outcomes.

At the end of the 20th century, the U.S. has achieved honest electoral processes, free from police influence. This is an important gain. But it is not enough.

The often troubled relation between police and the public remains. Vice, as most police managers know, is always a potential source of officer misbehavior and corruption. Police abuse of individuals when there are no outside witnesses is hard to monitor. No one solution can be relied on. Police problems may be predictable, but solutions are not. Oversight agencies, whether internal or external, can help, but cannot substitute for internal demands for fairness, honest and quality.

On the other hand, as with similar organizations, schools, for example, the tone is set at the top. Police executives can demand quality, but if those who hire chiefs and control budgets do not make this clear, the city has little reason to expect it. If the city’s message is, “Stop the gangs, we don’t care how,” then it has to accept responsibility for its agents.

Commissions, whether internal or external, are better than complacency. One hundred years after the first such commission, and the modest shake-up it caused, it is hard to believe any oversight investigation can produce lasting structural change. Different versions of old problems constantly emerge. This should not cause us to disparage the work that will go into investigating and trying to fix the current crisis, but it should serve as a cautionary tale. Policing change comes with difficulty, that we know for sure. *