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Police Corruption

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Police Corruption
Police Corruption happens all around the world, and it has been going on for many years now. Police Corruption is a very large problem many local agencies face every day in the United States. Police corruption is defined as the “abuse of police authority for personal or organizational gain by a police officer acting officially”. (Singh, 2007) I believe that Police Corruption is a serious abuse of police power and that the decisions made throughout the corruption hurt more people then the benefit of it. Police officers are upheld to a higher cause because they enforce the laws. Some police feel because they uphold the law that they are above the law. I feel as citizens we always desire more and will never truly have a limit to what we can have. Police are still citizens and some may feel that due to the lack of income in certain areas they need to take certain illegal acts to increase their income. With police corruption on the rise, the good police officers are not trusted by citizens because there is no distinctive way to determine who is good and who is corrupted. Police officers can not enforce rules and regulations if they themselves are not obeying the laws put before them. An example of Police Corruption is “Jon Burge is a former Chicago Police Department detective who oversaw the torture of hundreds of Black men resulting in false confessions between 1972 and 1991. Burge would burn suspects with radiators and cigarettes, and electrocute their testicles. Although Burge was protected by the statute of limitations for his crimes, he was convicted for lying about the torture in January of this year”. (Gane-McCalla, 2011) I feel this type of corruption is the most severe of them all, not only is it racism but its also inhumane. The citizens will never feel the same for police officers after incidents like these. Citizens need to be able to trust the people who enforce the law. Police are sometimes the biggest criminals because they feel they can get away


References: Gane-McCalla, C. (2011, September 28). The top 5 most corrupt u.s. police officers of all-time. Retrieved from http://newsone.com/1551885/top-5-corrupt-police-officers Singh, A. (2007, February) Corruption in police. Retrieved from http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Police/2007/police-corruption.html

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