Catching up on my links!

[xenologer]

Thanks to unusualmusic for posting this link. I need to talk about something other than sexual harassment drama for a second, and believe it or not... this is what I've chosen.

The original article is here, but there's some commentary that I found relevant as well.

A Dallas police officer is likely to be fired as soon as next week after an internal investigation concluded that he repeatedly lied about an incident in which a man was taken to West Dallas, doused with pepper spray and then left there.

A rookie police officer also is facing discipline over not immediately reporting the August 2008 incident to supervisors. The rookie, Officer John Hoover, later told detectives that a third officer had intentionally used pepper spray on the man and they concocted a story that the canister had malfunctioned. (...)

Hoover, the rookie who initially backed up the veteran officers' account, later told police investigators that as he and Lopez left, he saw Loeb get out of his car.

Hoover told investigators that the other officers turned around and that he then saw Loeb intentionally spray Reyes without provocation.

"I saw the suspect on the ground and Mike with his pepper spray out and a cloud of pepper spray near the suspect," he wrote. "As we pulled up, the suspect was able to get up and move a few feet before falling back to the ground with Loeb right next to him. Loeb then gave him another spray of pepper spray."

Loeb then threw the canister at Reyes, Hoover told investigators. Hoover said the officers then left. Reyes walked to a nearby gas station and called 911.

The officers later met up at a convenience store where Loeb and Lopez came up with their account, Hoover said.

"I did not notify a Sgt. of this incident because I was scared and I feared retaliation," he wrote.

In a written statement, Lopez attributed the difference in the accounts to Hoover's rookie status: "Rookie officers interpret and see things differently than more mature veteran officers."

Let's look at that last sentence one more time. "Rookie officers interpret and see things differently than more mature veteran officers."

If you'll forgive the source of this commentary this time, I think it contains some good arguments worth including.

The officer who wielded the pepper spray explained why the rookie's account matched the victim's:

"Rookie officers interpret and see things differently than more mature veteran officers."

In other words, rookies in the Dallas Police Department haven't learned to lie to protect other officers.

In many police departments, officers maintain a "blue wall of silence" as a matter of honor. Eiserer writes:

Many cops view peers who report misconduct as "squirrels" and will ostracize them.

According to Eiserer, officers are more likely to report misconduct that is committed for the officer's personal gain, while keeping silent about misconduct that's viewed as a component of effective police work.

Many police officers differentiate between "noble cause corruption" and "bad corruption."

"Bad corruption" would be something like taking a bribe or robbing a drug dealer, and they would not hesitate to report such criminal behavior.

The line gets blurry when dealing with so-called "noble cause corruption" -- the idea that police are at war and the ends justifies the means, i.e. raiding a drug house without having probable cause to do so or roughing up a gang member.

While there's probably some truth to that distinction, it's relatively rare for an officer to rat out another officer when money goes missing during a drug investigation. The subtle distinction between "bad corruption" and "noble cause corruption" can be elusive. Once officers are willing to justify corruption, it's easy to rationalize misconduct. If officers think a suspected drug dealer's money is ill-gotten profit, for instance, why should they let the dealer keep it?

Eiserer nonetheless makes an excellent point when she points to "the idea that police are at war." The war mentality -- the war against drugs, the war against crime -- creates the belief that anything officers do to harm the bad guys is justifiable. After all, it's war, and war isn't pretty. Wars are fought against enemies. Wars produce casualties. Defeating the enemy is the primary goal of a war, and if the enemy is harmed, or the enemy's property is destroyed or taken, that's an acceptable consequence of war.

What's it they say? If that doesn't scare you, no evil thing will?