Law enforcement experts say, increasingly, police realize a department’s integrity depends on reporting internal abuse.
by David Hench, Portland Press Herald
Police officers reporting misconduct by other officers, breaking the so-called “blue wall of silence,” remains rare, but it is growing more common as police realize their department’s integrity depends on it, experts say.
“Within the law enforcement community, there is a recognition that in many cases, maintaining the highest level of professional standards is something that has to be enforced internally,” said Gilbert Moore, spokesman for the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Service. “The ‘code of blue’ is more and more looked at as a bad thing by the ranks within.”
Portland city officials and national experts in law enforcement and civil rights say it is the sign of a healthy department that a number of Portland officers felt they could come forward and report alleged misconduct by two other officers. The Police Department is now conducting criminal and internal affairs investigations into the conduct of two detectives alleged to have punched a suspect in the head while he was handcuffed Sept. 26.
Michael Esposito, 21, is recovering from two broken bones in his face and a possible eye injury while he is held in Cumberland County Jail on charges of violating his probation. Police say he is a habitual offender, arrested after trying to outrun police while driving with a suspended license.
The two city drug agents accused of hitting Esposito are on administrative leave with pay while the investigation takes place. The district attorney’s office is scheduled to review the criminal case later this week and will probably convene a grand jury to decide on charges.
Outside observers say other officers’ willingness to report the conduct is a welcome break from tradition, at least in some of the country’s major metropolitan departments.
“It’s quite unusual and quite significant,” said David Kairys, a constitutional rights attorney and law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. “The code of silence is something that many professions have some version of and among police I think it’s as strong as anywhere.”
“If someone breaks the rules, the code is you never tell on them and that includes lying for them. That conduct is either common or certainly not unusual. You find it in police departments across the country,” said Kairys.
Kairys said the ability of officers to come forward depends on the culture and leadership of a department. In the past, some officers in other departments have been ostracized and even endangered for cooperating with misconduct investigations.
“It may be a very good sign that there is within the police culture the comfort to report what seems to be a very bad use of force on someone who is already restrained,” Kairys said. “Either one person is doing it out of principle and doing it no matter what consequences are, or the usually solid code of silence may be breaking down.”
Police say internal reporting is not that unusual, that when confronted by a stark example of misconduct, most officers will come forward. But they concede that the scrutiny the department is under and the bad publicity officers had to endure last year contribute to a new sensitivity about excessive force issues.
The city faced a series of excessive force lawsuits last year, and settled one case for $ 600,000 out of court. In that case, an officer chasing a suspect hit the man in the head with the barrel of the gun. The city’s vulnerability was increased because the officer initially lied about the incident and no other officer reported it. Most of the public cynicism about the incident fell on uniformed officers, who handle the majority of the department’s calls.
The incident was a major reason why the department invited the Justice Department to conduct an investigation of the department to look for a pattern or practice of civil rights violations. That review is ongoing and will include an examination of the Esposito arrest.
Joseph Ryan, a 25-year veteran of the New York City Police Department and now chairman of Pace University’s Criminal Justice and Sociology Department, said covering up misconduct doesn’t pay off in the long run.
“The reality is they’re hurting themselves more than they’re actually helping themselves by protecting their fellow officers,” Ryan said, saying that community policing strategies require the trust of the community. He also said that there are 10 times as many lawsuits against police officers than there were just 15 years ago.
Still, officers being forthright about conduct by fellow cops is rare, he said. “When I see someone actually coming and breaking the blue wall it’s just amazing. It speaks volumes for the police department,” he said.