The police in America
(The Knapp & Mollen Commission)

Jarrett M. Adams

CJL300.98.SP.12 POLICE & SOCIETY
Professor Bill Harmening
April 3, 2012
Introduction
Police corruption comes at an extraordinary cost. First and foremost, a corrupt act committed by any law official is a crime. Police corruption also diminishes the integrity of the police and tarnishes the public image of law enforcement. Furthermore, corruption protects other criminal activity such as drug dealing and prostitution. Protected criminal activities are a huge threat to the community because they are able to operate with the help of law enforcement. This paper will explore the efforts put forth by the Government to control police corruption with the hopes of ridding it from society.

The Knapp Commission In the spring of 1970, then New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay placed a call to Federal Judge Percy Whitman Knapp. This phone call led to Knapp’s most visible role: chairman of a five-member commission that uncovered, after many months of investigating, a pattern of corruption familiar in precinct houses throughout the five boroughs of New York. This corruption included shakedowns at bars and construction sites to accepting payoffs from gamblers and drug dealers to ignore their criminal operations. The major catalyst for the inquiry came from a series of articles in The New York Times by David Burnham, an investigative reporter who had passion to expose police corruption (Burnham). The series of police corruption articles started when The Times was approached by two disgruntled police detectives, Frank Serpico and David Durk. It was later found that both detectives first voiced their concerns and disgust to various officials in the Lindsay administration, including Jay Kriegel, a top aide to the mayor, and Arnold G. Fraiman, the head of the city's Commission of Investigations. After the detectives concerns and complaints went unheard, they decided to go public.

The Knapp Commission: Findings The commission report, based on the work of a 30-person staff, including about a dozen investigators asserted that the Lindsay administration had failed to promptly investigate reports on specific corrupt acts, despite evidence that the corruption was widespread. Bit by bit, reports of the commission’s findings of police corruption in New York City leaked out to the public. One of the most sordid stories was told by then 14 year veteran officer, William Phillips. Officer Phillips, explained how he and innumerable other cops had taken bribes as casually as they had handed out parking tickets. Phillips told of three Queens Narcotic officers who split $80,000 that they picked up in a narcotics raid. Phillips went on to testify that he knew of no officers assigned to gambling who was not on the take after two months. Phillips obviously learned fast. When he first joined the force, he did not get any offers for a while. He was being watched for telltale signs of integrity. When they did not appear, a fellow cop made the first approach by telling him where to get a free meal. From then on, he regularly freeloaded, though as he told the Commission, he tried not to go to a restaurant during "real busy hours." The free meal is a first test of the corrupt cop. If he passes it, he is on his way. When a Commission member asked Phillips how he could tell that a certain lieutenant was honest, Phillips replied: "He carries his lunch to the station house. Anyone that does that is clean"(“Guarding the Guardians." Time 98.13 (1971). Knapp’s Recommendations The Knapp Commission took the scientific administration vision’s approach in its recommendations toward improving the NYPD’s anti-corruption mechanisms. Knapp found that organizational fragmentation hindered corruption control. The units responsible for uncovering misconduct and maintaining internal discipline were widely dispersed, poorly coordinated, and understaffed (1972: 205). The Inspectional Services Bureau (ISB), under the command of the First Deputy Commissioner, was charged with among other things, monitoring the performance of various units and investigating complaints of misconduct. The ISB however, was lacking in official authority. The ISB was seriously understaffed, with its manpower kept to a level that “made it virtually impossible to do its job effectively.” Inadequate investigative techniques made for a poor work product. Because the ISB worked on a case-by-case basis, patterns were neither sought nor uncovered. Cases were assigned to whom the bureau’s superiors felt the case should be assigned, regardless of where the organizational chart required the case be assigned. There was no intra-bureau coordination or communication, and records were not properly organized so as to promote efficient intelligence gathering (1972: 208-209 ;). Knapp noted that these were failures that needed to be corrected. The NYPD’s failed ability to adequately curtail corruption was inherent in the Department’s system of corruption control. Knapp recommended that the NYPD’s investigative apparatus, its “machinery for detecting and investigating police corruption” be “unified organizationally.” Knapp pushed for command accountability, making commanders at all levels of the Department responsible for rooting out corruption (1972: 16-17; 205). Knapp asked the question: “Will history repeat itself?” Rather than see corruption as a problem that is talked about every 20 years, Knapp called upon the NYPD to create a climate of reform (1972: 13, 17). The 1994 Mollen Commission found that the NYPD largely failed to create such a climate and history did repeat itself (Commission Report, 1994: 70). The Mollen Commission Mayor David Dinkins created the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption and the Anti-Corruption Procedures of the Police Department by a 1992 executive order. The Commission, chaired by Judge Milton Mollen, focused largely on the NYPD’s failure to root out corruption, with the Michael Dowd case as a prime example. Over a span of six years, the New York City Police Department received 16 complaints alleging that Police Officer Michael Dowd had been robbing drug dealers and dealing cocaine as part of a gang of corrupt officers in the 75th Precinct in the crime-ridden East New York section of Brooklyn. That wasn't all. The officer drove to work in a bright red Corvette and sometimes had a limousine pick him up at the station house for gambling trips to Atlantic City. Yet in a clear example of what went wrong with the department's handling of corruption cases, an investigative panel, the Mollen Commission, concluded that senior officers repeatedly ignored allegations against Officer Dowd or blocked efforts to check them out in a deliberate policy to shield the department from scandal.

The Mollen Commission: Findings & Recommendations The system of corruption control was only as good as the people who controlled the system. Accountability and responsibility for rooting out and investigating corruption had deteriorated. The Internal Affairs Department kept only five percent of the corruption cases yearly, referring the other 95 percent to the Federal Internal Affairs Unit, which at the time was understaffed and ill equipped to handle the caseload (Commission Report, 1994: 85). Mollen recommended that the NYPD redesign its Internal Affairs function, and the Department has made several changes. Commanders are evaluated continually about their respective anti-corruption performance. Precinct and unit commanders regularly confer with Internal Affairs Bureau commanders to share information regarding corruption hazards, as well as intelligence information regarding corruption-prone officers. Random drug screening occurs regularly throughout the year, and members of the service found to be users of illicit drugs are dismissed from the Department (Commission Report, 1994: 127-131). Virtually every unit has a lieutenant act as an Integrity Control Officer (ICO). The lieutenant has the duty of interacting on a daily basis with officers in their assigned unit. The ICO’s sole function is that of integrity control. He or she will continually check on time records, overtime requests, court appearances, etc.

Conclusion Police corruption tears at the fabric that this country is clothed in. Although police corruption may never be fully eradicated, The Government has shown that it is serious about rooting out any form of it. The citizens of this country both need and deserve to have honest police officers protect and serve them. After all, it is the citizens of America who pay the taxes that employ these officers.

Work Cited 1)"Cops As Pushers." Time 95.19 (1971): 19. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Apr. 2012

2)"Guarding The Guardians." Time 98.13 (1971): 30. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Apr. 2012

3)Commission to investigate allegations of police corruption and the city’s anticorruption procedures. (1972, December 26). Commission Report. New York: George Braziller.

4)Commission to investigate allegations of police corruption and the anticorruption procedures of the police department. (1994, July 7). Commission Report. New York: The City of New York.

5)Dowd case http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/07/nyregion/corruption-uniform-dowd-case-officer-flaunted-corruption-his-superiors-ignored.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm