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"The cops who were engaged in corruption 20 years ago took money to cover up the criminal activity of others," says Michael Armstrong, who was chief counsel to the Knapp Commission. "Now it seems cops have gone into competition with street criminals." For cops as for anyone else, money works like an acid on integrity. Bribes from bootleggers made the 1920s a golden age for crooked police. Gambling syndicates in the 1950s were protected by a payoff system more elaborate than the Internal Revenue Service. Pervasive corruption may have lessened in recent years, as many experts believe, but individual examples seem to have grown more outrageous. In March authorities in Atlanta broke up a ring of weight-lifting officers who were charged with robbing strip clubs and private homes, and even carrying off 450-lb. safes from retail stores.
The deluge of cash that has flowed from the drug trade has created opportunities for quick dirty money on a scale never seen before. In the 1980s Philadelphia saw more than 30 officers convicted of taking part in a scheme to extort money from dealers. In Los Angeles an FBI probe focusing on the L.A. County sheriff's department has resulted so far in 36 indictments and 19 convictions on charges related to enormous thefts of cash during drug raids -- more than $1 million in one instance. "The deputies were pursuing the money more aggressively than they were pursuing drugs," says Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Bauer.
When cities enlarge their police forces quickly in response to public fears about crime, it can also mean an influx of younger and less well-suited officers. That was a major reason for the enormous corruption scandal that hit Miami in the mid-1980s, when about 10% of the city's police were either jailed, fired or disciplined in connection with a scheme in which officers robbed and sometimes killed cocaine smugglers on the Miami River, then resold the drugs. Many of those involved had been hired when the department had beefed up quickly after the 1980 riots and the Mariel boatlift. "We didn't get the quality of officers we should have," says department spokesman Dave Magnusson.
When it came time to clean house, says former Miami police chief Perry Anderson, civil service board members often chose to protect corrupt cops if there was no hard evidence to convict them in the courts. "I tried to fire 25 people with tarnished badges, but it was next to impossible," he recalls.
The Mollen Commission testimony could also lead to second thoughts on the growth of community policing, the back-to-the-beat philosophy that in recent years has been returning officers to neighborhood patrol in cities around the country, including New York. Getting to know the neighborhood can mean finding more occasions for bribe taking, which is one reason that in many places beat patrolling was scaled back since the 1960s in favor of more isolated squad-car teams.