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The real test of a department is not so much whether its officers are tempted by money but whether there is an institutional culture that discourages them from succumbing. In Los Angeles the sheriff's department "brought us the case," says FBI special agent Charlie Parsons. "They worked with us hand in glove throughout the investigation." In the years after it was established, following the Knapp Commission disclosures, the New York City police department's internal affairs division was considered one of the nation's most effective in stalking corruption. But that may not be the case anymore. Police sergeant Joseph Trimboli, a department investigator, told the Mollen Commission that when he tried to root out Dowd and other corrupt cops, his efforts were blocked by higher-ups in the department. At one point, Trimboli claimed, he was called to a meeting of police officials and told he was under suspicion as a drug trafficker. "They did not want this investigation to exist," he said.
A similar story came from a black-hooded undercover informant who told the commission that in 1991 more than a dozen crooked cops from a precinct in Manhattan's East Village had even come up with the idea of a Fourth of July barbecue with local drug dealers. A plan by the local district attorney for the informant to attend, equipped with a listening device, was thwarted when commanders suddenly ordered the officer in charge of the barbecue arrested on drug charges. By tipping off the other officers, that had the effect of scuttling any wider inquiry. No other arrests were made, even though police found the names of five officers in the phone book of a drug dealer.
Last year New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly announced a series of organizational changes, including a larger staff and better-coordinated field investigations, intended to improve internal affairs. His critics say those changes don't go far enough. At last week's hearings two retired members of the internal affairs division, Sergeant James Dowd and Lieut. James Wood, described how they offered evidence last year that two officers were dealing heroin, only to watch department investigators bungle the probe, then accuse Dowd and Wood of wrongdoing instead. Much of that happened after Kelly's reforms had been announced. The Mollen Commission is expected to recommend the establishment of an outside monitoring agency, a move that Kelly and other police brass have expressed some reservations about. "No group is good at policing itself," says Knapp Commission counsel Armstrong. "It doesn't hurt to have somebody looking over their shoulder." An independent body, however, might be less effective at getting co-operation from cops prone to close ranks against outsiders. "You have to have the confidence of officers and information about what's going on internally," says former U.S. Attorney Thomas Puccio, who prosecuted a number of police-corruption cases.
Getting that information was no easier when officers were encouraged to report wrongdoing to authorities within their own department. In many cities that have them, internal affairs divisions are resented within the ranks for getting cops to turn in other cops -- informers are even recruited from police-academy cadets -- and for rarely targeting the brass.