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"One of the things that has come out in the hearings is a culture within the department which seems to permit corruption to exist," says Walter Mack, a onetime federal prosecutor who is now New York's deputy commissioner of internal affairs. "But when you're talking about cultural change, you're talking about many years. It's not something that occurs overnight."
Dowd, who is scheduled to be sentenced this month on a guilty plea that could bring him 15 years or more in prison, put it another way. "Cops don't want to turn in other cops," he said. "Cops don't want to be a rat." And even when honest cops are willing to blow the whistle, there may not be anyone willing to listen.