Who Exactly Are the Good Cops?

I, like most Americans, believe that those drawn to serve as officers of the law, for the most part, are attracted by a combination of performing a vital and necessary social service with a touch of excitement along the way. It is a noble calling, to be sure. God knows it is an all-encompassing commitment, stressful and complex. Cops often cannot help but bring their work home with them. “We all know that the divorce rate for the nation sits right at about 50%, but did you know that the rate for officers is 60-70%? Staggering number when you really consider it. Approximately one quarter of the officers who are married will still be married to that same spouse at the end of their careers. One quarter.” Law Enforcement Officer, 2013. 

For some, that constant vigilance required for police work can rapidly turn into an “us versus the perps” mentality. Brother and sister police officers understand each other. Civilians often don’t. So even after hours, cops tend to hang with other cops. More separation. More “them versus us.” That brother/sisterhood is rife with unwritten rules. Chief and most destructive among them is “cops take care of each other first.” That’s a polite way of saying if there is something going on that appears a tad wrong… or very wrong… a cop’s perceived first obligation is to protect fellow officers at all costs. 

This golden rule has decimated more than one police department. Racial injustice is rife across society, but it is explosively rampant within our criminal justice system, from enforcement to prosecution and punishment. But today’s blog focuses on a system that has enabled this anomaly, that has supported an insidious value that has stained law enforcement since we first had cops. 

Most of us know of the Billy club-wielding cops in the NYPD around the turn of the 20th century. The mobs, the politicians and the cops were part of one big corrupt mess. Prohibition didn’t help. Gangsters proliferated. But the mob and its connection to corrupt cops didn’t end even after that was repealed, even as new generations of cops and prosecutors cleaned house. But the house kept getting back into dirt. In the 1980s, for example “Brooklyn’s 77th Precinct had made a name for itself as a home for crooked cops. Officers routinely stole money off dead bodies and pocketed cash from drug busts. When there weren’t enough busts to keep them happy, they created their own.” AllThatsInteresting.com/NYPD (9/21/17). The mob and dirty cops never really disappeared. They never do. Power corrupts… And these themes make great movies and television programs. But foment social injustice. 

Big cities struggle with having thousands of officers and lots of money that can be spread around. Los Angeles has had its long-standing police notoriety as well. So many nasty and corrupt stories, very similar to the issues faced by New York. Recent history is not particularly glorious either. The Encyclopedia Britannica reminds us the “Rampart scandal, [an] official inquiry (1998–2000) into corruption among officers of the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). More than 70 officers were implicated in misconduct, including unprovoked beatings and shootings, planting and covering up evidence, stealing and dealing drugs, and perjury.” But that was hardly the end of it. Recent stories about police corruption are all over the local headlines. 

It's no secret that LA, like many American cities, has a gang problem. Well-armed tattooed hoodlums perpetrating serious crimes all over the city, but particularly in poorer neighborhoods. Like Compton. It seems, however, that some of those gangs are actually cops. “A violent gang of Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies who call themselves ‘The Executioners’ control a patrol station in Compton through force, threats, work slowdowns and acts of revenge against those who speak out, a deputy alleges in a legal claim. 

“Austreberto Gonzalez, a former Marine and a sheriff's deputy since 2007, said in a notice of claim ahead of a planned lawsuit that the gang retaliated against him for months after he anonymously reported a fellow deputy for allegedly assaulting a coworker in February ‘to further the reputation of the gang.’… Gonzalez later received a text message with a photo of graffiti at the station, he said. The graffiti allegedly said, ‘ART IS A RAT.’… The allegations against the Compton deputies follow accusations of other gangs in the department — called the Spartans, Regulators, Grim Reapers and Banditos — that also share tattoos and a history of violence…” NBC News Los Angeles, August 4th. 

The problems just keep compounding. “Six Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies reported hearing a single gunshot during a foot chase outside Golden Bird Chicken in Willowbrook. One said he saw a revolver on the man they were after, then a bright muzzle flash… Lyle Spruill was arrested that December night last year and charged with one of the most incendiary of felonies — attempted murder of a police officer — even though no gun was found. He spent the next six months in jail. 

“Then, just before Spruill’s scheduled preliminary hearing in June, prosecutors dropped the case. The evidence, including surveillance footage of him running away and the absence of gunshot residue, didn’t support the charges, the district attorney’s office said… Spruill claims in a lawsuit filed last week that the deputies from the Century Station fabricated the story and withheld evidence that contradicts their version of events. 

“A gunshot residue report was completed 15 days after Spruill’s December arrest but wasn’t turned over to prosecutors for six months, according to records and interviews. (The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department said that because of personnel changes related to COVID-19, ‘the handling detective was unaware of the GSR results until just before the pretrial’ hearing.) 

“The allegations come at a time when the reliability of police accounts increasingly is being questioned amid a push for criminal justice reform spurred by videotaped killings such as that of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Spruill’s case is among others in Los Angeles that have been tossed out or rejected by prosecutors, or are under review, because the evidence and stories presented by police don’t hold up… ‘Every day I walk around, and I think about why,’ Spruill, 45, said in an interview with The [LA] Times. ‘Why me? What have I done wrong to make not one cop, not two cops, but several cops to make a statement that I tried to hurt them?’ 

“A Gallup poll after Floyd’s May 25 death found that confidence in police was at a record low, falling to less than half the U.S. population, 48%, for the first time in 27 years. Experts said it appears people are more likely now to question what’s in police reports.” Alene Tchekmedyian writing for the August 31st Los Angeles Times. Cops hate bodycams, and police departments everywhere where such cam exist, are pressuring to keep the resulting footage from the public. No problem. There’s probably someone with a cell phone camera recording the incident anyway. 

The settlements that cities and counties have to pay for these falsehoods, defended by taxpayer-supported internal PR units with cops protected by unions that shelter obvious murderer-cops, are staggering. As Donald Trump calls for keeping all this “internal evidence” away from the press and the public, as he supports military tactics and whatever force cops believe they should use, our cops and their unions are becoming some of the President’s strongest supporters. Screw reform and cleaning up corruption; turn the cops loose to do what they need to do to restore what is a dramatically unconstitutional vision of “law and order.” 

The problem with all of this is compounded by the reality that the public is losing confidence in what have to be some of the most ethical and duty-bound police officers in the world. They are being tarnished by those who fear transparency and believe that in some material ways, cops need a free pass to violate a law or two if that’s what (they believe) it takes. That old “judge, jury and executioner” thang that the Constitution was expressly created to prevent. It’s called “due process,” and cops swear a most sacred duty to protect that and other constitutional rights. 

But as long as cops put their brother-sisterhood above the law (and look the other way or help in manufacturing cover-ups), police department PR machines whitewash all negative behavior (hiding contrary evidence), and police unions knee-jerk to rally to support the most obviously violent and dangerous cops, the criminal justice system cannot work, cannot provide equal justice under the law and cannot protect and serve its taxpaying citizens. I’m Peter Dekom, and a “good cop” – moral in their own practices to a fault – who looks the other way (even if they aren’t affirmatively engaging in a coverup) as fellow officers plantI, like most Americans, believe that those drawn to serve as officers of the law, for the most part, are attracted by a combination of performing a vital and necessary social service with a touch of excitement along the way. It is a noble calling, to be sure. God knows it is an all-encompassing commitment, stressful and complex. Cops often cannot help but bring their work home with them. “We all know that the divorce rate for the nation sits right at about 50%, but did you know that the rate for officers is 60-70%? Staggering number when you really consider it. Approximately one quarter of the officers who are married will still be married to that same spouse at the end of their careers. One quarter.” Law Enforcement Officer, 2013. 

For some, that constant vigilance required for police work can rapidly turn into an “us versus the perps” mentality. Brother and sister police officers understand each other. Civilians often don’t. So even after hours, cops tend to hang with other cops. More separation. More “them versus us.” That brother/sisterhood is rife with unwritten rules. Chief and most destructive among them is “cops take care of each other first.” That’s a polite way of saying if there is something going on that appears a tad wrong… or very wrong… a cop’s perceived first obligation is to protect fellow officers at all costs. 

This golden rule has decimated more than one police department. Racial injustice is rife across society, but it is explosively rampant within our criminal justice system, from enforcement to prosecution and punishment. But today’s blog focuses on a system that has enabled this anomaly, that has supported an insidious value that has stained law enforcement since we first had cops. 

Most of us know of the Billy club-wielding cops in the NYPD around the turn of the 20th century. The mobs, the politicians and the cops were part of one big corrupt mess. Prohibition didn’t help. Gangsters proliferated. But the mob and its connection to corrupt cops didn’t end even after that was repealed, even as new generations of cops and prosecutors cleaned house. But the house kept getting back into dirt. In the 1980s, for example “Brooklyn’s 77th Precinct had made a name for itself as a home for crooked cops. Officers routinely stole money off dead bodies and pocketed cash from drug busts. When there weren’t enough busts to keep them happy, they created their own.” AllThatsInteresting.com/NYPD (9/21/17). The mob and dirty cops never really disappeared. They never do. Power corrupts… And these themes make great movies and television programs. But foment social injustice. 

Big cities struggle with having thousands of officers and lots of money that can be spread around. Los Angeles has had its long-standing police notoriety as well. So many nasty and corrupt stories, very similar to the issues faced by New York. Recent history is not particularly glorious either. The Encyclopedia Britannica reminds us the “Rampart scandal, [an] official inquiry (1998–2000) into corruption among officers of the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). More than 70 officers were implicated in misconduct, including unprovoked beatings and shootings, planting and covering up evidence, stealing and dealing drugs, and perjury.” But that was hardly the end of it. Recent stories about police corruption are all over the local headlines. 

It's no secret that LA, like many American cities, has a gang problem. Well-armed tattooed hoodlums perpetrating serious crimes all over the city, but particularly in poorer neighborhoods. Like Compton. It seems, however, that some of those gangs are actually cops. “A violent gang of Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies who call themselves ‘The Executioners’ control a patrol station in Compton through force, threats, work slowdowns and acts of revenge against those who speak out, a deputy alleges in a legal claim. 

“Austreberto Gonzalez, a former Marine and a sheriff's deputy since 2007, said in a notice of claim ahead of a planned lawsuit that the gang retaliated against him for months after he anonymously reported a fellow deputy for allegedly assaulting a coworker in February ‘to further the reputation of the gang.’… Gonzalez later received a text message with a photo of graffiti at the station, he said. The graffiti allegedly said, ‘ART IS A RAT.’… The allegations against the Compton deputies follow accusations of other gangs in the department — called the Spartans, Regulators, Grim Reapers and Banditos — that also share tattoos and a history of violence…” NBC News Los Angeles, August 4th. 

The problems just keep compounding. “Six Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies reported hearing a single gunshot during a foot chase outside Golden Bird Chicken in Willowbrook. One said he saw a revolver on the man they were after, then a bright muzzle flash… Lyle Spruill was arrested that December night last year and charged with one of the most incendiary of felonies — attempted murder of a police officer — even though no gun was found. He spent the next six months in jail. 

“Then, just before Spruill’s scheduled preliminary hearing in June, prosecutors dropped the case. The evidence, including surveillance footage of him running away and the absence of gunshot residue, didn’t support the charges, the district attorney’s office said… Spruill claims in a lawsuit filed last week that the deputies from the Century Station fabricated the story and withheld evidence that contradicts their version of events. 

“A gunshot residue report was completed 15 days after Spruill’s December arrest but wasn’t turned over to prosecutors for six months, according to records and interviews. (The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department said that because of personnel changes related to COVID-19, ‘the handling detective was unaware of the GSR results until just before the pretrial’ hearing.) 

“The allegations come at a time when the reliability of police accounts increasingly is being questioned amid a push for criminal justice reform spurred by videotaped killings such as that of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Spruill’s case is among others in Los Angeles that have been tossed out or rejected by prosecutors, or are under review, because the evidence and stories presented by police don’t hold up… ‘Every day I walk around, and I think about why,’ Spruill, 45, said in an interview with The [LA] Times. ‘Why me? What have I done wrong to make not one cop, not two cops, but several cops to make a statement that I tried to hurt them?’ 

“A Gallup poll after Floyd’s May 25 death found that confidence in police was at a record low, falling to less than half the U.S. population, 48%, for the first time in 27 years. Experts said it appears people are more likely now to question what’s in police reports.” Alene Tchekmedyian writing for the August 31st Los Angeles Times. Cops hate bodycams, and police departments everywhere where such cam exist, are pressuring to keep the resulting footage from the public. No problem. There’s probably someone with a cell phone camera recording the incident anyway. 

The settlements that cities and counties have to pay for these falsehoods, defended by taxpayer-supported internal PR units with cops protected by unions that shelter obvious murderer-cops, are staggering. As Donald Trump calls for keeping all this “internal evidence” away from the press and the public, as he supports military tactics and whatever force cops believe they should use, our cops and their unions are becoming some of the President’s strongest supporters. Screw reform and cleaning up corruption; turn the cops loose to do what they need to do to restore what is a dramatically unconstitutional vision of “law and order.” 

The problem with all of this is compounded by the reality that the public is losing confidence in what have to be some of the most ethical and duty-bound police officers in the world. They are being tarnished by those who fear transparency and believe that in some material ways, cops need a free pass to violate a law or two if that’s what (they believe) it takes. That old “judge, jury and executioner” thang that the Constitution was expressly created to prevent. It’s called “due process,” and cops swear a most sacred duty to protect that and other constitutional rights. 

But as long as cops put their brother-sisterhood above the law (and look the other way or help in manufacturing cover-ups), police department PR machines whitewash all negative behavior (hiding contrary evidence), and police unions knee-jerk to rally to support the most obviously violent and dangerous cops, the criminal justice system cannot work, cannot provide equal justice under the law and cannot protect and serve its taxpaying citizens.    

I’m Peter Dekom, and a “good cop” – moral in their own practices to a fault – who looks the other way (even if they aren’t affirmatively engaging in a coverup) as fellow officers plant evidence, is a very, very bad cop.