Law Enforcement

Recent police corruption cases in several cities have underscored the link between police corruption and illegal drug activities. This report studies the impact of drug trafficking on police corruption in large cities with significant drug problems. Although GAO did not locate any central data sources that would allow it to reliably estimate the extent of police corruption or how much corruption is drug-related, the literature GAO reviewed, along with interviews with officials and academic experts, provided information on the (1) nature and extent of known drug-related police corruption in certain large cities; (2) factors associated with known drug-related police corruption; and (3) practices that have been recommended or implemented to prevent or detect drug-related police corruption.

GAO noted that: (1) drug-related police corruption differs in a variety of ways from other types of police corruption; (2) in addition to protecting criminals or ignoring their activities, officers involved in drug-related corruption were more likely to be actively involved in the commission of a variety of crimes, including stealing drugs and money from drug dealers, selling drugs, and lying under oath about illegal searches; (3) although profit was found to be a motive common to traditional and drug-related police corruption, New York City's Mollen Commission identified power and vigilante justice as two additional motives for drug-related police corruption; (4) the most commonly identified pattern of drug-related police corruption involved small groups of officers who protected and assisted each other in criminal activities, rather than the traditional patterns of non-drug-related police corruption that involved just a few isolated individuals or systemic corruption pervading an entire police department or precinct; (5) federal agencies either do not maintain data specifically on drug-related police corruption or maintain data only on cases in which the respective agency is involved; (6) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provided GAO with data on FBI-led drug-related corruption cases involving state and local law enforcement officers; (7) however, since the total number of drug-related police corruption cases at all levels of government is unknown, the proportion constituted by FBI cases also is unknown; (8) one commonly identified factor associated with drug-related corruption was a police culture that was characterized by a code of silence, unquestioned loyalty to other officers, and cynicism about the criminal justice system; (9) officers lacking in experience and some higher education were considered to be more susceptible to involvement in illicit drug-related activities; (10) GAO's sources also identified practices that they believed could prevent or detect drug-related police corruption; (11) these practices, although often directed toward combatting police corruption in general, also were viewed as effective steps toward specifically addressing drug-related police corruption; (12) the detection practices GAO's sources discussed included integrity testing, early warning systems to identify potential problem officers, and proactive investigations of individual officers or precincts with a high number of corruption complaints; and (13) lastly, GAO identified several federal initiatives that were directed toward assisting state and local governments in preventing and detecting police corruption.