On Bad Apples

[hootinholler]

Over time I keep seeing the phrase A Few Bad Apples in describing poorly behaving police and dismissing their enablers. The people using this metaphor are forgetting the rest of the expression: Spoils the barrel. A few bad apples spoil the barrel.

This folk wisdom is actually born in fact. It's why back in the day apples picked for storage were always picked by hand and treated gently. It's why apples today picked for storage are picked well before they begin to ripen. As fruit ripen they emit ethylene as a gas which is a hormone that encourages ripening. Bruising is a point source of ethylene and if you put a bruised apple in a storage barrel, that source of ethylene will grow as it affects the rest of the apple and others it is near. A few bad (bruised) apples will literally spoil the barrel long before the barrel should otherwise spoil.

It's an apt metaphor for our current police except in it's typical use today, which is to excuse the behavior of the good apples who cover for the bad one. The reality is that the few bad apples have corrupted those who overlook the bad behavior instead of calling it out and purging the bad apple. The culture inside police departments must change before we see relief form the bad apple syndrome.

Let's hope that Balitmore PD can show us how this can be done. I'm not optimistic they will because institutional culture is hard to change, even resistant to change even when the culture outside the institution applies pressure to change.

We must find a way to encourage and reward good apples when they identify and purge bad apples. How to do that is beyond me.

[tblue37]

1. Not just reward good apples, but PROTECT them from retaliation. The ones who report brutality or

corruption are lucky if they just suffer false accusations or bad work reports in their files and/or get pressured to leave the force that way or because of being ostracized by their peers, given lousy assignments and shifts by their superiors, and finding their path to career advancement completely blocked.

All too often retaliation goes far beyond those tactics, awful as they are. A "traitor" cop might find himself without any backup in deadly situations, or he might "accidentally" fall victim to friendly fire. If he doesn't end up wounded or killed while on duty, he might get framed for corruption. Serpico was a typical victim of such retaliation.

A tactic used on one NYC cop whistleblower was to have him locked up for 72 hours in a mental institution!

I think that a lot of decent cops leave the force because they see corruption and brutality they know that they cannot safely report. Others just keep their heads down and try to do the job as well as they can without becoming targets themselves, which means that inevitably they will become complicit in these crimes.

As those with real principles who are unwilling to compromise get pressured out of the force, the corruption becomes progressively worse, until it is so pervasive and so extreme that the only way to improve the system would be a complete *top to bottom* purge--from police chiefs all the way down to beat cops. Since DAs and judges also become a part of this system of injustice, corruption, and brutality, a lot of them would also need to be swept out in the general housecleaning. A lot of people in political offices are also involved, too, of course--mayors, councilmen, AGs, etc.

[hootinholler]

2. Great point on protections

I don't see how a grand purge would work though.

[tblue37]

3. Actually I see no way such a purge could even be undertaken. I am just

pointing out the anything less is unlikely to remove the corruption, bias, injustice, and brutality from the system.

[hootinholler]

4. That's pretty much what I meant by the shorthand work

Rather than my implication that it wouldn't have any effect.

It will take a cultural shift, bodies on the gears until it reaches a critical mass. I'm having trouble seeing how to get that rolling.