Misconduct Widespread in
the Police-State Republic

By Richard A. Serrano
LA Times Staff Writer

DULUTH, MN - One day Officer Kerwin Hall climbed into his patrol car and found two $100 bills on the seat. Before long he was taking cash directly from the hands of drug dealers. In return he would steer his police cruiser away from certain streets notorious for drug sales. But soon enough the law he had sworn to uphold caught up with Kerwin Hall. Arrested, convicted and sentenced to prison, he traded in police Badge No. 209 for Inmate No. 07441-424. He no longer sports the crisp blue colors of the Ford Heights, IL, police uniform. Instead, he wears a drab green inmate jumpsuit at the Federal Prison Camp here. He is doing 11 years for criminal racketeering. He will be 50 years old when he gets out. His eight kids will be grown.

Hall has not journeyed alone from the life of a cop to a life of crime. Since 1993, the number of law-enforcement officers doing time in federal prisons has risen to 668 -- an increase of nearly 600%. Even before the scandal involving the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division began to unfold, corruption crackdowns were leaving deep scars on police forces large and small. Experts agree that much of what has been revealed in Los Angeles - a department under siege, a group of officers under arrest or investigation, a community anxious for reform - is being played out in cities and towns across America. (The idea that the LAPD scandal is limited to the Rampart Division case highlights the anxiety felt by the leaders of the police state, who want to limit the public perception of police misconduct to specific geographical areas. Most local southern California experts, however, recognize that the problems in the LAPD exist throughout the force, due to systemic problems that originate at the highest levels of power in Los Angeles. WFI Editor)

In Ford Heights, IL, one of the nation's poorest communities, seven of the Police Department's ten officers were convicted of racketeering, bribery and other drug and money-related charges. Among those sent to prison - for 20 years - was Police Chief Jack L. Davis, a man Hall had admired as a youngster, both as a father figure in uniform and for the car he drove back and forth to the police house: a flashy blue Cadillac.

In West New York, NJ, up on the bluffs of the Hudson River, some two dozen officers of a 100-member force were prosecuted on similar racketeering and bribery charges, mainly for protecting illegal interests in gambling, prostitution and go-go bars. (The simple solution, of course, is just to legalize these victimless activities, which would take the profit-motive out of it for corrupt police. WFI Editor) Among those now in prison are Chief Alexander V. Oriente, who sobbed openly when he described to a judge his descent into infamy, and of his son and namesake, Lt. Alexander L. Oriente. They each were sentenced to 2 ½ years. (Who said crime doesn't pay? After betraying their sacred public trust, the police CHIEF and his son receive a mere two and a half years! There are people serving LIFE SENTENCES for selling marijuana; surely police who defile their badges should receive sentences that equal the impact of their crimes, and while life sentences should be reserved for only the most heinous of crimes, like murder, [NOT selling marijuana], an official of the state charged with law enforcement responsibilities who betrays the public interest should serve a minimum of twenty years, especially if a senior executive, like a chief of police. WFI Editor)

Both departments were turned upside-down by the corruption scandals. Both are still struggling to rebuild their shattered organizations, reform their internal procedures and restore order on the streets. (That is the larger cost of political corruption in a police state, the loss of order in the society. This does not refer to the kind of "order" imposed by coercion, but the order that is the result of the community operating by known tacit agreements regarding fairness. When the government is illegitimate, as is usual when the state is formed in the aftermath of a violent civil war which jettisons the fundamental values of the society, and the agents of the government act like gangsters instead of as responsible constitutional leaders, it can lead to an internal state of confusion that inevitably results in the cannibalization of the civilization. WFI Editor)

What is it about police work that turns cops who arrest crooks into cops who become crooks? Why have some forces become so full of corrupt police officers that federal investigators not only are making wholesale arrests, from chiefs on down, but even calling in outside law-enforcement agencies to protect citizens? Gary Sykes, director of the Southwestern Law Enforcement Institution and the Center for Law Enforcement Ethics in Dallas, has found that a surprising number of cities have had to deal with police corruption. "I'm talking about abuse of authority and patterns of misconduct," he said. "There isn't any major city that hasn't gone through some embarrassing events that call into question the trustworthiness of police departments." (The answer may just exist in the forgotten history of the United States federal republic, which was organized as a police state, the first function of which was to preserve the institution of slavery. Modern Americans do not appreciate the time and resources that were expended for the recovery or punishment of fugitive slaves by the local, state and federal authorities of the early republic, which directly benefited the slaveholding class. The enslaved population had to be kept under lock and key, because they constantly and repeatedly sought to escape to Canada, where they would be free. Early American accounts are full of white voices - there were no black voices because they were not allowed to read or write - expressing the indignation of the white slaveowners over the repeated attempts of their slaves to escape, even though their slavemasters felt that they had treated them well. It is very clear from these factual accounts that the slavemasters never gave the humanity of their slaves a second thought, such as to their innate desire to be free, even if it meant possibly suffering the most humiliating, or even deadly punishments. The primary purpose of the republic has always been to serve as a constabulary protecting the property of the elite. While not one civil right of the American people is listed in the body of the Constitution of 1787, the one clause the Founding Fathers were the most concerned about - providing for the return of fugitive slaves, which is a purely police function - was included.

Ironically, the first police force in America was the U.S. Marshal Service, which was involved in the first use of organized violence by the new American federal government against American people, known as the Whiskey Rebellion. The U.S. Army was always there to enforce "order," largely as a skeletal force that could be reinforced by the state militias, but the mindset of the republic from its first days under Washington, always cast a suspicious eye upon the lower classes of poor whites, enslaved blacks, native Americans, women and children. Of course, the real drive underlying the police state structure of the republic did not come to fruition until the post-Civil War period, when the Secret Service was established by Pinkerton, who had honed his talents for investigation as a private detective for the railroads, the equivalent in their day of Big Business today.

The modern era of law enforcement evolved from these origins, and culminated in the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation, which became the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover's opportunistic and fascistic leadership. Hoover was the most powerful evidence there has ever been of the uncontrollable nature of the federal bureaucracy, as a senior law enforcement bureaucrat who was never elected, but who kept his hand on the levers of power by maintaining dossiers on all the elected politicians who ran the republic. When Hoover died, Washington D.C. sighed a collective sigh of relief, as the paper shredders worked overtime to cover up the various crimes Hoover engaged in to maintain his bureaucratic supremacy. And of course, there is always another Hoover in the wings. WFI Editor)

Ford Heights and West New York mirror the LAPD's Rampart Division scandal - systemic examples of police arrogance that put officers above public safety. Today, there are also more temptations. And experts say that prosecutors, community groups and the public are not as willing to give police officers a free pass to skirt the law just because they are authority figures with high-pressure jobs. "It's nothing distinctive about police…" said Edwin J. Delattre, a longtime criminal justice expert and dean of the School of Education at Boston University. But, Delattre continued, police officers who go bad are singularly egregious because "in policing you have the authority to abridge liberty and you are in a distinctive position to do harm." (There is a certain powerful irony in the idea of the upholder of law being engaged in conspiracies to defeat the interests of law to protect the rights to justice for all the people. WFI Editor)

Sam Walker of the University of Nebraska, a leading researcher on police corruption, asked "Why do cops go bad? It's because of bad organizations." Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder, recalled in an interview that, as U.S. attorney in the nation's capital during the mid-1990s, his office prosecuted the District of Columbia's so-called "Dirty Dozen" police officers for protecting drug dealers. (No wonder it was so easy for the government to obtain that bag of crack President Bush held up in front of the nation when he announced his lucrative War on Drugs. WFI Editor)

Los Angeles' Rampart Scandal has seen two officers imprisoned, with three more under indictment. More than 30 officers either have been relieved of duty, suspended, fired or have quit. More than 70 are under investigation for such offenses as covering up unjustified (police) shootings, intimidating witnesses (obstruction of justice), planting evidence, and perjury. Prosecutors have overturned more than 75 felony convictions because of alleged police misconduct. (Actually, if a conviction is overturned the allegation of police misconduct is a proven allegation, rather an unproven allegation. WFI Editor)

The West New York case broke after one of the officers, Richard G. Rivera, spotted a detective leaving a gambling parlor in 1991. He tipped off federal investigators - not an easy decision for someone working in such a closed society as a police department. (One might imagine that it would be a prerequisite for admittance to a police force that all members agree to uphold the law, and to deliberately disclose any knowledge of misconduct as a matter of personal honor and integrity. The fact that integrity is not as highly prized in the paramilitary police forces of the country, as the ability to keep official secrets, is powerful and compelling evidence that the law enforcement institution has an agenda of its own, separate and distinct from the national interest of the American people. WFI Editor) "I never imagined myself betraying another police officer," Rivera wrote for the Law Enforcement News published by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, "until I discovered that it was me, along with law enforcement and the general public, who was actually being betrayed."

Carlos Ortiz, a federal prosecutor, said, "People are afraid to testify against officers. They're in the community, and if you testify against the police, you sometimes might feel you are on your own." (Which is a fancy way of saying that the police are very political, and that they will remember your opposition to them, and they will exact revenge, despite the fact that they are sworn to protect the public. This independence and autonomy on the part of law enforcement is the basis of the claim that the republic is now, and has always been, a police state. WFI Editor)

Chief Oriente, upon his arrest, began cooperating with authorities. He confessed that when he joined the Police Department in the 1950s, rookies like himself commonly accepted $1 for each car tow they sent to a favorite auto-wrecking company. By the time he stood up to be sentenced in federal court last January, as the top cop for a 100-person department patrolling a city less than a quarter-mile in size, rookies were pocketing $6 for each tow. "When I joined the West New York Police Department, I was very young," a sobbing Oriente told the judge. "I was placed in a corrupt position, a corrupt environment, which was the normal part of this Police Department." (But what is the message sent when the Chief of Police, who is sustaining and perpetuating that corrupt environment, is sentenced to a mere 2 ½ years? That crime in high places pays. WFI Editor) When the chief's son, Lt. Oriente, was sentenced, he apologized for his "mistakes," but did not mention his father's influence. However, U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Simandle took note of the father-son relationship. "Mr. Oriente was molded by his father," the judge said. "He decided to, when the opportunity presented itself, follow a corrupt path he derived directly from his father, as well as from his own corrupt activities, money that was paid in order to destroy his oath and to avoid the law."

If not about power, police corruption is almost always about money. And in Ford Heights, officers chose to facilitate the crack epidemic that swept through town in the 1980s. Hall said that he was trying to raise a large family on a wage of $7 an hour. Sometimes cash-strapped City Hall could not even meet its payroll. He said his world "was turned upside-down" when one of his sons was found to have a brain tumor. Around that time the $100 bills started showing up on his car seat. "Basically, my family had to eat. I had infants at home. They needed milk and Pampers and I couldn't bring it home. So I found myself bringing home gratuities from drug dealers." Hall insisted in the prison interview that he never purposely refused to arrest drug dealers. He said he told them that if he caught them red-handed, they were going to jail. But, he said, he did agree not to drive his police cruiser down certain streets and to warn some dealers if they might be under investigation. Over four years, he said, he took $2,500 "and it is costing me 11 years and nine months for that little bit. You've got cops who actually make a better living getting money on the outside and it doesn't just go down to patrolmen. It goes higher. It's accessible. Because as a cop you go anywhere. You talk to anybody. You pull over a drug dealer and roll down your window and say whatever you want to say. You falsify reports.

"And cops are trying to make names for themselves. You've got people in jail who shouldn't be there. You've got cops who hide behind their badge every day, cops who profit off the badge. I tried to be an honest cop. But it wasn't easy. A guy gives you a few hundred dollars, why aren't you going to take it?" (Because if you have any scruples at all, you would realize that what you are doing is morally wrong, and that by acting unscrupulously you are in fact violating the public trust placed in you as an officer of the law, which is tantamount to treason against the public interest, by endangering the public. On the other hand, this testimony about police corruption is strong evidence of the bad consequences of the ill-conceived War on Drugs, which is just an excuse to arrest Americans in order to fill up the prisons, to keep the prison industry expanding. If the national government were actually considering the national interest it would legalize all drugs, except when used in a negligent or risky way, which would be the equivalent of a DUI, instead of life sentence to prison; and then spend the money saved from not having to incarcerate 3% of the population of the United States, on health programs to treat Americans with addiction problems. Of course, several massive bureaucracies would be out of business, which is why this obvious solution will not be implemented while the republic remains in power. WFI Editor)

SOURCE: Excerpted from an article in the 28 May, 2000, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "Battle Against Bad Cops Isn't Fought Only in L.A." Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this article. Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.