A study conducted by Neal Trautman, Director of The National Institute of Ethics and presented at a conference of The International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2000 had stunning statistics concerning the police "Code of Silence." It provided the following about police recruits:
Twenty-five basic law enforcement academies from 16 states took part in the research by administering and collecting 1,016 confidential questionnaires completed by academy recruits. The findings included that:
•79% said that a law enforcement Code of Silence exists and is fairly common throughout the nation.
•52% said the fact that a Code of Silence exists doesn’t really bother them.
•24% said the Code of Silence is more justified when excessive force involves a citizen who’s abusive.
•46% said they would not tell on another officer for having sex on duty.
•23% said they wouldn’t tell on another cop for regularly smoking marijuana off duty.
Here is some of the information the study provided about current officers:
The sampling of current officers was comprised of 2,698 fulltime officers from twenty-one different states. A total 1,116 of the 2,657 officers asked to complete a confidential questionnaire, did so. This equates to a response rate of 42 percent. An additional forty-one officers provided confidential interviews. The following facts were revealed.
•In response to "Please describe the first time you witnessed misconduct by another employee but took no action," 46 percent (532) advised they had witnessed misconduct by another employee, but concealed what they knew.
•In response to the question "At the time of the incident occurred, what did you think would happen if you revealed what had taken place?" the five reasons listed most often were: I would be ostracized (177 times); the officer who committed the misconduct would be disciplined or fired (88 times); I would be fired from my job (73 times); I would be "blackballed" (59 times); the administration would not do anything even if I reported it. (54 times)
•73 percent of the individuals pressuring officers to keep quiet about the misconduct were leaders.
•Eight percent (40) of the 509 officers who admitted to intentionally withholding the information about officer misconduct were upper administrators. The upper administrators of the average American police department comprises only five percent of the agency.
•The average age of an officer who covered up an incident for the first time was 31.4 years of age.
•The average years of experience when they first took part in the Code of Silence was 8.2 years.
•449 of the 532 officers were male, while 74 were female.
•Of the 532 who confessed they had participated in the Code of Silence, 252 were pressured to keep quiet by the officer(s) who committed the misconduct and 118 felt pressure from uninvolved officers. The remaining 162 officers advised they covered up the incident even though they were not pressured.
•Excessive use of force was the most frequent situation over which the Code of Silence occurs, with 217 excessive use of force circumstances.
When you factor in the prevalence of the Code of Silence, how can anyone say with any degree of certainty that police excessive force and other abuses of authority are a rare phenomena? The significant evidence of the Code of Silence says otherwise.
