QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES
Means "Who Polices the Police?"

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

NYC officer pleads guilty in teen prostitute case

Prosecutors say a New York City police detective accused of forcing a 13-year-old runaway into prostitution has resigned from the force and pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping.

Wayne Taylor initially said he was "100 percent innocent" of keeping the teen as a captive and compelling her to sell herself at parties last winter.

More here.

And

N.O. officer to face sex count

Prosecutors plan to file a sexual assault charge against a New Orleans police officer next week after the officer declined a plea deal, said Robert White, chief of the New Orleans district attorney's public corruption unit.

The officer, Carlos Peralta, reneged during a July 11 Criminal District Court hearing on an agreement to plead guilty to a lesser crime, second-degree battery, White said Friday.

Prosecutors will refile charges as soon as next week, with possible allegations including sexual battery, rape or forcible rape, a crime that carries up to 40 years in prison, White said.

More here.

Well, that's dirty filthy New York, dirty filthy New Orleans.

No, it's not. That's everywhere. Cop misbehavior happens all the time, all over the United States. It's not in just a few cities with a public perception of chronic problems. It's in your city, too. Like I keep saying, these stories just fall into my lap, all the time, and these are just the cops who get caught--one assumes that the traditional "code of silence," cops' unwillingness to rat out other cops, keeps most of these cases from ever reaching the light of day. It can't possibly be just "a few bad apples." It's too pervasive.

Why is it that the supposed good guys are so often actually the bad guys?

A traditional cop-loving explanation is something to the effect of numbers and human nature. That is, as the excuse goes, there are so many police officers out there, a certain percentage of them are bound to commit crimes, just like in the general population. Of course, the major flaw in that line of reasoning is that cops are not the general population. They're cops. There are supposed to be screening processes that weed these types out. There is supposed to be training and a pro-law culture inside police departments that should make such behavior unlikely. I mean, the whole reason for these people's existence is to enforce the law, not break it. By all rights, cops ought to be far less likely to break the law than, say, lawyers or investment bankers or garbage men. Or career criminals.

Alas, that doesn't seem to be the case.

If you read Real Art regularly, you already know what I think: police culture, from coast to coast, is the culprit. Hypermasculinity, elitism, us-versus-them attitudes, violence-as-best-solution thinking, and on and on. All this makes cop law breaking inevitable, from running red lights to running cocaine to sex trafficking. The good news is that organizational culture can be changed. The bad news is that nobody seems to be looking at police culture in these terms.

Until somebody does, expect the endless parade of news stories about spectacular cop corruption to continue. I'm gonna go watch Serpico now.

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