Police code of silence

Truth about police code of silence revealed
The terms ‘Blue Code’, ‘Blue Wall’ or ‘Code of Silence’ refer to the law enforcement departmental rule of refraining from reporting on the misdemeanors, mistakes and offenses of fellow police officers in the event they are interrogated, in official investigations, about any act of misconduct that involves a coworker. This Blue Wall is symbolic of the loyalty between law enforcement officials in any given police force. For maintaining this loyalty, even scrupulous officials might be coerced into turning a blind eye to law enforcement brutality cases that may cause further harm to innocent civilians by ensuring they don’t get their due justice. Furthermore, law enforcement culture defends and promotes this code, along with police brutality. All cities and states have police departments in place for maintaining public peace and enforcing city and state laws. Within democratic republics, law enforcement officials are required to maintain law and order in society whilst simultaneously taking care not to violate the human or civil rights of citizens (Trautman 2000).
The abovementioned issue of the law enforcement blue wall rule must be resolved post- haste. The government requires an entirely fresh police accountability approach for systematic identification and segregation of good and bad cops, followed by firing unscrupulous figures. However, this cannot occur if the police brotherhood, unions, district lawyers and the brass collaborate and uphold their blue wall rule when it comes to cases of law enforcement violence, including shooting at and even killing civilians (Grisham, 2016).
Exposure is one potential way to prevent the penetration of this code into police departments. A number of states have adopted measures within their police training institutions and departments for promoting blue code exposure. A majority of cities require candidates seeking admission into academies to pass criminal background checks. The use of further background checks, psychological assessments and polygraph testing increases particular law enforcement departments’ ability of choosing candidates with lesser likelihood of tolerating misconduct. The employees of such departments undergo a basic training course which provides instructions on ethical conduct, reinforced, in certain instances, through classes and seminars conducted once every year (Grisham, 2016).
A large number of anti- blue code or blue code exposure campaigns have been initiated. Among the earliest campaigns was New York’s 1970 Knapp Commission (whose formal name was the ‘Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption’), led by Mayor John V. Lindsay. More than two decades later, another New York- initiated commission – the 1992 Mollen Commission – led by Mayor David Dinkins was established, for investigating the degree and nature of corruption within the NYPD (New York City Police Department), in addition to recommending changes for improving relevant procedures. Such investigations served to reveal, in depth, the city’s law enforcement department’s internal workings.
The potential dark side of the law enforcement sector – namely the blue wall – is exploited by a few law enforcement officials for maintaining silence and secrecy in the event any official investigation is taken up against any coworker of theirs. However, this might not be the case for all nations or all police departments. Nevertheless, this sense of brotherhood or solidarity between law enforcements officials employed by the same department guarantees that they will be supported and protected by coworkers in the event they end up in any threatening situation. Simultaneously, this solidarity might result in isolation of law enforcement officials from citizens, giving rise to a ‘them’ against ‘us’ mentality. Such an attitude has normally been considered to be maintained by the more pessimistic employees of police departments who view others in a negative light: they believe most people fail to share or respect their values, disregard their authority and attempt actively at conspiring against them. Police-community interactions have the potential to fuel this skepticism; other contributors are informal peer interactions and formal supervisor-subordinate interactions within police departments (Workman-Stark, 2017). 





















References
Grisham, C. J. (2016). What is "The Blue Wall of Silence"? Retrieved September 18, 2018, from https://priceofbusiness.com/what-is-the-blue-wall-of-silence/
Trautman, N. (2000). Police code of silence facts revealed. In Annual Conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, available at http://www. aele. org/loscode2000. html.
Workman-Stark, A. L. (2017). Inclusive policing from the inside out. Springer.