Police Corruption Media Portrayal Cultural Analysis

As Dutta (1999) notes, “only a change in society and in societal expectations can bring change in institutions like a police department.” The problem of police corruption is merely a representation of the problem of corruption in the culture at large. Dutta points out that police departments do not exist in a vacuum: nothing does. The culture of the country is really the starting place if one is going to address the issue of police brutality. Officers are impacted by victims of violence and by interactions with offenders on a daily basis. They are only human—and if they become brutal in their actions, it is a sad and unfortunate consequence of trafficking daily in an often brutal world. What is needed is not necessarily a crackdown on police departments, because to do so would be like putting a Band-Aid on a deeply infected wound. The wound is cultural and runs through all of society. Society has to address this cultural wound at its core rather than try only to address the symptoms.

For instance, the Risk Takers video depicts a white police officer making an arrest at night in a black community, where the suspect is believed to armed and there is concern about him leaving the scene in the car, as a group of bystanders gathers around (Magellan TV, 2015). The scene is tense and it could easily have escalated into one of violent confrontation. Fortunately, it did not. But the risk of violence is always there, and this risk can cause fear, and that fear can lead to people making bad decisions on both sides of the law.

Yes, the statistics suggest that police brutality takes place. However, statistics do not always tell a full story. Personal acquaintance with a city police officer has revealed to me that, based on his opinion, roughly half the force of 900 police officers is corrupt or incompetent at best. His opinion is that most officers feel they are not supported by the local government or the anti-police culture that has swept the nation; therefore, the good ones are usually demoralized, and more and more morally suspect or unqualified officers are joining the force. He has recounted numerous stories to me about corruption that he has personally witnessed. The problem as he sees it is political and cultural. Bad political policies and bad cultural influences combine to create an environment in which doing good police work is very difficult.

This is why the saying that “democracy is always hard on the police” makes sense: in a democracy, the will of the people is asserted, and whatever that will is will be heard by law enforcement. Law enforcement officers have the duty of enforcing the law—but when many people in a democracy do not care for the laws (or even know what they are because they are so many) or feel that police actually act above the law, it makes it hard for police to justify their actions. The office depicted on Magellan TV was certainly in a situation that could have ended badly—but everyone remained calm, more or less, and the situation did not escalate out of hand.

I agree with Dutta (1999) that it is probably often the case that “officers exercise great restraint against aggressive and combative people when they justifiably could have used force.” Yet, it is the few bad apples who receive all the attention because we have a media that loves to sensationalize and profit from such stories. This feeds into the negative culture of society and comes back to bear on police officers. Until society demands more accountability from the media and from itself, the problem is not going to go away. Everyone must set a higher moral and ethical standard for themselves—not just police officers, but everyone in society because we are all responsible.