Police Corruption Essay

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We as Americans always expect the best. But when it comes to the ones that serve and protect we don’t pay enough attention. Police men and women are often abusing their power. Doing so civilians lives are lost same as there tax money. This happens all too often. It’s called police corruption. Serve and Protect are common words associated with police officers. Some law enforcement officers degrade the honor and integrity of the job. Although it is a serious and real issue a lot of people don’t fully know what police corruption is. Police corruption is the illegal use of legitimate authority. Or illegal abuse of power for personal gain. Police Corruption is a serious problem affecting nearly every city across the country and world. To show you how often his happens here are some statistics. From January 2010 through June 2010 there were 2,541 reports of police misconduct cited. 3,240 Law enforcement officers included in the police misconduct reports. 178 Of the law enforcement officers reported were departmental leaders, police chiefs, and sheriffs. 4,199 Alleged victims of police misconduct associated with these reports. 124 Fatalities associated with these reports. There were 17.9 Law enforcement officers cited in the news for misconduct each day on average. $148,512,000 in approximated police misconduct related settlements and judgments paid out in this period. That was only six months of time. The most common type of misconduct is excessive force at 23%. 13% of excessive force reports involved fatalities and, of those fatalities, 60% were caused by firearms.
The most dirty and hurtful type of corruption is frame ups. A frame-up is a common form of corruption used by police officers daily. A frame-up is when a police officer w...

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...eiving threats. Preventing corruption is a hard task but steps can be taken in order to prevent it. Another idea to help fight corruption is to raise the officer’s salary to. The idea of raising the salary for police officers has been around for years and one of the main ideas to fix this serious issue. The average salary for police officers is about sixty thousand dollars. This price is way too low for the individuals who risk their lives for our safety every day. The salary for police officers should be raised a significant amount to avoid the officer accepting bribes or getting involved in criminal activity to make money. This alone won’t end or solve the problem of police corruption. Other factors have to be addressed and tackled to entirely fix this problem more time taken on training, background checks, and mental evaluations would help slow down corruption.

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