Police Corruption

            Police corruption has always been a problem since police forces were put in place in response to riots. Police corruption is a problem that affects all of us, not just other police officers. It has become so bad that on any given day you can flip through a newspaper and find some article that deals with some aspect of police corruption whether it was stealing drugs and selling them, abuse of a suspected criminal, accepting gratuities, or just overall abuse of their authoritarian position. In my paper I am going to discuss an instance of police corruption that happened in March of 1997 in Boston, Massachusetts that involved two veteran detectives. Along with discussing the newspaper article, I will also discuss some theories that may help to explain how and why corruption occurs and what can be done about it.
             I believe that being a police officer is a privilege and not just a job. Maybe I feel this way because my grandfather and my father were both Boston cops and that is how they conveyed it to me. It is implied that a police officer will defend the law the best that he or she can. In doing this, it is also implied that he or she will not be contributing to the law breaking that they are meant to prevent. A police officer is the public's first line of legal defense against any wrongdoing that has occurred to them or that is occurring around them. If a police officer or police officers have the reputation of breaking laws themselves and not being fair to the general public then the public isn't going to trust them or rely on them. Instead the public is going to take matters in their own hands often creating riots and uprisings. This is why I believe that it is important for police officers to treat their line of work as a privilege, not as a job because so many people are relying on you and put their trust in you to do what's right to keep the peace. .
             Unfortunately, some cops go sour like the two detectives from Boston.