Most police officers do their job to the best of their ability every day, but they have all done things they regret. "Even the best training is not enough,"" argued Quinn. These regrets are almost always among the things that end up being held under the police code of silence. .
"Every day in newspapers we can find another instance of police abuse," said Quinn. He describes how police testilying and creating special report writing techniques is not unusual. Judges often believe that officers are always testifying honestly and the defendants are lying, but more often than known about, officers testily. Quinn also touches on the 10 myths about policing. They range from "street justice teaches people a lesson"" to "cops who deal with a lot of bad guys always draw more complaints"" to "you need to be macho to be a good cop." " These are all myths about policing and so often people believe that these are the truths behind each officer and what exactly the job entails. .
Quinn knows that the code of silence will never completely disappear, but we can work to try and minimize it, by being more aware, he claims. Quinn believes that the code of silence can be stopped from within. He argues that if one cop would stand up and say no more, that this would at least prevent that officer from any unethical policing in front of that specific officer. .
The punishment for the code of silence to be broken has to increase. As Quinn stated, "Unless the motivation is extremely powerful, like being sent to prison, cops don't tell on other cops. " He explained how if our communities knew the truth behind policing, they would never approve of some of the things that occur in our community policing departments on a regular basis. Our communities see the officers as role models for young children and the youth of our society. If people knew more about the code of silence, officers would be held accountable for their own actions and police might actually police one another, instead of cover for one another.
