Police corruption is a form of police misconduct in which law enforcement officers end up breaking their political contract and abusing their power for personal gain. This type of corruption may involve one or a group of officers.
Internal police corruption is a challenge to public trust, cohesion of departmental policies, human rights and legal violations involving serious consequences. Police corruption can take many forms, such as: bribery, theft, sexual assault, and discrimination. Soliciting or accepting bribes in exchange for not reporting organized drug or prostitution rings or other illegal activities and violations of law, county and city ordinances and state and federal laws.
Bribes may also include leasing unlawful access to proprietary law enforcement databases and systems. Flouting the police code of conduct in order to secure convictions of civilians and suspects βfor example, through the use of falsified evidence.
There are also situations where law enforcement officers may deliberately and systematically participate in organized crime themselves. In most major cities there are internal affairs sections to investigate suspected police corruption or misconduct, including selective enforcement , but there are situations where Internal Affairs also hides departmental and individual corruption, fraud, abuse and waste by individual officers, groups of officers or even unwritten departmental policies.
There are also Police Commissions who are complicit in the same cover-ups, often to hide internal and departmental problems, both from public view, and also from inter-departmental reviews and investigations. Certain officers can be fired, then rehired by petition after they accrue enough signatures, often from the very criminals and violators from whom corrupt officers have garnered previous favors in exchange for officers "turning a blind eye", resulting in selective enforcement of violations being deterred, but actually promoted.
