USA TODAY is leading a national effort to obtain and publish disciplinary and misconduct records for thousands of police officers.
Source: Police misconduct: Discipline records for thousands of cops uncovered
As I read through this article and saw the quotes from other police officers about how there are still 750,000 officers and this is only 30,000 of them. But as we know like all crime, these are only the ones that have gotten caught and put under enough scrutiny and pressure to have an internal investigation result in a criminal conviction.
So let’s do some math. (30,000/750,000=.04) 4% of the law enforcement officers in this country have been decertified.
At least (85,000/750,000=.11) 11% of law enforcement officers have been investigated. And those are the ones that we know about. Almost 1/3 of those investigated leads to being decertified.
When law enforcement comes after private citizens they have a 95% or better conviction rate, but when they investigate their own, they have a 33% conviction rate? This disparity of the numbers indicates that either they investigate their internal crimes with less vehemence, their reluctance to put their co-workers under a microscope, or is it just old fashioned ‘good ole boys club’ happening here and they believe they are above the law in some way.
Does it matter?
The clear disparity in the conviction rate for all the investigations that are conducted, indicates that there are different rules of investigation at work for any profession that isn’t law enforcement.