The Control of Police Misconduct in the Americas
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“A woman is arrested by two members of the vice squad. She was charged with the offense of offering to commit prostitution with an unknown man for the sum of fifteen dollars. Her social and financial status is such as to render the charge utterly incredible. After effecting an entrance into her apartment, the police officers question her about her finances and assets for about forty-five minutes before taking her to the police station. . . . She is taken to the . . . Police Station and is there prevented from using the telephone until after she makes an arrangement with one John Steiner, a professional bondsman, for her release on bail. Before he consents to go on her bond, Steiner relieves her of her jewelry and takes it out to have it appraised. After the necessary arrangements for releasing the woman on bail have been completed, Steiner . . . states: ‘We fix these cases up all the time. No matter how innocent you are, you are going to get yourself in a jam and they might jail you because they all work hand in hand and they (the magistrates) will take their word.’ . . . On the day of the trial she is again called for by [the bondsman], who takes her to court, informing her on the way ‘It is going to be fixed and don't worry. Everything will be fixed. . . . Now don't you get excited and say anything.’ . . . At no time was she informed that she would be represented by an attorney, but when she arrived at the Court House and her case was called for trial, there was a man present who asked the policeman questions after the District Attorney had finished his direct examination. . . . All she knows is that all persons concerned were very insistent upon her maintaining silence and that at the conclusion of the officer's testimony she was told that she could go home. . . . The Deputy Assistant District Attorney . . . testified that after the conclusion of the case, he received a sum of money from the defense attorney.” (From Samuel Seabury, In the Matter of the Investigation of the Departments of the Government of the City of New York [Seabury Report, 1932] in Chin 1997, vol. 3, 21-23). The case quoted above occurred in Manhattan some 70 years ago. The then-governor of New York, Franklin Roosevelt, together with the judges of the appeals courts, had appointed Judge Samuel Seabury in 1930 to investigate corruption in the lowest criminal courts in New York. Judge Seabury discovered a conspiracy to pervert justice among judges, lawyers, bail bondsmen, politicians, and police as well as underworld figures; he exposed it, using this case as one example of many, in his report of 1932, one of six such reports about police scandals that occurred in New York City about every 20 years in the century from 1894 to 1994. Judge Seabury's investigation and report was the most successful of the six, even though he made few recommendations specifically about the police. He recommended instead that the lower courts be completely reorganized, with new judges appointed, that the bail system be reformed, and that indigent defendants be defended in an organized way rather than by “hangers-on” at the courts. The political situation was such that the existing lower courts were completely discredited, and the governor and superior judges were actually able to push through these reforms. The result was that the system of fixing cases in the courts largely passed away, and the practice of beating and coercing suspects to extract confessions entered a long process, over the next 30 years, toward near-extinction. The experience of the Seabury investigation shows that police abuses of suspects may take the form of false charges or of brutality, or both, and these may be connected to acts of corruption by the police. The most important point to take from Judge Seabury's report, however, is that police abuses are virtually impossible to control if the criminal justice system as a whole tolerates or encourages them. If the prosecutor and the judge expect to take bribes and to overlook police brutality, then they rely on the police to participate, and it is sheer hypocrisy to focus criticism on the police. Conversely, if the criminal justice system sets its face against police abuses—if, for example, the courts try consistently to exclude coerced confessions—then the incidence of such abuses is going to drop. Although the reforms after the Seabury investigation enormously improved the criminal justice system in New York City, the police misconduct that was part of the pattern has not passed away. Police brutality and corruption persist in New York and other cities in the United States, just as they do elsewhere in the Americas. One reason for the persistence is that city dwellers, as well as politicians, are not altogether sure that the abuses are a bad thing. It is important to come to grips with this political ambivalence about police abuses. We must see clearly the problems that police abuses create, for citizen security as well as for the consolidation of democracy, if we are to talk of control. This chapter will briefly consider, in the next section, the connection between corruption and violence and the citizens' sense of security. Following that, the chapter will survey the options available in the Americas for the control of police violence, considering in turn the functions and duties of the central government as a whole, then focusing on the legislature, the courts, and, most extensively, systems of oversight and discipline. In this last connection, the chapter will take up criminal and civil liability of police personnel and/or the state for police abuses, as well as problems of administrative regulation, either within the police institution itself or from government institutions outside the police. Finally, the chapter will briefly discuss controls through international institutions.
Source Publication
Crime and Violence in Latin America: Citizen Security, Democracy, and the State
Source Editors/Authors
Hugo Frühling, Joseph S. Tulchin, Heather A. Golding
Publication Date
2003
Recommended Citation
Chevigny, Paul G., "The Control of Police Misconduct in the Americas" (2003). Faculty Chapters. 1137.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1137
