CRMJ 520 WEEK 3 & 4 DISCUSSION

Bowling Green State University ScholarWorks@BGSU

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications Human Services

2015

Police crime: The Criminal Behavior of Sworn Law Enforcement Officers Philip M. Stinson Bowling Green State University - Main Campus, [email protected]

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Repository Citation Stinson, Philip M., "Police crime: The Criminal Behavior of Sworn Law Enforcement Officers" (2015). Criminal Justice Faculty Publications. 37. https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/crim_just_pub/37

Police Crime: The Criminal Behavior of Sworn Law Enforcement Officers

Abstract

This essay examines the criminological conceptualizations and research on police crime,

that is, the criminal behavior of sworn law enforcement officers. It starts with an overview of the

conceptualization of police crime as it relates to organizational and scholarly perspectives of

social deviance. Police deviance is often conceptualized to include various misconduct,

corruption, and/or crime committed by police organizations and police officers. This essay

focuses on police crime resulting in the arrest of a sworn law enforcement officer and is

organized within a conceptual framework that incorporates five types of police crime: sex-related

police crime, alcohol-related police crime, drug-related police crime, violence-related police

crime, and profit-motivated police crime.

Introduction

Surprisingly little is known about crimes committed by law enforcement officers, in part

because there are virtually no official nationwide data collected, maintained, disseminated,

and/or available for research analyses. Researchers have utilized other methodologies to study

police misconduct and crime in the absence of any substantive official data, including surveys,

field studies, quasi-experiments, internal agency records, and the investigative reports of various

independent commissions delegated to report on this phenomenon within particular jurisdictions.

These methodologies have thus far failed to produce systematic, nationwide data on police

crime. The lack of data on police crime is clearly a problem, since the development of strategies

to mitigate police crime in the least requires that they be documented and described in some sort

of systematic and generalizable manner. From an organizational perspective, more

comprehensive data could provide comparisons among agencies on rates of police crime, and

subsequently contribute to the development and implementation of policies to deter police crime

and lessen damage to police-community relations in their aftermath. From a scholarly

perspective, the collection, analysis, and dissemination of more comprehensive police crime data

could instigate studies designed to identify significant correlates, explore relationships between

police crimes and more general forms of police deviance, and provide information on how police

culture and socialization potentially contribute to the problem. Scholars have yet to fully pursue

these and other important issues associated with the problem of police crime because we lack

any sort of comprehensive data on the types of crime that police commit and how frequently they

commit them.

This article demands a conceptual framework that reflects that broad range of criminal

offenses committed by sworn law enforcement officers. In the sections that follow the research

is organized within a conceptual framework that incorporates five key types of police crime: sex-

related police crime, alcohol-related police crime, drug-related police crime, violence-related

police crime, and profit-motivated police crime.

Conceptualizing police crime

The study of police crime has thus far been hampered by a degree of conceptual

confusion, mostly due to the tendency of police scholars to consider crimes perpetrated by

officers within studies focused on the more generalized topics of police corruption, deviance, or

misconduct. A quick review identifies the myriad of terms used to define each of these distinct

topics. Wilson (1963) defines police criminality as “illegally using public office for private gain

without the inducement of a bribe, whereas acts of corruption do involve the acceptance of

bribes” (p. 190). He further distinguishes police criminality and corruption from brutality, which

includes “mistreating civilians or otherwise infringing their civil liberties” (p. 190). Punch

(2000) distinguishes “crimes committed by criminals in uniform” from acts of police

misconduct, which involve violations of administrative rules that are typically investigated and

sanctioned internally by the police organization (pp. 302–303). Ross (2001) provides a

multidimensional taxonomy of police crimes based in part on whether the act was (a) violent, (b)

motivated by profit, and/or (c) perpetrated on behalf of the individual or the organization.

Sherman (1978) focuses on corruption as a form of organizational deviance, and does not

distinguish between police corruption and police crime.

Scholars have tended to consider acts of law violation together with other forms of police

deviance that do not involve specific violations of the criminal law, as well as those whose legal

status as crimes tends to shift over time, such as bribery (see, e.g., Anechiarico and Jacobs 1996,

6–7). Fyfe & Kane (2006) point out that the various forms of police deviance are not mutually

exclusive—some forms of corruption and misconduct are police crime and all forms of police

crime constitute misconduct. Crimes, however, that do not involve the misuse of authority

cannot be defined as acts of corruption (Fishman 1978). The distinction among the various

forms of deviance is that all police crimes involve a violation of criminal statutes and are subject

to criminal prosecution, but not all acts of police corruption or misconduct violate criminal laws

(Wilson 1963). The conceptual confusion stems largely from the failure to distinguish specific

violations of the criminal law whether or not they constitute an abuse of authority. Scholarly

attention on police crime behaviors have thus far remained invisible to researchers because they

have often been lumped together with more general acts of corruption, deviance, and/or

misconduct (Box 1983; Jupp, Davies, and Francis 1999; Kutnjak Ivkovic 2005).

Most of what we know about police corruption and other forms of police deviance is

from the investigations of independent commissions in the wake of police scandals including the

Knapp Commission (1972) report, the Pennsylvania Crime Commission (1974) report, and the

Mollen Commission (1994) report. These investigations were not designed to investigate police

crimes per se, but their findings in regard to corruption and other forms of misconduct shed some

light on the crimes committed by officers. The commissions collectively demonstrated a

problem that went well beyond the usual claim that police deviance is limited to a few “rotten

pockets” of morally deficient officers, but their findings supplied only limited information on the

true nature and extent of crimes committed by officers (Sherman 1974, 7; Skogan and Frydl

2004).

The Knapp Commission (1972) acknowledged that bribe-taking and petty thefts were

pervasive. The investigation also identified small groups of officers referred to as “meat-eaters”

who “spend a good deal of their working hours aggressively seeking out situations they can

exploit for financial gain, including gambling, narcotics, and other serious offenses” (p. 65).

Twenty years later, the Mollen Commission recognized a shift in the nature of corruption

“primarily characterized by serious criminal activity” closely associated with the drug trade,

including wide-scale drug abuse and trafficking among officers (Mollen Commission 1994, 17).

The trend was closely tied to an explosion of crime opportunities provided by open-air markets

for cocaine that sprouted during the early 1990s.

Researchers have used police agency records to study officer misconduct that in some

cases includes specific violations of the criminal law. Fyfe and Kane (2006) studied the career-

ending misconduct of a sample of 1,543 New York City Police Department officers employed

from 1975 through 1996 (see also Kane and White 2009; Kane and White 2013). They

identified eight separate categories of career-ending misconduct, and found that officers

commonly engaged in several different types of profit-motivated crime including bribe-taking,

grand larceny, insurance fraud, burglary, petit larceny, receiving stolen property and welfare

fraud. Officers also engaged in a wide variety of crimes while they were off-duty, including

domestic violence, driving while intoxicated, bar fights, and sexual offenses.

Sex-related police crime

Scholarship on sex-related police crime has been comparatively sparse. Early studies

focused broadly on behaviors that constituted police sexual misconduct and acts such as on-duty

consensual sex between officers and female adult citizens. Barker (1978) surveyed police

officers who indicated that consensual sex on-duty was quite prevalent, especially in patrol

cruisers. Sapp (1994) provided data derived from in-depth interviews of police. The study

included qualitative—sometimes lurid—descriptions of seven different forms of police sexual

misconduct, including cases wherein police spent entire shifts seeking opportunities to view

unsuspecting females partially clad or nude, the sexual harassment of crime victims and criminal

suspects, and sexual contacts between officers and underage females. Some of the behaviors

described within the Sapp study clearly involved sexual coercion rather than consensual sex

between police and willing citizens.

Kraska and Kappeler's (1995) exploratory study on police sexual violence incorporates a

wide continuum of behaviors that range from comparatively unobtrusive forms of sex-related

misconduct (e.g. voyeurism and other invasions of privacy) to obtrusive forms of sexual violence

(e.g. sexual assault and rape). Kraska and Kappeler study the phenomenon within the context of

existing police scholarship and scholarship derived from the feminist literature that more clearly

defines police sexual violence as a form of gender bias and the systematic differential treatment

of females in the criminal justice system. They identified 124 cases of police sexual violence

through both published news reports and federal lawsuits arising under 42 U.S.C. §1983 (civil

action for deprivation of rights) involving police accused of sexual misconduct. Close to one-

third of the cases (30%) identified involved rape and/or sexual assault. More than one-half of the

cases involved strip searches. Published news reports tended to identify more serious forms of

police sexual violence, while cases that involved strip searches and less serious acts were more

likely to be identified through the federal lawsuit data. Cases of police sexual violence were

widely dispersed geographically, and Kraska and Kappeler (1995) suggest that the cases

identified in their study were likely the “tip of the iceberg” (p. 97). They indicated that the

organizational and occupational culture of policing provides officers ample opportunity to

engage in sex-related misconduct and crime, and note the obstacles to reporting these forms of

misconduct confronted by victims including the fear of retaliation and forms of secondary

victimization similar to that experienced more generally by victims of sexual assaults (see, e.g.,

LaFree 1989).

More recently, Maher provided data on police sexual misconduct derived from surveys of

both officers (Maher 2003) and police chiefs (Maher 2008). Surveys of officers demonstrate that

they believe less serious forms of sexual misconduct occur frequently, and are facilitated by the

opportunity structure provided by the job. The majority of officers indicated that they had not

been pressured to engage in acts of sexual misconduct, but, they were unlikely to report less

serious forms of the phenomenon. Surveyed police chiefs believed that less serious forms of

sexual misconduct were common and serious forms of sexual misconduct and crime were rare.

The data suggest that most police agencies do not have any written policies that expressly

prohibit sexual misconduct (Maher 2008). Walker and Irlbeck (2002) describe cases that they

refer to as “driving while female,” wherein police initiate bogus traffic stops to harass,

intimidate, and/or sexually assault female motorists.

Rabe-Hemp and Braithwaite (2013) published a study focused on police sexual violence

and the problem of officer shuffle, wherein police involved in various forms of sexual

misconduct and crime escape punishment and maintain their law enforcement career through

employment with another police agency. Data were derived through a content analysis of

published newspaper accounts of police sexual violence from 1996-2000. They identified 106

cases of police sexual violence. Close to one-half (41.5%) of the cases involved repeat police

perpetrators. Repeat offenders were more likely than first time offenders to victimize juveniles.

Similarly, Stinson, Liederbach, Brewer, and Mathna’s (2014) content analysis of news articles

reporting 548 arrest cases of 398 sworn officers employed by 328 state and local law

enforcement agencies during the years 2005-2008 found that the most egregious forms of police

sexual violence are not isolated events.

Alcohol-related police crime

Alcohol-related police crime is a problem in terms of both the off-duty consumption of

alcohol and the phenomenon of police DUI. Virtually all of the existing empirical data on off-

duty police misconduct describes the misbehavior of NYPD officers primarily through the

reports of the Commission to Combat Police Corruption (1998; 2004). The Commission

recommended specific policies designed to mitigate problems associated with off-duty alcohol

abuse, including provisions to expand the definition of unfit for duty to include intoxicated off-

duty officers and prohibitions against carrying an off-duty weapon while intoxicated

(Commission to Combat Police Corruption 1998). Fyfe and Kane's (2006) classification of

police misconduct includes driving while intoxicated within the category of off-duty public order

crimes, but they do not provide specific data that distinguishes misconduct that includes the

abuse of alcohol. Kane and White (2009) provide several descriptions of cases that involved

intoxicated off-duty officers engaged in bar fights, drunk driving, and personal disputes.

The lack of existing scholarship on alcohol-related police misconduct and/or crime is

even more acute in the specific case of police DUI. Some recent evidence indicates that officers

and agencies often minimize or ignore the problem of impaired driving among police. A Bureau

of Justice Statistics (BJS) survey reported that over one-third of responding state and local police

agencies would consider police applicants with a prior DUI conviction (Reaves 2012).

Additionally, a majority of officers responding to a survey on police integrity said they would not

report a fellow officer who had a minor traffic accident while driving under the influence of

alcohol (Klockars et al. 2000). Recent journalistic investigations in Milwaukee (Barton 2011),

Denver (McGhee 2011), and New York City (Paddock and Lesser 2010) reported disturbing

cases in which police found to have driven drunk were either not arrested and/or otherwise

minimally punished. The primary reason that police who drive drunk are not arrested often is

because the police are generally exempt from law enforcement. That is, police officers do not

typically arrest other police officers, even when a crime has obviously been committed (Reiss

1971). One recent study analyzed news articles and found 782 cases where a police officer was

arrested for drunk driving. Most of those cases involved situations where an officer lost his or

her “exemption” from law enforcement and was arrested because the specific facts of an officer’s

drunk driving (e.g., traffic accidents with injuries, hit-and-run crashes, resisting arrest) compelled

official law enforcement action rather than extending a professional courtesy of nonarrest

(Stinson, Liederbach, Brewer, and Todak 2013).

Scholars have long recognized the existence of alcohol-related problems in policing and

have identified factors that seem to promote excessive drinking among police (Dietrich and

Smith 1986; Dishlacoff 1976; Hurrell, Jr. et al. 1984; Violanti, Marshall, and Howe 1985).

Violanti et al. (2011) group these factors in terms of (a) officer demographics, (b) stress, and (c)

police culture. Excessive alcohol consumption is certainly due at least in part to demographics

and the over-representation of young males among police officers, in particular patrol officers.

Men are more likely to have problems with alcohol than women, and alcohol use disorders are

most prevalent among 18-24 year-olds (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

2008). Age and gender have also been specifically correlated with drinking and driving.

Alcohol dependence at the age of 21 has been found to significantly predict persistent driving

while drinking episodes (Begg, Langley, and Stephenson 2003) and young adult males have been

found to be significantly more likely to engage in driving while drinking than other cohorts

(Chou et al. 2006).

There is an extensive line of research on how stress may influence excessive drinking

among police. Abdollahi (2002) provides a comprehensive overview of this literature in terms of

factors that include (a) intra-interpersonal stressors, (b) job-related stressors, and (c)

organizational stressors. Violanti et al.'s (2011) survey of police found that stress derived from

failed interpersonal relationships increased the likelihood of hazardous drinking behavior,

especially among male officers. A number of studies attribute excessive alcohol consumption to

the failure to properly cope with stress that is related more specifically to the job, including stress

derived from a perceived lack of organizational support and problematic encounters with citizens

(Anshel 2000; Ayres, Flanagan, and Ayres 1992; Kohan and O’Connor 2002). Leino et al.

(2011) recently explored how job-related exposure to violence and the absence of adequate

debriefing procedures may increase levels of drinking among police. Swatt, Gibson, and Piquero

(2007) utilize Agnew's general strain theory to explain how anxiety/depression mediate the

relationship between work-related strain and drinking prevalence among police officers.

Studies focused on the drinking behavior of police also underscore the impact of police

culture. Police culture has been referred to as essentially a drinking culture that often includes

frequent social interactions that involve the consumption of alcohol (Violanti, Marshall, and

Howe 1985). Various occupational factors have been found to increase the risk of alcohol and

drug problems (Fennell, Rodin, and Kantor 1981; Hingson, Mangione, and Barrett 1981).

Indeed, Macdonald, Wells, and Wild (1999) specifically found that the existence of a drinking

subculture at work was associated with the development of alcohol problems. Lindsey and

Shelley (2009) found that police officers most at risk for drinking problems admitted that fitting

in was the primary reason they engaged in alcohol consumption. Officers may also be

discouraged from reporting problem drinking or drunk driving among fellow officers in order to

uphold other widely-recognized values shared among police including secrecy and solidarity

(Banton 1964; Skolnick 1994).

Drug-related police crime

The research on drug-related police crime covers three relevant issues including (a) the

etiology of drug-related misconduct, (b) the classification of drug-related misconduct, and (c) the

prevalence of drug use by police. Police scholars typically attribute drug-related corruption to

factors associated with the organization of police work and the occupational culture of police.

Stoddard (1968) emphasizes the role of police culture and the nature of police work in the

causation of what he referred to as blue coat crime. Kraska and Kappeler (1988) underscore the

prevalence of on-the-job opportunities for patrol officers to become involved in the drug trade in

some fashion, including lack of direct supervision, drug availability, and exposure to drug users

and dealers. The report of the General Accounting Office (1998) highlights the influence of

deviant police subcultures that both promote drug corruption and protect police who adhere to

deviant subcultural norms such as secrecy, loyalty, and cynicism about police work and the

criminal justice system. Carter and Stephens (1994) view substance abuse as primarily a “job-

related condition” among police, particularly those working undercover vice in drug-infested

beats (p. 107).

Carter (1990) provides the most often cited classification scheme for drug-related

corruption. His typology identifies two forms of drug corruption. The first type, traditionally-

conceptualized drug corruption, involves officers motivated by illegitimate goals including

personal profit. This form of drug corruption includes the extortion and robbery of drug dealers

and the acceptance of bribes to protect them. The second type of drug corruption is comprised of

officers motivated by organizationally-derived legitimate goals ostensibly tied to the arrest and

conviction of dealers and users. This form of drug corruption includes perjury, violations of

criminal procedure, and the planting of criminal evidence. Aside from its utility as an

organization scheme, Carter's typology demonstrates how the drug trade tends to give rise to

many different forms of police crime. The drug trade provides opportunities for personal gain

through payoffs, shakedowns, robberies, and opportunistic thefts, as well as types of misconduct

tied to drug enforcement goals and violations of the rights of criminal defendants including

perjury and the planting of evidence. Officers who are recreational drug users expose

themselves to street-level dealers and associated manipulation and coercion (Kappeler, Sluder,

and Alpert 1998). Carter's (1990) conclusions about the impact of these markets on the nature of

police corruption closely mirror those of the Mollen Commission (1994), “the nature of

corruption has changed, particularly with respect to police drug users, the emergence of crack

houses as easy targets, and the frustration with drug-law enforcement associated with the

extraordinarily high volume of drug traffic” (Carter 1990, 96–97).

Very little is known about the prevalence of drug use among police officers

(Mieczkowski 2002). Kraska and Kappeler (1988) provide what is widely-cited as the only

empirical description of on-duty drug use by police through their study of one medium-sized

police agency. They found that 20% of the officers used marijuana on duty at least two times per

month, and that 10% had used other non-prescribed controlled substances while on duty,

including hallucinogens, stimulants, and/or barbiturates. The study provides initial evidence to

suggest that the problem of on-duty drug use by police is not limited to large urban departments,

although data derived from a much larger sample of agencies is needed to assess the prevalence

of drug use among police across various types of jurisdictions.

Official drug tests provide another source of data on the degree to which police use drugs,

but most of this evidence describes testing results from a single agency, and no entity collects

comprehensive data on the number of police who test positive overall. One journalistic

investigation reported a 1.1% failure rate (75 officers) among Boston Police Department police

tested from 1999-2006, as well as the failure of 14 Los Angeles Police Department officers drug

tested from 2000-2006. Over 81% of the positive tests in Boston involved the use of cocaine,

and police executives indicated that they believed cocaine had surpassed marijuana as the drug of

choice among police (Smalley 2006). More recent data derived from self-report surveys of

officers in a single agency in Australia suggest that police use a wider variety of drugs including

marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy, heroine, ketamine, and non-prescribed steroids

(Gorta 2009).

Lersch and Mieczkowski (2005a) report results of drug tests conducted in a large police

agency in the Eastern United States in which very few officers tested positive. Scholars often

point out, however, that official drug tests are likely influenced by (a) “announcement effects”

and the fact that officers employed by these agencies are aware of testing protocols (Lersch and

Mieczkowski 2005a, 292), and (b) the method of drug testing. Cocaine is the most frequently

detected drug based on hair analysis, and marijuana is the most frequently detected drug based

on urinalysis (Lersch and Mieczkowski 2005a; Mieczkowski and Lersch 2002; Mieczkowski

2002). More recently, Stinson et al. (2013) found that cocaine is the most prevalent drug in

drug-related police corruption arrest cases.

Violence-related police crime

According to Sherman (1980), police use of physical force is synonymous with police

violence, defining police violence as behavior by any police officer—acting pursuant to their

authority and/or power as a sworn law enforcement officer—that includes any use of physical

force (including, but not limited to, the application of deadly force), whether justified or

unjustified, against any person. Based on Sherman’s definition, explanations for police violence

in the existing literature have been quite varied (e.g., Alpert and MacDonald 2001; Garner,

Maxwell, and Heraux 2002; Griffin and Bernard 2003; Lersch and Mieczkowski 2005b;

Manzoni and Eisner 2006; Terrill and Mastrofski 2002; Terrill, Paoline, and Manning 2003;

Terrill and Reisig 2003). Stinson, Reyns, and Liederbach (2012) analyze data from published

news articles to identify and describe cases that involve the criminal misuse of conductive energy

devices—purportedly a less-than-lethal alternative to firearms. It would appear studies that

describe the factors that influence police use of force more generally during citizen encounters

are particularly relevant.

Police scholars have examined the factors that influence the use of force more generally

since the 1960s, and quantitative studies have focused on the relationship between police force

and a wide range of predictors including situational, individual, organizational, and community-

level variables. Overall, virtually all studies that compare situational factors to others such as

officer, organizational, and community-level factors have found that situational factors exert the

most powerful influence on the decision to use coercive force (Skogan and Frydl 2004). Police

are more likely to resort to violence in encounters that include physically aggressive suspects and

citizens who resist officer attempts to control the situation. Researchers have most often

investigated the influence of situational factors in cases that involve the use of deadly force by

police (e.g., Alpert and Smith 1999; Binder and Scharf 1982; Blumberg 1983; Fyfe 1981). This

line of research has primarily emphasized the direct relationship between the level of situational

risk faced by an officer and the specific decision to employ deadly force. Situational risk refers

to the immediate scenario within which police must decide to shoot or not shoot. Did the suspect

assault the police? Was the suspect armed? Did the suspect shoot at police? These situational

factors appear to explain the use of deadly force more directly than other variables. Terrell's

(2003) research based on observational data suggests that situational factors are also the primary

determinants of the use of non-deadly force by police. He examined the relationship between

five levels of suspect resistance (none, passive, verbal, defensive, and active), and four levels of

non-lethal force (none, verbal, restraint, and impact) and found that force levels were

significantly related to levels of suspect resistance.

This type of police crime also incorporate cases that involve police arrested for crimes

associated with domestic and/or family violence, a phenomenon increasingly referred to in the

research literature as officer-involved domestic violence. There have been very few empirical

studies designed to estimate the prevalence of officer-involved domestic violence—all of them

based on self-administered surveys of police and/or their spouses. Johnson (1991) reported that

40% of responding officers admitted that they had behaved violently toward their spouse at least

once during the previous six months, and 20% of the spouses in a concurrent survey reported that

their spouse had abused either them or their children in the previous six months. Neidig, Russell,

and Seng (1992) and Neidig, Seng, and Russell (1992) reported that 41% of responding male

officers admitted that at least one incident of physical aggression occurred in their marital

relationship during the previous year, and 8% of those reported the occurrence of “severe”

physical aggression including choking, strangling, and/or the use or threatened use of a knife or

gun (Neidig, Russell, and Seng 1992, 32). Reported rates of officer-involved domestic violence

are highest among officers who are currently divorced or separated from their spouses.

The literature on officer-involved domestic violence is filled with anecdotes that

underscore the occupationally-derived etiology of violence within police families. Factors

associated with police culture and the job that have been discussed within the context of officer-

involved domestic violence include: (a) violence exposure, (b) authoritarianism, and (c) problem

drinking. Researchers suspect higher rates of domestic violence among police most exposed to

work-related violence based on studies that document a relationship between violence exposure

and the personal well-being of police officers; and, the research literature on the relationship

between work and family and the possibility of spillover effects (Johnson, Todd, and

Subramanian 2005; Mullins and McMains 2000). Officer surveys identify violence exposure as

one of the most significant work-related stressors for police (Gershon 2000), and studies based

on clinical trials describe links between police stress and poor family functioning (Neidig,

Russell, and Seng 1992). Police training in authoritarian styles and the regular exercise of

coercive force may also influence marital interactions and promote domestic and/or family

violence (Greene-Forsythe 2000; Johnson, Todd, and Subramanian 2005; Johnson 1991;

Sgambelluri 2000).

Police are trained to exert power and use coercive force to accomplish their goals and

gain compliance from citizens (Bittner 1978; Skolnick 1994). The regular exercise of coercion

and authoritarianism may spillover to the home in cases where police treat family members as

criminal suspects. Johnson (1991) identified a link between authoritarian spillover and high

levels of strain in police families; and, Johnson et al.’s (2005) survey of police indicates that

authoritarian spillover mediates the relationship between exposure to violence on the job and

domestic violence among police. Problem drinking is another aspect of the work-family

spillover that may contribute to the incidence of violence in police families. The research that

associates officer-involved domestic violence with problem drinking cite many of the same

occupationally-derived factors covered in the previous section on alcohol-related police crime

including (a) intra-interpersonal stressors, (b) job-related stressors, and (c) organizational

stressors.

Much of the remaining research literature on officer-involved domestic violence focuses

on the unique vulnerabilities of domestic violence victims in police families and factors that

conspire to discourage exposure of these crimes and contribute to the hidden nature of the

problem. While scholars have long demonstrated that victims of domestic and/or family

violence are often reluctant to officially report these crimes, the fact that perpetrators of officer-

involved domestic violence are police themselves creates particular problems and barriers to

reporting. First, they must consider the fact that perpetrators possess and are trained to use lethal

weapons. Second, police perpetrators are likely to know the location of domestic violence

shelters and have professional experience that can be used to manipulate the system and shift

blame to the victim (Gershon 2000; National Center for Women & Policing 2005). Third,

decisions to report incidents of officer-involved domestic violence are also likely influenced by

the cultural values of secrecy and loyalty, wherein police (and their families) are expected to

“never blow the whistle” and expose police perpetrators (Johnson, Todd, and Subramanian 2005;

Shernock 1995, 623). Fourth, domestic violence victims in police families also may be

concerned about consequences associated with provisions of the Lautenberg Amendment (1996)

that prohibit police from owning or using a gun if they are convicted of a misdemeanor crime of

domestic violence.

Profit-motivated police crime

The Mollen Commission (1994) found that greed is the primary motive behind police

crime that constitutes corruption. This is true if police corruption is conceptualized in the

traditional context of acts such as accepting bribes to refrain from law enforcement. It is,

however, “less clear whether officers who perform robberies or burglaries, shoplift, sell drugs, or

engage in welfare or insurance fraud during their off-duty time are engaging in a variety of

police corruption” (Fyfe and Kane 2006, xv). Fyfe and Kane (2006) reconceptualized these

actions as “profit-motivated misconduct” and noted that “police corruption is not as easy to

define as we formerly may have believed (p. xv). Similarly, Carter (1990, 89–90)

conceptualized police corruption as being characterized by a “profit-driven cycle.” The

classification of some police crime as profit-motivated is also found in Ross’ (2001) taxonomy of

police crime, where the second of four dichotomous distinctions is between “economically-

motivated and noneconomically-motivated police behavior” (p. 184).

Using the same data set as Fyfe and Kane (2006), Kane and White (2013) explored the

nature of the career-ending police misconduct in the NYPD and found that the profit-motivated

cases included bribe-taking, grand larceny, insurance fraud, burglary, petit larceny, receiving

stolen property, government fraud, gratuities, gambling, illegal operation, and other profit-

motivated misconduct such as extortion, robbery, abusing official resources (p. 73, Table 4.2).

Stinson and colleagues found that profit-motivated police crime is a quantifiable variable

that helps explain the nature of police crime across the life course of officers’ law enforcement

careers in a variety of contexts at nonfederal law enforcement agencies across the United States.

Whereas less experienced police officers are more likely to commit violent crimes, those officers

who commit profit-motivated crimes are more likely to be experienced officers late in their

policing career and more likely to be supervisors and/or administrators (Stinson, Liederbach, and

Freiburger 2010). Likewise, crime by policewomen is most often profit-motivated (Stinson,

Todak, and Dodge 2013). Crime by school resource officers typically is not profit-motivated

(Stinson and Watkins 2014). Finally, profit-motivated police crimes are more likely to be

committed while on-duty and less likely to be committed while an officer is off-duty (Stinson,

Liederbach, and Freiburger 2012).

Conclusion

Problems with conceptualization of police crime has plagued researchers’ efforts to study

police deviance. In this essay I have argued that a proper conceptualization of police crime must

reflect the broad range of criminal offenses committed by sworn law enforcement officers. To

the end, most crime committed by law enforcement officers is sex-related, alcohol-related, drug-

related, violence-related, and/or profit motivated. These types of police crime are not mutually-

exclusive categories. For example, some drug-related crime by police officers is clearly also

profit-motivated. Similarly, many acts of sex-related police crime are also violence-related.

There are many possibilities within this conceptualization, but the main premise is that police

crime is a complicated and multifaceted phenomenon. It occurs in law enforcement agencies of

all sizes and without regard for geographic boundaries. Some police crime occurs while off-duty

and there is no bright line to distinguish between on- and off-duty crimes by police officers

because the training, experiences, stresses, relationships, and culture of policing simply do not

end at the end of each work day.

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