Making Police Crime Unfashionable

Thomas Mackell was a classic of the species. A onetime New York City police detective who shifted easily to politics, the amiable, white-haired Irishman was handily elected district attorney of Queens County in 1966; his rosy future included talk of a run for the U.S. Senate. But last week the former D.A.'s normally twinkling eyes were glassy as he sat in a courtroom and heard himself sentenced to six months in prison.

A jury had convicted him of protecting a confidence racket from prosecution because members of his office had invested in the scheme. It was the first time a New York City district attorney had ever been indicted, much less convicted. Mackell's sudden fall underscored two apparently conflicting trends. Corruption in law-enforcement agencies seems more prevalent than ever, while efforts to curb venality are at an alltime high. Items:

> In Chicago, James Rochford was named the new police superintendent after the convictions of 48 cops in the past three years and the firing or forced resignations of 407 members of the force. Two weeks ago, after 72 top officers took lie detector tests, Rochford gave the force its biggest command shakeup ever; 60 of the highest-ranking men were moved up, down or around.

> In Philadelphia, a state crime commission charged in March that the city's police department was infested with "systematic, widespread corruption at all levels." The commission report said that the administration of Mayor Frank Rizzo, who rode to political power on his reputation as a tough police chief, had tried to block the investigation and, at the very least, was permissive toward police graft. A special prosecutor has been imported from New York.

> In Indianapolis, a six-month investigative effort by a team of Star reporters turned up a pattern of police corruption connected with prostitution, narcotics and stolen goods. The newspaper series caused Mayor Richard Lugar to fire the city's three top law-enforcement officials and bring in a former Secret Service officer to clean up.

> In Cleveland, the Plain Dealer has been churning up evidence of similar problems. Two weeks ago, four policemen--including a lieutenant and a sergeant--were indicted on various charges. A nine-member citizens' committee has been named to investigate the police force formally.

> In Houston, nine policemen are currently awaiting trial on a variety of charges connected with heroin dealings.

> In Denver, a grand jury is now investigating what is said to be small-scale police narcotics trafficking and burglary-fencing operations. At least four cops have reportedly been implicated.

> In New York City, Special Prosecutor Maurice Nadjari was appointed two years ago to police the city's entire criminal justice system. He has chalked up 85 indictments, including 33 against policemen ranking from lieutenant on down. Two weeks ago, he obtained an indictment against his fourth judge.

Regular Intervals. The array of cities caught up at the same time appears to be unprecedented in U.S. history. But most experts agree with James Thompson, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, who says: "It's just an unmasking of what's been there all along." He believes the situation these days is in fact "not as pervasive as it was at the turn of the century." And he seems to be right.

In Minneapolis in 1901, reported Muckraker Lincoln Steffens, the mayor stacked the police department, then openly "laid plans to turn the city over to outlaws." A grand jury investigation eventually brought down the scheme. Eighty years ago, the sin-thumping Rev. Charles Parkhurst plunged state investigators into New York City's Tenderloin district for ten months of astounding discoveries about police involvement in brothels and gambling houses. Since then, a major investigation has been made of New York's Finest at almost regular intervals (1913, 1930, 1950, 1971). Chicago has a less metronomic, but even gamier tradition.

More Bodies. The current visibility of scandals reflects a new public attitude. "We have discarded the rotten-apple theory," says J. Terrence Brunner of Chicago's Better Government Association. "We are now working on the more accurate assumption of pervasive corruption on all levels in big cities."

Another shift came in the late 1960s when the Federal Government began efforts to improve state and local law-enforcement agencies. Street crime and the Mafia were the main targets, but new programs and subsidies have helped fight police crime as well. "We are just now seeing the fruits of what was set in motion seven, eight years ago," says Brunner. "There is more money, more bodies and therefore more cases."

There are also more professional police--bringing the end of what is left of old-style political-machine control of police forces. "The professionally and the politically dominated departments tend to be at opposite ends of the corruption scale," writes William P. Brown, a former cop who teaches at the State University of New York at Albany.

Another lesson is that even relatively clean departments are reluctant to police themselves vigorously. Thus the trend toward independent agencies. Citizens' commissions seem to be the most popular. But Philadelphia's and New York's special-prosecutor offices will soon be joined by a similar setup in Wisconsin. Because their sole justification is to uncover venality, the new bureaucracies are proving especially effective.

The new investigators practice new tactics, new aggressiveness, with New York particularly showing the way. A patrolman caught on the take used to be prosecuted quickly and forgotten; now he is often "turned" and used to trap higher-ups. The spread of uniformed informers is matched by the proliferation of bugs planted everywhere but inside badges. A blizzard of accountants and other financial sleuths now trace credit cards and checking accounts because, says Jonathan Goldstein, U.S. prosecutor for New Jersey, often "it's just a matter of finding the money."

One internal police-investigation unit is currently running its own "pad" --a list of undercover cops getting quite real and regular bribes from gamblers. The idea is to see which other officers come sniffing around to get on the pad. (Afterward, the gamblers will be prosecuted as well.) Suspected cops are also given access to controlled amounts of drugs to find out what they will do with them. In another bit of "integrity testing" that comes tantalizingly close to entrapment, 51 New York police were recently given "lost" wallets containing money; 30% failed to turn them in and drew administrative penalties.

Redoubled Ire. The success of these ever more mechanized, computerized, organized methods of fighting graft has prompted a new sense, as Houston Prosecutor Robert C. Bennett Jr. notes, that "something can be done about it." There are signs of a change in attitude among cops too. Michael Armstrong, who temporarily took Mackell's job, says that among Queens police, corruption was once so fashionable that some cops used to exaggerate their "scores" in locker-room bull sessions. Now, says Armstrong, "you've got rookies giving oldtimers a hard time about corruption." James Vorenberg, director of Harvard's Criminal Justice Center, believes that the most important element in permanently changing police behavior is "a change in the policeman's self-image. You rarely hear of an FBI agent being corrupt. J. Edgar Hoover made it inconsistent with the agent's professional and self-image."

Yet pressures to succumb to old, familiar temptations remain considerable. Businesses and private individuals are as willing as ever to bribe police to overlook offenses; so are professional criminals. Nor have enough jurisdictions moved to investigate prosecutors and judges--officials who often rake in substantial graft. There has been no real progress toward legalizing gambling and some other "victimless" crimes that are an especial source of trouble. Important resistance to reform still exists in police unions as well as among officials. In Boston, where many believe a scandal is not far below the placid surface, a bid for special investigation funds by Chief Robert J. di Grazia prompted the first city council turndown of a police fiscal request in memory. New York's Nadjari has also seen earlier enthusiasms fade as his budget proposal was cut by 25% in the state legislature.

Such frustrations redouble Nadjari's ire. "The pressure has to be constantly applied," he says. "If public officials can't be totally honest, they should be frightened." Former Inspector Sydney Cooper, who specialized in anticorruption work, agrees with Nadjari's cynicism. "The crab grass grows back," he warns. "You start afresh with it every day. These are very pragmatic guys. They are looking at chances right now to make money and are weighing the money against the risk. The longest day they ever lived, they didn't stop doing this." Which means that despite the progress that has been made, the bad old days may well return if the risk factor is not maintained at a high level.

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