The “Blue Wall of Silence” is not a new subject to this blogsite. It is also one of the four obstacles to police improvement I mention in my book, “Arrested Development.”
Silence from the police officers when they witness or have knowledge of illegal behavior by a colleague can no longer be tolerated. It must be confronted and eliminated. It is criminal behavior pure and simple. As long as the Blue Wall of Silence is permitted to exist among our nation’s police their reform will be in vain and the trust and support they need from their communities will be non-existent.
The “Blue Wall of Silence” is not a new subject to this blogsite. It is also one of the four obstacles to police improvement I mention in my book, “Arrested Development.”
Silence from the police officers when they witness or have knowledge of illegal behavior by a colleague can no longer be tolerated. It must be confronted and eliminated. It is criminal behavior pure and simple. As long as the Blue Wall of Silence is permitted to exist among our nation’s police their reform will be in vain and the trust and support they need from their communities will be non-existent.
Excerpts From “The Blue Wall of Silence Among Police Enables Cop Brutality”
By Bill Berkowitz, Truth-out.com
“‘In the late 1960s,’ the Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement points out, ‘the blue wall [of silence] came crashing down when a New York City police officer named Frank Serpico blew the whistle on fellow officers who were engaging in illegal activities, including taking bribes from drug dealers and members of organized crime.’ His attempts to alert his superiors fell on deaf ears. Serpico eventually went to the press. A commission was formed, an investigation held, a few minor reforms initiated, but basically business went on as usual.
“No one whistle-blower, scathing report or series of well-intentioned initiatives is going to eliminate criminal behavior and racist actions by police departments across the country. In all too many cases, as revealed in the Justice Department’s investigation into the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department, the problem is structural. For change to occur, it’s going to take a transformation of police culture; how police go about their business. One thing that will do more good than harm is tearing down the Blue Wall of Silence…
“The phrases, ‘the Blue Wall of Silence,’ and ‘the Blue Veil of Silence,’ describe the police officer practice of closing ranks behind each other, clamming up in the face of injustice, and protecting their own, making the holding of bad cops responsible for their actions practically impossible…
“Last summer, Yesha Callahan, editor of The Grapevine and a staff writer at The Toot, wrote that, in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Eric Garner on the streets of Staten Island, PoliceOne.com, ‘a popular online community for law-enforcement members … who have to be verified by the site to show that they are actually police officers,’ exploded with comments vilifying Garner while at the same time supporting the police officers involved in his death.
“’What’s so telling about most of the comments,’ Callahan pointed out, ‘is that it shows a lack of compassion and a solidarity when it comes to some in law enforcement’…
“In a January 22, 2013, post at UIC News, Brian Flood reported that ‘Police corruption in Chicago survives due to a lack of oversight and indifference from internal and external leadership.’ Flood, citing a report published by a UIC researcher titled, ‘Crime, Corruption and Cover-ups in the Chicago Police Department,’ pointed out that ‘police corruption is enabled by a “blue code of silence” entrenched in a department culture where officers avoid reporting crimes and misconduct by their colleagues.’
“Whistle-blowing by police officers is all too rare and, in those rare cases when police officers do display the courage and integrity necessary to report misconduct by their fellow officers, they are often faced with being ostracized by fellow officers, intimidation, firing, and/or threats to their safety on the job.
“In a February 2011 piece in Reason magazine titled ‘Why Cops Aren’t Whistleblowers’ Radley Balko wrote about the case of Barron Bowling, who was awarded $830,000 ‘for the beating he suffered at the hands of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in Kansas City, Kansas.’ According to Balko, ‘U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson went out of her way to acknowledge another victim in the disgraceful affair: Kansas City police detective Max Seifert’…
“Because of his willingness to stand up, Seifert was forced into early retirement, ‘lost part of his pension and his retirement health insurance. … [and] was “shunned, subjected to gossip and defamation by his police colleagues, and treated as a pariah”…
“The [Det.] Seifert story is only one of many similar stories, where the insidious Blue Wall of Silence obstructs individual officers trying to do the right thing.
“Balko noted that in former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper’s 2005 book Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing, he ‘explains the implicit threats that make the Blue Wall so successful: “You have to rely on your fellow officers to back you. A cop with a reputation as a snitch is one vulnerable police officer, likely to find his peers slow to respond to requests for backup—if they show up at all. A snitch is subject to social snubbing. Or malicious mischief, or sabotage.…The peer pressure is childish and churlish, but it’s real. Few cops can stand up to it”…
“In an ‘Us vs. Them’ culture, cops close ranks and cover for each other. There is a desperate need for more independent oversight of our police departments, greater transparency, broader support for whistle-blowers, and public access to police records.”
Read Berkowitz’s entire article HERE.
Improving Police: A Necessary Conversation 
Reblogged this on e-Roll Call Magazine.
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Reblogged this on Shediac1981; A Blue Wall of Silence.
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