"(W)ith people standing together . . . , the public can have a positive effect on increasing positive police action and good cops within the law enforcement system. And when that happens, good citizens and taxpayers win while unethical and biased behavior by law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and judges lose."
Dr. Sandra Nunn, Former Federal Agent
and National Security Whistleblower
In recent years, communities across the U.S. have found themselves facing issues of police brutality, abuse of authority, lack of accountability, and unethical conduct toward individual citizens. These incidents have raised public awareness and national attention regarding an alarming trend of poor law enforcement conduct and how its effects negatively impact public trust toward law enforcement officers. Law abiding citizens have begun to distrust law enforcement officers at the local, state, and federal level because of problems that many perceive as the emergence of a police state and severe abuses of authority. Even former law enforcement officers have watched issues emerge often commenting among themselves regarding poor police conduct and its repercussions. These issues underscore the public need to address ways that they can promote good cops in the system rather than continually find themselves subjected to bad police practices.
As a former federal agent who worked in Los Angeles with many local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies for more than 12 years, I was exposed to the internal workings of various law enforcement organizations in my everyday contact. And in those daily interactions, I often witnessed firsthand people at all levels of the organization from the street officers to upper management. As an active observer, I also came to understand ethical conduct by good cops in contrast to the unethical conduct by bad cops.
In the wake of many of these issues, people have often asked me what can be done to mitigate these issues and help facilitate law enforcement agencies that truly work “for the people” instead of against them. Based on years of observation and experience, I believe that the public must address this issue from several perspectives to truly be effective at facilitating positive changes.
First, the public must recognize the power of working together in grassroots efforts in order to facilitate change. There must be greater mobilization efforts at the national level to recognize the scope of this issue throughout the country, not just in local or regional communities. And these organizations need to inspire the local communities to work together in supporting change. For this effort, a national organization with membership across the country would prove very powerful in terms of networking, organizing, and coordination of efforts. As part of this effort, I would advocate that this national organization and correspondent grassroots membership help support efforts by various organizations to enhance and increase whistleblower protections for law enforcement whistleblowers at the local, state, and federal level. Law enforcement whistleblowers risk their livelihood, careers, families, and financial stability to stand up to unethical conduct by law enforcement managers and their peers. These men and women are the insiders who see the real problems within the law enforcement agency and can pinpoint the key issues because they have witnessed it firsthand. Therefore, the public should support efforts to help protect whistleblowers against retaliation from law enforcement managers and others whose only concern is to protect themselves from public exposure instead of seeking to correct the problems revealed by whistleblower disclosures.
Another key consideration should be that the public should insist on accountability at all levels of law enforcement from managers down to the street cops. If the community sees dysfunction, the people need to use the power they have as citizens and taxpayers to make lawmakers listen from the city mayor all the way up to the state governor’s office and the President. We must remember that law enforcement officers are paid by taxpayer dollars. Therefore, they serve the people not their own agenda.
The public needs to understand that oftentimes, managers and other officers within law enforcement agencies are often protected by the legal system even if they have engaged in wrongdoing. For example, most if not all law enforcement agencies provide free legal counsel to law enforcement managers and officers even if they have engaged in unethical conduct. The theory is that the law enforcement agency is trying to mitigate its culpability in such cases by defending the actions of its officers. However, one must remember that our law enforcement system suffers from a strongly ingrained “good ‘ol boys” system that has been around for many years. Therefore, some of the other issues related to this aspect is the fact that prosecutors often side with police agencies and we thus have another issue that emerges known as prosecutorial misconduct in which prosecutors themselves may fail to prosecute certain managers or officers within the law enforcement agency because of certain biases.
Likewise, prosecutors may also engage in similar prosecutorial misconduct when they seek to prosecute a law enforcement whistleblower because they fail to recognize the whistleblower’s protected disclosures and the subsequent retaliation. Further, the legal system also possesses another issue that stems from a lack of judicial accountability when judges are not held accountable for actions or rulings that clearly show bias or deference toward those engaged in unethical conduct in the law enforcement community.
Because of these issues, citizens need to stand together to ensure that law enforcement agencies at all levels serve the interests of all people. If managers, officers, or a department/agency exhibit issues that pose a threat to public welfare, then people within the community and across the country need to exercise their voice to stand up against wrongdoing. I do not advocate violence to accomplish this aim. Rather, I advocate the power of political action through concerted efforts to make the voice of the People heard by elected representatives until these problems are corrected. I know that this can be done and is already being done as a recent article suggests. This article showed how the FBI Director has been using inhouse surveys to identity poor management and poor practices within the FBI. When identified, the FBI Director has removed poor managers and replaced them with better managers. He has also worked to correct other problems to ensure that the FBI organization operates better and serves the public interest. I think that this is a very positive step forward and I would like to see more law enforcement organizations use similar actions to improve management, personnel, processes, and professionalism.
Like anything though, change takes time. But, with people standing together to correct these issues, the public can have a positive effect on increasing positive police action and good cops within the law enforcement system. And when that happens, good citizens and taxpayers win while unethical and biased behavior by law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and judges lose.
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Dr. Sandra Nunn is a former federal agent and national security whistleblower with more than 12 years of federal law enforcement experience and more than 27 years of national security experience. Dr. Nunn is a leadership and ethics expert who serves on numerous boards of directors and in several executive positions. She also is the CFO, Board Member, and National Security Expert with The Law Project as well as the Acting Program Director with the Drum Majors for Truth (DM4T), a whistleblower support organization spearheaded by the National Forum On Judicial Accountability (NFOJA) and the Government Accountability Project (GAP).
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