One issue that comes up time and again regarding the out-of-control behavior of police departments across the country is the recycling of bad police officers from one police department to another. Tim Loehmann, the killer of 12-year old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, OH, is the poster child of this law enforcement malpractice.
Roger L. Goldman, Professor Emeritus at the Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Law & Advocacy at St. Louis University School of Law, has proposed, in an opinion piece at the Guardian, that one thing that states and legislatures can do is to take a more active role in revoking police licenses.
Since 1960, when New Mexico became the first state to get the authority to revoke licenses, a total of 44 states have established commissions that have the authority to issue and revoke licenses, similar to the way lawyers and doctors are regulated. But 25% of the nation’s police officers work in six states – California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island – that don’t have such regulatory bodies. And 16 of the 44 states that do have the power to revoke can only do so if the officer has first been convicted of a crime.
Approximately 30,000 law enforcement officers have had their licenses revoked in the United States. However, an officer who has lost his police license may then work in private security, corrections and other criminal justice occupations, depending on each state’s law. Such ex-officers, who are often armed in their new jobs, have sometimes gone on to commit crimes in their new uniforms.
However, a large percentage of police officers with prior misconduct don’t need to leave policing for good. Many know they can seek jobs with other departments that will knowingly hire them despite the risk of a possible damage suit for wrongful hiring. There are economic reasons why this occurs: many departments can’t afford to pay a decent wage so they hire officers who have previously been fired or resigned in lieu of firing because they know they can pay them less.
Thanks to the Infoboomtube known as Google, I also managed to locate Professor Goldman's 2001 detailed study of the issue,
Revocation of Police Officer Certification: A Viable Remedy for Police Misconduct? One interesting thing that I noted is Goldman's view that citizen review boards are often insufficient to solve the problem
Without a mechanism at the state or national level to remove the certificate of law enforcement officials who engage in such misconduct, it is likely that there will be more such instances of repeated misconduct. Traditional remedies do not address the problem. For example, the exclusionary rule prevents prosecutors from using probative evidence seized from a defendant in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, but it does nothing to punish the officer. Likewise, criminal prosecution of officers is rare, and convincing jurors to convict is extremely difficult. Administrative complaints against the police in front of civilian review boards have been equally ineffective because the department for which the officer works rather than an independent body usually conducts the investigation. Finally, civil damage suits against police officers face the problem of juries, who tend to rule in favor of the police; even if the suit is successful, the officer is often judgment-proof.
The case studies that Goldman cites in his paper are impressive. (I do have to add here that my state of Illinois does seem to have one of the
better state laws regarding the decertification of corrupt police officers, yet there was nothing to stop disgusting "human vermin" like
Jon Burge or Guantanamo torturer
Richard Zuley from committing horrific crimes nor does it seem to have deterred the Chicago Police Department from
picking up where Burge and Zuley left off.)
To be sure, Goldman is well aware that revocation of police licenses is only a part of the solution:
States need to move beyond merely revoking licenses of unfit police officers, though. They must enact legislation to disaccredit police departments that do not meet minimum standards, just as failing local school districts can lose accreditation.
The entire oped is well worth a good read.
And given the "rarity" of police misconduct and bad police officers, it may even be necessary.