Bad Cop, Bad Cop.

The latest season of Underbelly: The Golden Mile began with the tagline:

"the story of the excesses of the empire, the collapse of the empire, the chaos that followed...seen through the eyes of some of the most sexy, charming, corrupt and deadly people of the time"

The glamour of police corruption is often painted across our television and cinema screens. We are exposed daily to countless fictional and not-so-fictional tales of cash-swindling, womanising cops. Admittedly though, we are often drawn in. Perhaps it's the need to satisfy our own indwelling deviance. Perhaps it's the sweet allure that comes with seeing someone else bend the rules. Perhaps it's merely curiosity.

A few months ago I sat in at the trial of Mark William Standen, former assistant director of the NSW Commission. Amongst various other misdemeanours, he had been charged with conspiracy to import 300kg of pseudoephedrine. I recall wondering what would drove him to commit such a crime. Was it pure greed? A search for more power? 

Or perhaps the pressure of being one of the 'good guys' had simply gotten to him. 

Whatever it was, there was definitely no glamour about it. The sex, money and fame promised by Underbelly were a far cry from the handcuffed, hunched figure of a disgraced cop.

Police corruption, both fictional and fact, is a popular topic in our contemporary media consumption, ever since the days of Philip Marlowe and the image of the cigar-smoking, rule-bending hard-boiled detective. The story of fallible police treading the fine line between discretion and dishonesty has seen great history in classics such as Dirty Harry and L.A. Confidential, as well as the new-age likes of The Departed and The Shield. But often, these tales are all but a reflection of the systemic and entrenched corruption of real life. The most prolific example to date is the infamous Wood Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service between 1995-1997. Tabloids pounced upon hundreds of uncovered instances of bribery, money laundering, drug trafficking, and falsifying of evidence by police. For many citizens it represented a failure of authority and seeded distrust of those who were supposedly meant to protect them from crime.

The question however, remains: What is the cause of police corruption?
Delattre (2008) purports the idea that corruption begins with apparently harmless and well-intentioned practices and leads over time—either in individuals or in departments as a whole—to all manner of crimes-for-profit. Though this view does address pertinent issues in police culture, the idea of allowing discretions in traffic offences leading to trafficking 300kg of narcotics seems a tad far-fetched to me.

I just prefer the idea that cops too are human; and susceptible to the same morally deviant impulses like the rest of us mortals.