THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

You can't see it but you can easily see what it does. The Blue Wall Of Silence that surrounds and protects bad cops and gives the good cops who built it a bad name with the public they are supposed to protect and serve.

But in some ways the more galling thing that we watched is that officers within these departments and more than a few administrators also watched and more importantly knew that their fellow officers were blatantly breaking the law. Yet, not one stepped forward before, during, or after the videos exposed the lies and the cover to blow the whistle on the lie and cover-up. This is so routine that it would have been a shock if one officer had actually broken ranks and screamed foul.

Here’s how deep, prevalent, and terrifying the blue code of silence is in police culture. The National Institute of Ethics in a study commissioned by the International Association of Police Chiefs surveyed hundreds of cops in 21 states. They found that nearly 80 percent of cops said that a code of silence exists, more than half said it didn’t bother them, almost half admitted that the code was strongest when excessive force was used, and half also admitted they had witnessed misconduct by another officer but kept their mouths shut about it. Why? Because in many cases they were told to keep quiet by other officers and in even more cases by department higher-ups. And if they didn’t they were scared stiff that they would be ostracized; the officer who committed the misconduct would be disciplined or fired; or worse, they’d be fired, or at the very least would be “blackballed,” or that their bosses would simply blow their complaint off. A significant number of them said they wanted to speak out about the abusive acts of fellow officers but were pressured by “uninvolved officers” to keep quiet.

The reasons they clammed up can’t be cavalierly sloughed off. Many readers and movie goers have long memories and remember the true life account of what happened to NYPD officer Frank Serpico who blew the whistle on police corruption, became an instant pariah and eventually was set up for the kill. But officers don’t have to envision themselves getting the extreme Serpico treatment for finger pointing abusive officers to know that their stock would plunge beneath the floor among other officers if they were tagged a stoolie by other officers.

The days of Serpico are over, but the silence continues. Cops know they have to clean their own house but the house does not want to be cleaned. How and where does a good cop start?