Why police corruption won't go away

By Marcus Greville and Wendy Robertson Politicians continually assure the public that police corruption occurs only in isolated outbreaks and under exceptional circumstances — the "rotten apple" theory. However, if the royal commission headed by Justice Woods — and the similar Fitzgerald inquiry in Queensland that led to the fall of Joh Bjelke-Petersen — is any guide, there is something more significant going on than the odd rotting of an apple. Justice Wood — taking advantage of modern technology, the stupidity of many crooked cops and the lack of honour among thieves — has uncovered widespread and institutionalised corruption. Elimination of endemic corruption in the NSW police force was supposed to be the focus of the Police Board, established after the Lusher report in 1981, and the Independent Commission Against Corruption, created in 1988. Both clearly failed. Wood's interim report, released on February 5, proposes to establish a new body, the Police Corruption Commission (PCC), to tackle corruption. The new commission is to be completely independent of the police, with no serving or former officers eligible for involvement. It will have the full spectrum of coercive investigative powers and a fully resourced databank. The establishment of an independent body may initially make it more difficult for institutionalised police corruption to flourish. However, corruption is an integral part of police existence which cannot be removed simply by the establishment of an investigatory body designed to catch the already corrupt. In formulating his PCC, Wood studied the anti-corruption bodies introduced by various national and international institutions to combat police corruption and deemed them all failures. In New York, other Australian states, New Zealand, Ontario, England and Wales, such bodies were all seen to allow corruption to reappear in the same, or an even more evil, form. The fundamental limitation of all these commissions is that they cannot tackle the fundamental reasons for corruption. Corruption in the police force thrives on the existence of a black market dealing in contraband materials and the undemocratic and unaccountable nature of the police. The Wood Royal Commission has unearthed evidence fabrication, robbery and perjury, but the most widespread corruption involves drug trafficking, illegal pornography and prostitution rackets. While police are given the power to enforce laws designed to remove the distribution of contraband, there will exist the opportunity for corrupt material gain through controlling the black market. A police trade in illegal goods can flourish because the police force is not accountable to the public it supposedly serves. This unaccountability is the root of the police "culture" which has troubled Justice Wood and other investigators. Police are accountable, really, only to the police above them in the hierarchy — if that. Why is it that the police, of all the bodies of the state, seem least able to be democratically controlled by the public, or even by the elected government that employs and pays them? In short, it's because helping children cross busy streets, or arresting burglars, or even stopping the sale of illegal drugs, are only secondary, peripheral tasks. The ultimate role of the police is protection of the rule of the wealthy minority over the majority. Democratic control and that central function are incompatible. So even the best-intentioned of investigators and commissions fail to root out police corruption. And the best of intentions are not always present, as the now retired NSW police commissioner, Tony Lauer, suggested when he said that the overriding objective of inquiries into police corruption is to restore public faith in the police department.