OFFICERS NEED TO SPEAK UP.....

The Washington PostBy Marc Fisher
Thursday, July 3, 2008; B01

On the street, nobody knows anything, nobody's seen anything. Cops
and prosecutors complain about it all the time: Somehow, right and
wrong tumbled over each other and the no-snitching imperative took
on the aura of morality.

But no one expects street thugs to have a finely tuned sense of
ethical values. Law enforcement officers are another story. Those
who are sworn and empowered to uphold the law have a special
responsibility to set an example.

In Prince George's County, a police officer is dead because a thug
demonstrated a sickening and total disregard for life. The 19-year-
old who was accused of killing county police Cpl. Richard Findley is
dead, too, apparently because someone with access to a solitary
confinement cell sneered at the law and anointed himself the Black
Hand.

Now, as the Maryland State Police try to determine what happened at
the jail in Upper Marlboro, several correctional officers have
declined to speak to investigators, and the county's public safety
chief has had to order officers to cooperate.

Some example.

This is, of course, hardly shocking news. The Blue Wall, the vow of
silence that binds law enforcement officers, is so strong that the
few who feel compelled to inform on wayward colleagues become the
stuff of Hollywood chronicles. Decades after Frank Serpico told
authorities about widespread police bribery in New York, his name
remains a curse word to many officers.

In a nationwide poll of police by the National Institute of Justice,
61 percent said officers "do not always report even serious
violations by fellow officers," and 67 percent said whistle-blowers
were likely to be "given a cold shoulder."

So why should bad guys and ordinary citizens pay heed when police
and prosecutors lecture them about how it's their civic duty to come
forward with information about crimes? If law enforcement officers
won't think of themselves as righteous whistle-blowers rather than
as rats or snitches, how can a system that depends on witness
testimony possibly function?

"My sense as a prosecutor is that whenever you deal with any
organization, there's a high likelihood of running into that kind of
resistance," says Prince George's State's Attorney Glenn Ivey, whose
job it is to put together the case against whoever killed Findley's
accused murderer, Ronnie White. Faced with officers who won't talk,
Ivey says he uses the same tools he deploys against street
thugs: "You find the little fish and try to flip them; you try to
get the less culpable to testify against the more culpable in
exchange for lighter punishment."

Prosecutors say there's an important distinction between why cops
and citizens in high-crime areas don't talk.

On the street, "people don't talk because they really don't trust
the police," says Alan Strasser, a Washington trial lawyer who was
formerly chief of the felony division of the U.S. attorney's office
in the District. "They sometimes see them as an occupying army. Or
they're afraid of physical retaliation or at least some social
retaliation, being ostracized, if they talk."

Law enforcement officers, in contrast, "feel they are fighting a
battle against crime and they don't have the resources or support
they need to do their job, and because of that, they face unique
tensions," Strasser says. "As a result, a few of them feel they're
entitled to a little slack, to do things that other people can't do."

Although there's often little prosecutors can do to persuade street
witnesses to set aside their fears, there is another tool that works
only on those in law enforcement, and that is the appeal to
officers' deep belief in order and justice.

Ivey says appealing to officers' self-image as good guys can
sometimes overcome the power of professional bonds, making officers
feel that only by coming forward can they protect their own against
the few who undermine the reputation of the many.

"With police officers, you have people who on average are more
committed to the rule of law than a street thug," Strasser
says. "Law enforcement does face higher standards, both as a legal
matter and because it is right to expect more of them."

No one predicts a swift or easy resolution in Prince George's. The
juxtaposition of a white police officer, Findley, and a black
suspect, White, in a racially divided county only adds to the
outside noise. And in the quiet of investigators' conversations with
those who might know something, decades of rancor over police
excesses exacerbate the tension between telling the truth and
protecting colleagues.

In the TV version of life, cameras capture what we need to know
about bad guys' behavior. But in reality, it's up to each of us to
say when something has been done that breaks the social compact.
Those who work in the jail are there not only to protect us from the
violent people in those cells, but also to make certain we do not
descend to the thugs' level.