Sigh. This is radically condensed but . . . during the gilded age, the NYPD became spectacularly institutionally corrupt. Various progressive attempts to cleanup the NYPD failed and the city settled for predictable corruption. However during and after the depression Commissioner Valentine cleaned up the force. In short, he used the massive unemployment of the era to hire, doh, educated policeman and then used transfers to break up institutional corruption as possible. By the time Valentine left the force, the NYPD was arguably one of the more honest police forces in the US. The depression and WWII era NYPD generation was slowly displaced by individually corrupt cops and then, by the time of the Knapp and Mollen Commissions, full-on institutionalized corruption was common. There was a moment under Giuliani when the political will to reduce corruption was there but, sigh, Giuliani simply refocused, restructured the force to hide the corruption and get to where we are today. In the mid to late-90s, the force could have rebooted the depression era procedures and hiring practices that made the NYPD more honest. Minimum education requirements could have been increased, corrupt precincts broken up, and officers transferred in ways that reduced street-level corruption. But no, Giuliani used a few high-profile bad apple cases to appease the press and kept intact precincts that were corrupt top to bottom (moving whole groups of cops from one precinct to another instead of breaking up groups of cops who know each other), focus was shifted to crime stats (as opposed to cop stats), search and frisk was radically increased, etc. The opportunity for a more honest force passed.
I know, I know, that’s a radical over simplification but . . . there are obvious ways that the NYPD can reduce corruption–civilian participation in review boards, random street assignments, actual punishment for cop crimes, higher education standards, etc. It’s hard to turn corrupt cops straight but it’s not impossible to hire non-corrupt cops. It’s hard to stop all corruption but possible to make it hard for corrupt cops to run precinct houses. Etc.
