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Police Corruption
Police corruption is an issue that has been around ever since the police force was introduced. Corruption is defined as the abuse of public power for a personal benefit. It is an issue that affects the entire society and has always been very hard to control. Police corruption is continuing to increase in the United States. Newspaper and other public publications will have stories about police officers abusing their power and committing crimes like drug smuggling, prostitution, money laundering and accepting bribes on any given day. Police officers are just as likely to commit a crime as any other citizen in the United States but when the corruption occurs people often act surprised. When committing police corruption the officer will misuse their authority, abuse their power to ultimately receive a personal gain. Police corruption can be broken down into two separate categories. The first is internal corruption which involves police officers working together to commit a crime. The second is external corruption which is when police officers accept pay offs from people who the book rules or city laws. The police force is very aware that this corruption is going on and are constantly looking for ways to decrease it.
The first thing the police force needs to do is strengthen the police leadership. The chief of the force along with other people in power have to make sure they are showing their concern for police corruption in a public and private matter. They also need to make the rules on police corruption more specific by drawing a line that distinctly separates what is police corruption and what the punishments are. These rules need to be taught to police officers in the lowest levels of training and need to be repeated constantly throughout a police officer’s tenure. Police officers also need to be supervised more. This might come off as annoying

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