The Faces of Police Corruption

This is often a difficult topic for police officers and police leaders to talk about honestly.

That’s because police corruption is not limited to the obvious acts people usually imagine: taking a bribe, misusing police intelligence for personal gain, planting or manipulating evidence, or stealing it outright.

By definition, police corruption also includes organizational gain—actions that benefit the police organization itself through unethical means, including the suppression or concealment of misconduct.

This form of corruption is often the easiest to commit.

Why? Because misconduct, particularly sexual harassment or targeted behaviour toward colleagues, is frequently wrapped in process. A process that provides cover. A process that offers just enough ambiguity to excuse, dismiss, or quietly sweep behaviour away.

Most police organizations have a code of conduct and an investigative framework designed to address these issues. On paper, the system makes sense. The person impacted, often a woman, though not always, is asked to provide a statement and participate in the process.

You can’t proceed without direct information… right?

Or can you?

I have watched different versions of these systems play out firsthand. They rarely end well.

While writing Tightrope, I included my experience as part of the Merlo-Davidson class action related to sexual harassment and gender-based bullying. I also wrote about two occasions where I found myself not as the victim, but as a witness to this kind of organizational corruption.

In both cases, senior police leaders knew that sexualized or violent behaviour toward a woman had occurred and the organization chose to make it disappear, or at least tried to.

I ultimately cut those two incidents from Tightrope. Not because they weren’t important, but because I was not the direct victim. Still, the topic has resurfaced repeatedly, through media coverage and conversations within policing, because bad behaviour will never be entirely eradicated from the profession.

What matters is how organizations and more importantly the top leaders, respond when they know it has occurred.

I’m sharing these experiences now because the first profoundly shaped how I responded the second time.

The First Time

The first incident occurred when a relatively senior officer came to me to disclose that he had engaged in inappropriate sexual behaviour. He had propositioned someone while off duty and was away on a holiday.

He came to me because he knew an investigation would likely follow and believed I might be assigned the file. He was visibly upset. Whether that was remorse or regret at being “caught,” I couldn’t tell. To be fair, he was the one bringing the information forward, not the other party involved.

I listened. I explained that the matter would follow an investigative process and that he would have access to support regardless of the outcome. I also told him something important: I was now a witness. Because he had disclosed directly to me, I could not be assigned the investigation. I would be notifying senior leadership and identifying myself as a witness to whoever was assigned.

That’s when things took a turn I still struggle to describe.

By the time I arrived at the senior officer’s office, who was many ranks above me, he had already contacted other leaders he reported to. I explained that I could not take the file and that I was now a witness.

The response stunned me.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re not investigating this. It happened while he was away on a holiday, out of the area, and no one reported it. He self-reported.”

I remember asking one question, my disbelief obvious:“But doesn’t it matter that we know what happened?”

The answer was simple and final. One of the most senior people in the organization had been informed and had decided nothing would be done.

I left the office shaken. My mouth was dry. I spent the rest of the day wishing I had never been told. My anger was no longer directed at the officer who disclosed his conduct, it was squarely aimed at the organization, more importantly, the senior leadership of it.

I ran through every option in my head. All of them felt risky. I knew who was involved, and there was no one else to escalate to.

Was it because they liked him?Or because others had done the same thing and been quietly given the same escape hatch, a hidden rule reserved for a select few?

I had seen junior members disciplined or terminated for similar behaviour. This case had no external complaint. I understood why, it was deeply personal and humiliating for the person involved. But we had enough information to follow up if we had chosen to.

We didn’t.

Life went on.

The Second Time

About a year later, I found myself in the same position again, present when another senior officer disclosed conduct that would clearly lead to an investigation.

This time, I wasn’t alone. Another officer senior to me was present, and I felt a sense of relief.

When the officer finished speaking and left, I turned to my colleague and said we needed to notify our leadership and identify ourselves as witnesses.

And then it happened again.

I was told we were not witnesses to the incident and didn’t need to tell anyone.

I pushed back immediately. We were witnesses to the disclosure. What mattered, or didn’t, was for investigators and the legal process to determine, not us.

I went back to my office and began to shake.

I took two deep breaths and realized something had shifted. Staying silent was no longer an option. If this decision ended my career, so be it.

The shaking stopped.

I walked back to the senior officer’s office, knocked, and said calmly: “You can do whatever you want. But in five minutes, I’m calling the investigative team, identifying myself as a witness, and telling them you were present with me.”

He looked up and said, “You’re right. I’ll make the call.”

I nodded and left.

I still like to believe he would have arrived at that decision on his own. I’m not sure if that’s true. What I do know is that my earlier silence was no longer something I could live with, as a person, a police officer, or a woman.

The outcome?

The second officer lost his job. The first was promoted.

It’s easy to say, “I’m not the boss,” or “It’s not my call.”

But very often, it is your call to speak up or stay silent.

I have heard dozens of cases of this type of Organizational corruption, hidden behind phrases like:

• “This is a private HR matter.”

• “No one wanted to come forward.”

• “Those involved signed a NDA”

• “She didn’t want to go through the process.”

All of those statements can be true and at the same time it is what protects this type of corruption.

It places the burden on the very person who never wanted the experience in the first place, forcing them to carry responsibility for resolving it.

Many good men and women in policing don’t want this to happen either. Too often, they lack processes that allow for action, or leaders with the courage to acknowledge what is happening on their watch. It’s easier to bury it than to confront the damage it does to people and to the organization.

Police corruption absolutely includes theft, deceit, and misuse of authority and leaders are often very good at addressing those.

But many still refuse to accept that hiding known misconduct to protect the organization’s reputation is also corruption.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that justification, “we have to protect the organization”, I would have retired a millionaire.

Once you know better, you have to do better.

That lesson followed me for the rest of my career. I found myself being the senior leader that often had to make these decisions. Tough as they were, I tried to not just be black and white about what the policy said, what the process was, who benefited and who did not.

Despite my experience and my decision to do the right thing, it often still did not work out the way you would hope. And it was one of the most painful lessons to learn, that you can’t always fix what seems to be going wrong.

Sometimes all you can do is take the steps, say the words, and be the person that allows you to reflect back one day and say "I wasn't perfect but I always did the best I possibly could."