(Institution Name)
Background of the Scandal:
Organized crime has been the most worrying thing that has been haunting the experts of governance and public management as it can be very hard to trace and even harder to avoid. Rather than doing their jobs, the law enforcement agencies like police and related other institutes can be made a part in the organized crime in order to ensure that the criminals get protected when caught or worse yet, do not face hurdles in their operations.
Drug addiction has been one of the biggest problems that the policy makers and governance specialists have ever claimed to have faced. The fact that people become so deeply addicted to drugs causes that they grow more and more willing to pay anything and in any manner possible to get their addiction satisfied.
In the case of cocaine, the addiction is severe, and the young customers who buy this drug carry out criminal activities of smaller extent in order to get money for buying the drugs. These crimes include shoplifting at first and as the habit of these young addicts keeps getting worse, so do their crimes.
They start robbing people on the street at the point of a gun or a knife and also start robbing shops in the form of gangs. Furthermore, these young addicts also become murderers if they have to kill another person to get the required money.
This means that the prevalence of drugs in the society can cause so much devastation at all levels. Not only are the lives of the drug addicts are bruised but so are the lives of people around them. This is the reason why it is emphasized greatly by the policy makers that drug distribution is eradicated in the society.
The police department and other related authorities are responsible for carrying out sweeping tasks that ensure that the distribution and sale of the drug are stopped and prevented. Those who smuggle and distribute drugs, hence fear the police and other related law enforcement agencies that they will put them to justice.
A similar incident that serves to be an excellent example of organized crime took place in Miami where corrupt cops were found guilty to have had gone rogue. It happened in 1985 when 6 drug dealers were trying to transport a lot of drugs in a boat in the Miami River. These drug dealers were armed and dangerous and were carrying drugs in quantity no less than 350 kilos. The drug that they were carrying was cocaine, and its worth was $9 million in cash. These drug dealers were quite familiar with this business, and they were carrying out another routine activity as they normally used to.
The boat that was carrying the drugs was intercepted by a police boat that had 8 men onboard, all wearing police uniforms. The drug dealers at first thought that it was a police raid and they had been busted. The punishment for dealing in drugs is very harsh, but it is the part of the court that they sentence the culprits.
The police only have a duty to capture these elements and to ensure that they are brought to justice. Therefore, the drug dealers realized that they would get arrested for their action and would be taken to jail, but as it turned out, one of the police officers cried to the rest asking them to kill the drug dealers (Lersch, 2001).
The dealers then realized that this was not a police raid, in fact, the men who were dressed police officer uniforms wanted to steal the drugs. Fearing that they would get killed in the process of this robbery, they decided that best is that they saved their lives by taking their chances on the river. Hence, they jumped in the water as they got shot at, and the raiders rode the drug-laden boat away.
The drug dealers that were now in water never got the attention of the raiders as they were not interested in killing them, they were only interesting in getting the drugs. As the raiders voyaged away in the drug-laden boat, the drug dealers tried to swim their way out of the water and to get to the shore. However, only three made it out of the water alive. Three of the drug dealers were swept away by the swift water currents or ever knew how to swim at the first place.
When the bodies were found of the three dead drug dealers, it was found that they were all armed. Guns were found with all of them, and they had jewelry on them. In addition to that, each of these drug dealers was carrying money in large amount i.e. $800 to $1000 a piece.
This money was supposedly meant to be paid as bribe to whoever was responsible for getting them through to a checkpoint. It very much possibly would have been another security official guarding a dock where the drug dealers were supposed to drop off the anchor.
In those days, it was very easy for a person to purchase uniforms and equipment used by the police officers and hence it was assumed that the people who raided the drug-laden boat were some robbers who were impersonating police officers.
They took advantage of their attire, and the drug dealers did not open fire on them because it is a very serious crime to attempt hurting a police officer. As they were able to get close enough using their attire and appearance, they raided on the drug dealers and carried out their loot.
However, it only took the investigators a few days to realize that the raiders who took the boat were actually policemen. This raised serious concerns about the level of corruption in the police department of Miami. It was also realized that the group of 8 police officers that had carried out this robbery actually had a gang name, “the enterprise.”
This gang was going to become the most notorious and the most corrupt gang made inside a law enforcement agency in Miami. It did not take long for the investigators to search and find the corrupt police officers who were behind this corrupt event.
In a matter of a month, there were made 5 arrests, and 5 others were interrogated thoroughly. For the surprise of the investigators, the more they dug in, the more people were found to have been involved in the event. With each and every person that got arrested and interrogated, there was obtained precious information about the spread of the network of corrupt police officers that were part of the Miami police department.
There were found to have been different categories of the culprits and corrupt cops in the Miami police department. The worst category was of the police officers who were actually responsible for having had carried out the events of robbery and murder as in the case of Miami River drug boat raid. Some others were responsible for supporting and facilitates the first group in carrying out these activities and to ensure that no one knew about this.
Another set of corrupt police officers was involved to an extent that they used to get financial benefit from these rogue activities by ensuring that the tracks got covered and that no trace could be found back to those involved. The police officers that were found to be least involved were those who knew what was going on and who was involved in it, and they did not report this to the police department where they were supposed to inform their superiors about this.
Punishments were given to these police officers based on the extent of their involvement. 100 odd policemen were found responsible and were fired at the least and sentenced to prison at the most with 20 suffering from the biggest punishment. However, a striking reality is that of all these police officers; all have been released until not, and some of them have also committed the offense again. 2 imprisoned police officers fled the prison in the late 1990s, and only one was caught and not before having committed a stream of crimes in the year 2003.
What is even more amazing is that the police officers that got released from prison have not been easy to trace even for the law enforcement agencies and the attorneys that have ever been interested in testifying against these cops have never been supported by the law enforcement agencies. Many of the arrested police officers are claimed to have been slipped out of the grasp of the law because of the loopholed laws that could not punish these people as hard as they had deserved.
Critical Analyzes:
There are several aspects of this scandal that can be critically assessed and that raise concerns. These concerns can be assessed and discussed separately.
Would not have gotten caught if there were no dead bodies ever found:
The 8 police officers who raided the drug-laden boat did not want to kill the drug dealers if they did not have to. The police officers were heavily equipped with both defensive and offensive equipment support. They could have easily finished off the drug dealers while they had the chance. But as the drug dealers jumped into the river to save their lives, they were never followed nor were they shot at, as confessed by the police officers that were caught later on.
The reason why the police officers did not want to kill the drug dealers was that they could have had difficulty in managing the dead bodies. In crimes, when the criminals have to take care of the dead bodies, they normally burn them and dispose of them in a manner that is hard to trace.
The fact remains that the law enforcement agencies who finally started off with the investigation of the matter could never have ever known about the incident to have ever occurred if they had not found the bodies of the three dead drug dealers. This is one of the biggest problems that the law enforcement has to face that if the police are gone rogue, there is virtually not a single way through which the higher authorities can ever know about an event to have had unfolded.
This also means that it is very easy for the police to conceal any event from everyone that had taken place. This also raises the question that no one can accurately guess that how many cases of this sort would have had happened without the higher authorities knowing about them because not always was the evidence found that triggered the investigation like the dead bodies did in this case.
The police officers who robbed the drug-laden boat also did not have to kill the drug dealers as the drug dealers were no legal threat to them. Of course, the drug dealers were in no position to go to any law enforcement agency complaining about what had happened to them. This would have backfired on themselves as the authorities would have captured the dealers (Girodo, 1991).
Possibility of high-level involvement, considering the scale of the drug deal:
The boat that was apprehended and looted was carrying drugs that were worth more than $9 million, and this amount of drug cannot be sold on the streets of Miami unnoticed. There was, of course, some person who was supposed to pick the delivery up from the dock where the boat was headed to. The money found in the pockets of the dead men found in the river also signified that they were to make use of this money in order to pay off the mules as the drug carries are called in the native term.
There was inevitably help provided to these drug dealers from the members of the law enforcement agencies who were supervising the entire deal. Otherwise, this deal could not have ever taken place. Also, the fact that the 8 police officers who raided the boat were aware that such a deal was taking place that also raises the questions about the involvement of the law enforcement agencies. Of course, the police officers did not just went on a protocol patrol over the river and encountered the drug dealers that they there and then decided to loot. They were planning this loot and carried this activity out with perfection (Dombrink, 1988).
The amount of the cocaine that was being also delivered signifies another thing that there existed such a great demand for this drug in the Miami area. And that there was already established a distribution channel that was able to sell off such a high quantity of this drug. As was later found that almost 100 police officers were involved in corruption at some level, it also lifted the veil from over the fact that the police department has gone severely off merit in the matter of recruitment of officers in the first place. Several police officers that were later caught have had criminal affiliations prior to them having joined the Miami police department.
Involvement of law enforcers in release of the police officers:
Many legal experts who reviewed this case and placed their views about the action of the law believe that the law did not come into action in the manner that it should have considering the intensity of the crime that had taken place in Miami. The involvement of police officers in committing crimes and facilitating them was taken as a very casual case by the local judicial system, and it seemed very less concerned with punishing the culprits.
The police officers who knew about the happenings and never told the authorities also claimed that they had not benefited from these rogue activities even slightly. They claimed that they never got any financial advantage from these activities. Upon asking that why they kept silent over the period of time as these activities kept unfolding all around them, they responded that they were pressurized. The courts never paid much attention to where the pressure was actually coming from and these police officers were fired to have had not helped the law in capturing these culprits earlier.
These police officers that were performing their duties well and good were also threatened by the rogue and corrupt elements that they would get fired and worse yet, hurt physically if they tried to leak the information about the activities that have been going on around the Miami police department. Many of the police officers had been recruited and induced in the police force through application of political pressure, and many of these police officers were found to have been culprits in corrupt activities, but none of these politicians were ever talked about by the courts of law (Sechrest & Burns, 1992).
This raised concerns over the possibility that the judicial system was also in some manner involved or affiliated with the criminal activities occurring in the police department at such a large scale. What reinforced this idea was the fact that the police officers that got arrested very easily got away with their punishments.
The sentences were very frail and while it was being expected that such a serious crime would result in the fact that the police officers would be made examples of, the law actually never made an effort in keeping them imprisoned for very long, and several of the arrested officers got released in the matter of a few years.
Of the police officers that were arrested for being most involved in the crime that had taken place, two actually fled from the jail. The police department has a close affiliation with the prisons department as they are responsible for shifting prisoners from the custody of the police to the custody of the prison handlers. It is possible that the prisons department also carried rogue and corrupt members who enabled the fugitives to get away from the prisons. It is also hence possible that the other prison breaks that had taken place in the past would have had also been facilitated by the corrupt internal members of the prison’s department (Bradford, 1998).
The courts barely took notice of the prison breaks that had taken place by the prisoners of this very important case and treated these cases as very normal ones. One of the fugitives rejoined a gang of criminals that signifies that he always had connections with the criminal world. This raises questions over the assessment criterion of the police department as it was never checked if these police officers had criminal affiliations or had ever been involved in criminal activities.
After the release of the police officers that were arrested, many of the police officers went off the radar. As part of the normal procedures that the law enforcement system has established for treatment of ex-convicts, their activities and whereabouts are always kept noted by the law enforcers. However in the case of these police officers, no attention was paid to these matters, and the law enforcement agencies were unaware of where these officers were. This sort of support can only be provided by the authorities that are sitting up on the top of the departments of police and judiciary.
Conclusion:
The case of Miami river police cops was a turning point as it made the people realize about the extent to which the police department of the police was corrupt and the mere fact that the bodies of the drug dealers were found made it possible for the law enforcement agencies to know that this event had taken place. If these bodies were not found, the corrupt elements in the police could have never been apprehended.
But the events that had unfolded signify that the police officers involved in the case had full support from the higher levels in the police and judicial departments as is visible from the fact that such a large amount of deal was going to take place and that the police officers that were caught got released very soon and that they were enabled to go underground after their release from the prison.
It can also be learned from this case that the depth of organized crime can be intense and can be inclusive of several departments that are otherwise responsible for making the law and order situation better. The organized criminals always tend to establish their links with the law enforcement agencies very closely because of the nature of their operations.
Without getting a serious amount of support from the “inside” as it is normally referred to, it is not possible for these criminals to undertake such practices. Therefore, rather than fighting with the law enforcement agencies, the criminals of this scale find it better to make these authorities corrupt so that they can share these crimes and their gains with them.
References:
Bradford, D. (1998). Police officer candidate background investigation law enforcement management's most effective tool for employing the most qualified candidate. Public Personnel Management, 27(4), 423-445.
Dombrink, J. (1988). The untouchables: vice and police corruption in the 1980's. Law and Contemporary Problems, 51(1), 201-232.
Girodo, M. (1991). Drug corruption in undercover agents: Measuring the risk.Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 9(3), 361-370.
Lersch, K. M. (2001). Drug-Related Police Corruption: The Miami Experience (From Police Misconduct: A Reader for the 21st Century, P 132-144, 2001, Michael J. Palmiotto, ed.-- See NCJ-193774).
Sechrest, D. K., & Burns, P. (1992). Police Corruption The Miami Case.Criminal Justice and Behavior, 19(3), 294-313.
