The Brotherhood of Silence

Of course, not all police are bad. The vast majority are just great.

But sometimes some officers make mistakes, or they misbehave, and the police 'brotherhood of silence' approach means that such blatant wrong-doing is often covered up instead of being addressed.

And this brothers above all else approach seems to be extremely common. There appears to be a nearly unlimited number of incidents where we hear no first-hand reports from other officers about the obvious misbehavior of the involved officer(s). There appears to be close to zero incidents where one of the officers stands-up to report on his brothers.

Failing to report (truthfully and completely) such events should be considered to be an extreme case of dereliction of duty. Police chiefs must instigate policies that support the breakdown of this code of silence; to fail to do so is inexcusable. Prosecutors need to call those other officers as witnesses under oath.

This traditional Brotherhood of Silence amongst the police is a huge threat to society and should be treated as such. It is perfectly evil and deserves our contempt.