Systemic corruption means not
only that a department or agency has an organizational culture that allows for
and may even laud corruption, but also that a city hall, as well as larger
jurisdictions such as member-states and even federal agencies may be enabling
the corruption by looking the other way and even lying to cover-up the lower-level
corruption. A study at Florida Atlantic University published in the Journal
of Criminal Justice identifies 24 categories of police misconduct in Florida
from 2012 to 2023. Even though it is tempting to highlight violent illegal acts
by police employees, lying regarding criminal law and refusing to take reports
of criminal activity may be more detrimental because such misconduct is probably
more common than is the violent sort. If so, the extent of corruption and the
underlying false sense of entitlement by police patrol-employees and even their
supervisors may be vastly understated in the United States.
The “24 categories of police
misconduct” in Florida range “from assault/battery to weapons offenses,
manslaughter, homicide, extortion and false statements/perjury (lying under oath).”[1]
The results of the study state that “the most considerable incidence of police
misconduct offenses was related to officer failure to report and perjury.”[2]
The incidence of this type of corruption was higher than “sexual-related crimes”
and “(d)rug and alcohol-related offenses.”[3] The serial lying to citizens and refusing their requests for police reports reflects back on the faulty use of psychological screening on police applicants. The propensity to bully too is indicative that such screening has been substandard and therefore should be drastically fortified.
The police department in Largo,
Florida, which is located just north of St Petersburg and west of Tampa, is a case in point. As of 2025 at least, police personnel who have taken oaths to enforce (and thus acknowledge) Florid law were to take reports of
fraud. “It takes several people to have
reported a case of fraud for us to make a report,” one police employee told me when I called to confirm the wayward policy. The statement demonstrates not only
corruption, but also a sordid breach of rationality, for if no initial reports of fraud by a person against another are
allowed, then it would be impossible to make a complaint after several other
people have done so regarding the same culprit. Incredibly, that same police
employee nevertheless maintained that in Florida, reports of fraud are made to the
police local departments.
That same squalid department also
has a policy that landlords, including local individuals and property-management
company employees, can enter rented residential space at any time for any
reason because, as I heard when I called to confirm, “there is no such thing as trespassing on a person’s own
property.” The department even lies to residents by claiming that neither the town
nor Florida has any laws protecting tenants from what is in fact trespassing. The Largo police department took the decision to ignore section 82 of the Florida statutes, which stipulates the conditions under which a property-owner can enter leased premises. The sheer extraordinariness of the lie should not be overlooked, for a brazen,
hardened corrupt mentality can be inferred, especially when wielded like a club by police employees who have sworn an oath to uphold rather than ignore and lie about the law.
As for Florida’s Law Enforcement Agency, the official line is that there is no state-level agency in Florida that oversees local police departments; the internal affairs offices of local police departments are the only avenue for complaints. That such a pertainent agency can so easily be coopted by their “brothers in arms” opens up the ethical problem of a conflict of interest. The office of Lori Berman (D), Minority Leader of the Florida Senate, also insists that no state-level avenue for complaints by residents of local police corruption exists; only the towns and counties could take such complaints. In investigating this problem by speaking with one of Berman’s employees, I suggested that federal oversight of corrupt local police departments is also possible. The result was a patronizing, “Now let’s slow down,” reply. I had heard enough, so I called Congresswoman Anna Luna’s office, whose district includes corrupt Largo. I asked which office in the U.S. Department of Justice I could contact regarding a corrupt police department, but was told by one of Luna’s enabling employees, “We have nothing to do with the U.S. Department of Justice.” Enabling the corruption of a local police department is itself a corruption, as is lying about the oversight of federal agencies by the U.S. House of Representatives.
There is a saying in philosophy, “turtles all
the way down.” A thread of corruption extending from local fraud, a lying local
police department unwilling to uphold (or even acknowledge) the law, the state
of Florida that is presumably unconnected from local agencies or departments, and
federal office-holders from Florida for whom federal oversight does not exist
either in the Congress or the U.S. Department of Justice qualifies as the
epitome of systemic corruption. Just as an unethically dysfunctional
culture of a company like Arthur Anderson, Wells Fargo, and Enron is
notoriously difficult to dislodge or cure with disinfectant, a corrupt local police
department encased and enabled at the state and Congressional level is as intractable
as they come, utterly impervious to correction and reform. Translucent sunlight
may be in short supply in the sunshine state.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
