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A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office notes, "...several
studies and investigations of drug-related police corruption
found on-duty police officers engaged in serious criminal activities,
such as (1) conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures;
(2) stealing money and/or drugs from drug dealers; (3) selling
stolen drugs; (4) protecting drug operations; (5) providing false
testimony; and (6) submitting false crime reports."
Source:
General Accounting Office, Report to the Honorable
Charles B. Rangel, House of Representatives, Law Enforcement:
Information on Drug-Related Police Corruption (Washington, DC:
USGPO, May 1998), p. 8.
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A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office cites examples
of publicly disclosed drug-related police corruption in the following
cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami,
New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Savannah, and Washington,
DC.
Source:
General Accounting Office, Report to the Honorable
Charles B. Rangel, House of Representatives, Law Enforcement:
Information on Drug-Related Police Corruption (Washington, DC:
USGPO, May 1998), p. 36-37.
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Corruption caused by the illicit trade in narcotics is
especially prevalent in some foreign countries. "In 1998, DEA
reported that drug-related corruption existed in all branches of
the [Colombian] government, within the prison system, and in the
military... In November 1998, U.S. Customs and DEA personnel
searched a Colombian Air Force aircraft in Florida and found
415 kilograms of cocaine and 6 kilograms of heroin."
Source: US General Accounting Office, Drug Control: Narcotics
Threat from Colombia Continues to Grow (Washington, DC: USGPO,
1999), p. 15.
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On average, half of all police officers convicted as a result
of FBI-led corruption cases between 1993 and 1997 were convicted
for drug-related offenses.
Source: General Accounting Office, Report to the Honorable
Charles B. Rangel, House of Representatives, Law Enforcement:
Information on Drug-Related Police Corruption (Washington, DC:
USGPO, May 1998), p. 35.
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As an example of police corruption, the GAO cites Philadelphia,
where "Since 1995, 10 police officers from Philadelphia's 39th
District have been charged with planting drugs on suspects, shaking
down drug dealers for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and breaking
into homes to steal drugs and cash."
Source:
General Accounting Office, Report to the Honorable
Charles B. Rangel, House of Representatives, Law Enforcement:
Information on Drug-Related Police Corruption (Washington, DC:
USGPO, May 1998), p. 37.
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A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office notes, "Although
profit was found to be a motive common to traditional and
drug-related police corruption, New York City's Mollen Commission
identified power and vigilante justice as two additional motives
for drug-related police corruption."
Source:
General Accounting Office, Report to the Honorable
Charles B. Rangel, House of Representatives, Law Enforcement:
Information on Drug-Related Police Corruption (Washington, DC:
USGPO, May 1998), p. 3.
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In New Orleans, 11 police officers were convicted of accepting
nearly $100,000 from undercover agents to protect a cocaine supply
warehouse containing 286 pounds of cocaine. The undercover portion
of the investigation was terminated when a witness was killed
under orders from a New Orleans police officer.
Source:
General Accounting Office, Report to the Honorable
Charles B. Rangel, House of Representatives, Law Enforcement:
Information on Drug-Related Police Corruption (Washington, DC:
USGPO, May 1998), p. 36.
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A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office states, "The
most commonly identified pattern of drug-related police corruption
involved small groups of officers who protected and assisted
each other in criminal activities, rather than the traditional
patterns of non-drug-related police corruption that involved
just a few isolated individuals or systemic corruption pervading
an entire police department or precinct."
Source:
General Accounting Office, Report to the Honorable
Charles B. Rangel, House of Representatives, Law Enforcement:
Information on Drug-Related Police Corruption (Washington, DC:
USGPO, May 1998), p. 3.
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The difficulty of maintaining a honest government while
fighting a drug war was noted by the UN Drug Control Program
in 1998: "In systems where a member of the legislature or judiciary,
earning only a modest income, can easily gain the equivalent
of some 20 months' salary from a trafficker by making one "favourable"
decision, the dangers of corruption are obvious."
Source:
United Nations International Drug Control Program, Technical
Series Report #6: Economic and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse
and Illicit Trafficking (New York, NY: UNDCP, 1998), p. 39.
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According to the international monitoring group Transparency
International, "Colombia has suffered the tragic consequences of
endemic theft by politicians and public officials for decades.
Entwined with the production and trafficking of
illegal drugs, this behaviour exacerbated underdevelopment and
lawlessness in the countryside, where a brutal war continues to
claim the lives of some 3,500 civilians a year. A World Bank survey
released in February 2002 found that bribes are paid in 50 per cent
of all state contracts.27 Another World Bank report estimates the
cost of corruption in Colombia at US $2.6 billion annually, the
equivalent of 60 per cent of the countrys debt."
Source: Hodess, Robin (ed.), Transparency International, Global
Corruption Report 2003 (Berlin, Germany: Transparency International,
2003), p. 108.
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According to the international monitoring group Transparency
International, "The Presidential Programme Against Corruption in
Colombia specifically addresses 'narco-corruption'. Colombia, with
a capacity to produce 580 tonnes of pure cocaine in 2000, is
particularly poisoned by the interplay of narcotics and violence,
with an estimated one million people internally displaced as a
result of battles for territorial control by rebel groups and
paramilitary forces. 'The corruptive effect of this kind of profit
is devastating, since it has penetrated to perverse levels in the
judiciary and the political system,' the official report of the
Presidential Programme concluded, adding that the rapid
accumulation of wealth from illegal drugs 'has fostered codes and
behaviours which promote corruption, fast money and the
predominance of private welfare over general interest'."
Source:
Hodess, Robin (ed.), Transparency International, Global
Corruption Report 2001 (Berlin, Germany: Transparency International,
2001), p. 176.
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According to the international monitoring group Transparency
International, "Mexico's police and armed services are known to be
contaminated by multimillion dollar bribes from the transnational
narco-trafficking business. Though the problem is not as pervasive
in the military as it is in the police, it is widely considered to
have attained the status of a national security threat."
Source:
Hodess, Robin (ed.), Transparency International, Global
Corruption Report 2001 (Berlin, Germany: Transparency International,
2001), p. 158.
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According to the international monitoring group Transparency
International, "Another problem occurs when officials turn a blind
eye to a narcotics trade that looms large in the region. 'Central
America has become the meat in the sandwich' - as a trans-shipment
point, storehouse and money laundering centre - in the drug traffic
from Colombia to the US, said Costa Rican parliamentarian Belisario
Solano. The Costa Rican Defence Ministry estimates that between 50
and 70 tonnes of cocaine travel through Costa Rica to the US every
year."
Source:
Hodess, Robin (ed.), Transparency International, Global
Corruption Report 2001 (Berlin, Germany: Transparency International,
2001), p. 160.
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The United Nations Drug Control Program noted the inevitable
risk of drug-related police corruption in 1998, when it reported
that "wherever there is a well-organized, illicit drug industry,
there is also the danger of police corruption."
Source:
United Nations International Drug Control Program, Technical
Series Report #6: Economic and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse
and Illicit Trafficking (New York, NY: UNDCP, 1998), p. 38.
