We all rush home from work to catch up on some steaming television programming of courtroom trials, police investigation and rescue, and street gangland-style episodes. Away from the television, the demand for movies dealing with some form of crime is always overwhelming. Television programs and movies that feature fictional criminals, cops, lawyers, and judges have had a large audience ever since they hit the market (Munro, 2002). Indeed, television programmers are allocating more slots to programs dealing with crime to maintain their audience all over the world. In the same light, it is very rare to come across a movie that lacks any crime scene in recent days. Consequently, crime can be described as one of the critical issues that influence the mass media and our daily conversation (Yeon, 2001). The purpose of this paper is to look at the crime of police corruption and how it can be explained through the movie – TheDetonator – by Wesley Snipes.
Crime is as old as mankind. In a layman’s language, it can be described as any action that goes against constitutional laws used to govern a state. The law definition of crime is any willful premeditated wrongdoing or action that has been classified by the congress or state as a criminal act or transgression (The Lectric Law Library, 2005). The existence of crime has necessitated the creation of criminal justice systems around the world. According to Gibson, Cavadino, and Faulkner (2008), the criminal justice system utilizes certain set practices and organizations to direct and uphold social control, deter and manage crime, and sanction those who are in violation of set laws through employment of criminal penalties. The system comprises of three interrelated components namely: the law enforcement agency or the police; the adjudication agency or the courts; and the correctional agency consisting of probation, prisons, parole, and jails. Huda (2003) argues that the criminal justice system is charged with the responsibility of controlling unpredictability and guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens; guaranteeing the rights of victims and culprits; promoting and maintaining a sense of security among citizens; and encouraging the general public to involve themselves in crime prevention exercises like community policing. Justice and fair play must be ensured to all.
The role of police in the criminal justice system cannot be underestimated. Their failure in performing their duties inevitably means that the whole system of justice will crumble. Foremost, the police are charged with the critical duty of providing security thereby ensuring the dignity of individuals and their total development (Huda, 2003; Shawn, 2008). The police must maintain social order at all costs. Indeed, the police are allowed by law to use necessary forms and other ways of legal coercion to effectively manage public and social order (John Howard Society, 1997). But this role has been largely dampened by police corruption if what we see in television episodes and movies is anything to go by. Though the movies may be fictional, they depict practical daily occurrences and realities on the ground. Judging by the content of high-level corruption within the police as exhibited in the movies, it is only reasonable to say that police have deviated from their traditional role of being the custodians of social order to that of being the actual transgressors of public and social order (UN Blue Book, 2003).
The assertion above can best be reinforced by the 1996 blockbuster movie, The Detonator. Directed by PO-Chih and Screen played by Martin Wheeler, the film features Wesley Snipes as Soni Griffith, William Hope as Michael Shepherd, and Tim Dutton as Joszef Bostanescu. Other notable actors include Sylvia Colloca as Nadia Comiski and Mathew Leitch as Demitri. Both Griffith and Shepherd are law enforcement agents, the former working for the Department of Homeland Security and the latter for the CIA (Nix, 2009). Bostanescu is a high-ranking crime boss dealing with gun-running and biological weapons and has managed to enroll the services of the CIA agent Shepherd for protection and information. Griffith’s role in the first place is to pretend that he is a gun-runner so that he can bust and arrest the gang. But his plans are thwarted when his long-term friend in the force – Shepherd – calls the gang to inform them that the customer was indeed a cop. Though this is a scene from the movie, the reality is that there are law enforcement officers who work from within the organization like Shepherd did to shield their colleagues in crime from possible arrest and prosecution (Holloway, 2002). Aiding criminals is the worst form of police corruption as it involves betraying the very course that has made a law enforcement officer be in the force (Klein, 2007).
The gangsters in the movie make several attempts on Griffith’s life on the information given out by the CIA agent, thereby occasioning massive displays of public disorder on the streets. Griffith, the main actor, is charged with the responsibility of protecting a key witness in a murder case – Nadia Cominsiki (Nix, 2009). The sell-out plans propagated by the CIA operative in cooperation with the gangsters expose how police corruption can hinder the fulfillment of their most basic requirement to society – that of maintaining law and order (Spout, 2009). It should be remembered that the ineptitude of police to maintain law and order seriously compromise the criminal justice system. In the movie, this is effectively revealed through the corrupt and back-stabbing nature of Michael shepherd, the CIA law enforcement officer. Real crime busters in real situations are often unable to arrest or dismantle high-level criminal operatives such as drug warlords, gun-runners, and blue-color criminals due to the corrupt nature of relationships that such criminals are able to establish with corrupt police officers within the force (Holloway, 2002; Hickey, 2003).
Though the movie relies on fiction to generate the story, the scenes played out are practically repeated time and again by our law enforcement agencies. There is a lot of high-level corruption and kickbacks involved, which only serve to defeat the criminal justice system and derail the natural course of justice. Just like in the movie, some police are known to work with criminals and gang leaders to defeat the course of justice. This is known as police corruption and is defined as a well-articulated system of abusing the authority given to police officers to achieve individual and organizational gains (Holloway, 2002). The United Nations Higher Commission for human rights defines police corruption as any commission or omission of action in the performance of one’s obligations in anticipation of rewards, assurances, or incentives, or the unlawful receipt of such rewards, assurances, or incentives once the action has been committed or omitted (Hickey, 2003). This form of corruption comes in many forms, from being compromised on minor everyday infringements of public law to involvement in major criminal activities such as money laundering, gun-running, and drug trafficking. Although the police may not be directly involved in these heinous criminal activities, they are accused of aiding or assisting the leaders to elope justice. In The Detonator, the CIA agent went against the rules and set procedures that are supposed to govern the law enforcement agencies to practically pass on confidential information to the gun-running kingpin – Joszef Bostanescu – in an apparent effort aimed at helping him escape the law.
The statistics are there to prove that indeed, one of the arms of the criminal justice system is sleeping on its job. In the US, six police officers from Texas were charged with aiding the trafficking of over 17,000 pounds of marijuana in 1997 (Holloway, 2002). A Hidalgo County Sheriff had earlier being indicted in 1994 and jailed for seven years for allowing a jailed drug trafficker to possess special privileges in exchange for $151,000 in bribes. This is what the CIA agent in the movie specializes in soliciting bribes from professional criminals in exchange for information (Spout, 2009). The statistics of police corruption in Africa and Latin America are shocking. In Africa for example, scenes of innocent citizens bribing the police for dear life are seen as the norm, rather than the exception. In many countries within the continent, police departments are seen as the most corrupt institutions of all (24.com, 2007). In an ongoing case in Australia, two law enforcement agents based at Liverpool Police Station are being charged with receiving thousands of dollars to maintain their silence about the perceived illegal activity of drug trafficking (Damon, 2009).
According to Holloway (2002), police corruption can be divided into two forms – internal and external. Internal corruption occurs when law enforcement agents connive to engage in criminal activities as a group within the police department. External corruption occurs when one or more law enforcement officers conspire to engage in illegal activities with the public. This form of crime happens especially in Africa where junior police officers are under direct instruction from the seniors to engage in the criminal behavior of soliciting bribes from establishments, public vehicles, and individuals (Sayed & Bruce, 1998). In The Detonator, the CIA agent connives with the dangerous Romanian gun-running gangsters to perform criminal activity of soliciting bribes in exchange for protection and information. Therefore, it would be prudent to say that Michael Shepherd engaged in external corruption. It can arguably be said that the agent in the movie misused the authority bestowed on him by the constitution, his personal attainment, as well as official capacity as a CIA agent in his interactions with the crime leader – JoszefBostanescu. These are crucial elements that facilitate police corruption everywhere around the world. The assertions reinforce the popular belief that power and authority bestowed on the law enforcement agencies often makes them engage in corrupt dealings (Holloway). This boils down to my former assertion that police may use their power and authority to generate and support crime rather than deterring it.
Holloway (2002) continually argues that external corruption perpetrated by law enforcement officers may comprise one or more of the following incidents:
- Non- criminal elements bribing police for failure to conform to set laws or city decrees like traffic offenders
- Criminal-elements who continually engage themselves in the process of breaking the law to make money paying bribes to police for protection. This form of external corruption is mostly perpetrated by drug warlords, prostitutes, carjackers, etc. This is the type of corruption that the CIA agent engages in with the gangster in the movie TheDetonator.
- Clean graft, a form of external corruption whereby cash incentives are paid to the law enforcement agencies for ‘services rendered.
Corruption in the police force will always interfere with the criminal justice system (Police Corruption Seminar, 2004). Indeed, a corrupt law enforcement agency would severely diminish the credibility of the whole system in the eyes of the citizens, effectively making them lose confidence in the officers charged with the responsibility of protecting and safeguarding their interests and aspirations in life (Martins, 1999). Corrupt police officers are perceived by the public as incapable of spearheading the fight against crime. This is portrayed by the media every day in TV episodes and movies. A corrupt officer is always portrayed in the movies as someone who is inept enough to solve his or her own problems, leave alone solving the problems of the public. In the movie, this is well reverberated by Shepherd’s indecisiveness while confronted by the public to help them solve a case involving a corrupt lawyer. It reinforces the argument that corruption decays the soul, as shown by Shepherd’s total lack of moral authority on the issue. According to Gerber and Mendelson (2008), this form of policing is known as predatory policing, and it carries the probability of critically compromising the public’s trust in the law enforcement agencies and other legal facilities such as the courts of law.
As mentioned by Holloway (2002), corrupt law enforcement agents always strive on giving false testimonies and betrayals. They are ready to offer false testimony in a court of law so that a counterpart or a defendant in crime is released. This serves to further tarnish the criminal justice system. According to King (2009), corrupt Canadian police officers are finding themselves on the wrong side of the law for giving false and misleading information, an accusation known as perjury. Presently, a court in Toronto is trying to determine a case in which five members of a police elite squad are accused of extortion, perjury, and offering false information before the courts. In TheDetonator, we see the shadowy FBI operative Michael Shepherd offering false and often misleading information for his own individual goals. His betrayal of the course of law enforcement officers reverberates across many scenes in the movie. For instance, he betrays the main actor, Sonni Griffith, to the gun-running warlord, Bostanescu, many times in the hope that he will get him and the girl killed by the gangsters (Nix, 2009; TorrentBox.com, 2009).
The above is a serious shortcoming on a law enforcement agent worth his or her salt. Shepherd wanted to defeat the cause of justice by his usual betrayal tactics and swearing-in false information. These are situations that practically do happen across the corridors of justice, and perpetrated by individuals who are supposed to be the custodians of law – the police. In Africa for example, the police can charge an individual with trumped-up charges and then proceed to swear before the court of law that the charges are true (Sayed & Bruce, 1998). This automatically defeats the course of justice. To have a vibrant, committed, and responsive police force, respect for the badge should be upheld at all times. Honesty, commitment to service, and moral uprightness should be the key cornerstones of an effective and efficient law enforcement officer (Holloway, 2002; Dentzker, 2005).
Perhaps a case of interest in the movie – The Detonator – is the way the CIA agent MichaelShepherd lets Bostanescu’s nephew off the hook even after being told by Griffith that he had arrested him gun-running at a stadium. This scene can be used to explain corrupt police officers manning correctional facilities the world over; they are always compromised. It is a serious violation of the criminal justice system for a law enforcement officer to release a suspect from lawful police custody for personal, material, or non-material gains even when all available evidence points to the fact that the suspect is guilty of committing a crime (Holloway, 2002). Such immoral and criminal activity in the case of corrupt law enforcement agents has contributed to the derailment of justice systems especially in Africa, Latin America, and some parts of Asia. In Africa for example, it is not unusual to hear of stories about murder suspects ‘miraculously’ escaping from lawful police custody (News.com, 2007; Ivkovic, 2005). What we don’t hear is that the police personnel manning the prisoners are often under the payroll of these suspects, and therefore play a big role in facilitating their escape. What happened in the movie after the CIA agent facilitated the release of Demitri may be fiction, but it is widely practiced in our criminal justice systems.
In conclusion, it can only be said that police corruption is resoundingly incompatible with the practice of rule of law governing civilized societies around the world. It has no place in our criminal justice systems. Though police corruption has been deeply engrained in the force, it is time that proper policies and frameworks are put in place to get rid of such negative behavior within our own police forces (Ivkovic, 2005; Dentzker, 2005). The process of reforming our law enforcement agencies should not start tomorrow; it should have started yesterday. The bad apples in the police force must be shown the door, and proper retributive measures taken to make them pay for their crimes. Like Michael Shepherd was finally exposed by Griffith for his mole-like criminal activities in the movie, the corrupt cops also need to be exposed from the police force. There may be a few corrupt law enforcement officers, but these few end up tarnishing the good name of the force.
As a search, concerted efforts need to be made from all quarters to see that the problem of police corruption is successfully halted. This is the only way that we can ensure the growth and prosperity of our criminal justice system. It starts with the police during the arrest and prosecuting of a suspect, and ends with the police at the correctional facilities. It is therefore imperative for the police force to rid itself of corrupt dealings. In this respect, proper preventive measures, not remedial strategies, need to be undertaken by all stakeholders (Canada’s Approach, 2004).
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