Are You Sure Officer O'Malley Was the One Who Broke Your Camera?

The growing national frustration with municipal police departments is not couched in a belief that all -- or even most -- officers act inappropriately. Rather, the frustration stems from the apparent unwillingness among police departments to recognize, condemn, and respond to misconduct when it arises.

In fact, police departments continue to innovate ways to make accountability more chimeric. Consider Chicago's new policy threatening criminal charges against people whose official claims of police misconduct are found to be without merit. While most people agree it would be satisfying to slap a fine on the Richard Heenes of the world, we have to remember exactly who's guarding the henhouse here:

A 2008 study by University of Chicago law professor Craig B. Futterman found 10,000 complaints filed against Chicago police officers between 2002 and 2004. That's more than any city in the country, and proportionally it's 40 percent above the national average. Of those 10,000 complaints, just 19 resulted in significant disciplinary action [suspension of a week or more]. In 85 percent of the cases, the complaint was dismissed without even interviewing the accused officer.

Furthermore, the 19-in-10,000 statistic deals only with complaints that were actually filed. According to the June 2006 US Department of Justice report on citizen complaints about police use of force, only one in ten people who believe that they have been abused by the police ever report the abuse.

Threats -- both explicit and implicit -- of financial and legal retribution are certainly one reason why.

Police officers are necessarily entrusted with authority over life and freedom, the two most important concepts in existence. It is unprecedented madness to also extend to them the continual benefit of the doubt. An officer wrongfully losing his job is terrible; a man wrongfully losing his life or his freedom is irreparable.