The tragic relationship between police corruption and brutality showed itself once again in New Orleans, Louisiana. On October 13, 1994, Kim Groves, a 32-year-old African-American mother of three, was assassinated for filing a brutality complaint against Officer Len Davis, who she had witnessed pistol-whipping a teenager.

According to the New York Times, Officer Davis was taped giving a detailed description of Ms. Groves over his cellular phone. The FBI stumbled upon the contract killing ordered by Officer Davis while carrying out a drug investigation on him. Soon after Ms. Groves was shot, the jubilant howl of "Yeah" and "Rock, rock-a-bye" was recorded over Officer Davis's phone.

Officer Davis was not operating alone. He and eight more New Orleans officers were indicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. According to the FBI, the murder case halted its drug investigation with at least 20 other officers under suspicion. In the last three years, according to the December 19 New York Times, New Orleans cops have been charged with:

"armed robbery, kidnapping, battery, bribery, extortion, rape, even murder; as many as 30 officers have been arrested, many of them convicted...

"Police officials who showed up to talk at a neighborhood meeting one night this week in a church near where Ms. Groves was killed were greeted with hostility and derision."

Corruption on this scale is hardly isolated to New Orleans. In New York City on July 7, 1994, the Mollen Commission released its final report. The commission, created in July 1992 by Mayor David Dinkins, spent 22 months investigating the city's police corruption. Prompted by the discovery of a police drug ring operating in the 75th Precinct, this investigation resulted in the arrests of more than thirty police officers for theft, drug distribution, brutality, and related charges.

The primary function of the commission was to restore faith in the NYPD, to shore up public confidence in the face of extreme corruption scandals. This is clear from the first page of the report which states:

"Our fundamental conclusion is that this City has cause for faith in the future of our police department. Unlike the situation a generation ago, the Commission can confidently report that the vast majority of New York City police officers are honest and hard-working..."

This presents an inconsistency within the report, which simultaneously proves that police corruption in New York City is "pervasive," "from the top down," etc. The report goes on to say that "Officers from various commands told this Commission that they would never report even serious corruption." An Internal Affairs detective testified that:

"[Internal Affairs commanders] didn't want us to be effective... They didn't want us to uncover any serious misconduct or large-scale or any kind of misconduct that would bring bad press to the Department."

In the Commission's survey of Internal Affairs investigators, 73% responded to the question, "Have you ever felt that you were discouraged from fully investigating allegations of corruption?" with "Often" or "Sometimes." If the majority of the NYPD is "honest" why would they tolerate "pervasive" corruption?

Despite its inconsistencies, the report makes some important observations, particularly on the relationship between police brutality and police corruption:

"Brutality, regardless of the motive, sometimes serves as a rite of passage to other forms of corruption and misconduct. Some officers told us that brutality was how they first crossed the line toward abandoning their integrity. Once the line was crossed without consequences, it was easier to abuse their authority in other ways, including corruption."

To test the relationship between thuggery and theivery, the Commission studied "234 problem officers that the Department had selected as the most likely to be corrupt."

"The data showed that the corruption-prone officers were more than five times as likely to have five or more unnecessary force allegations filed against them than the officers from the random sample group."

Or, in the plainer words of former Officer Michael Dowd, in testimony before the commission after his arrest on drug corruption charges: "The [officers] that are taking money will more typically be the ones that are giving the beatings, yes."

When public officials consistently allow the police to get away with acts of abuse against citizens, they are, whether or not they know it, inviting the cops to descend into corrupt activities. And this is as true in Berkeley or Oakland as it is in New York.