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In Bad Blood: The Moral Stigmatization of Paid PlasmaDonors, Martin
Kretzmann outlinesthe waythat commercialblood plasmacenterslabelthe clients
who sellthem plasmaas deviant.Although donating blood and other servicesmay
be considered altruistic, sellingit renders the client discreditable,and this defini
tion is forced onto donors by the policiesand practicesof the center s administra
tive and medical staff.Kretzmann compares the treatment of paid and unpaid
donors, the assumptionsimplicitlymade about their statusand the worth of their
blood, and the implicationsthis hasfor the identity labelsthat clientsassume.
The judicial labeling process is the focus of LisaFrohmann s Discrediting
Victims Allegations of SexualAssault: Prosecutorial Accounts of Case Rejec
tions. Frohmann discussesthe organizationaldynamicsof the prosecutor s office,
focusing on the waysin which rape casesand rape victims are typified, with
those displaying discrepant (that is, individualized) features discredited. Com
plainants are made to feel deviant and devaluedif their casesdo not mold to the
norm, and their casesare dropped from further legalpursuit. This caseis particu
larlyinteresting because it is the rape victims,not the offenders,who aremade to
feeldisvaluedby institutional processingassumptionsand procedures.
Therefore, individuals operating within institutional frameworks are likely to
be affected by the organizational dynamics shaping these frameworks. They are
either spurred to deviance or labeled asdeviantby their bureaucraticmechanisms.
16
P RT I V
15
Fluffing Up the Evidence
and Covering Your Ass
On Police Lying
TOM BARKER AND DAVID CARTER
lying
nd other deceptive practices are an integral part of the police offi
cer s working enviromnent. At fIrst blush, one s reaction to this statement
might be rather forthright. Police officers should not lie. Ifyou can t trust
your local police who can you trust. However, aswith most issuesthe matter
is not that simple.
We are all aware that police officers create false identities for undercover
operations. We know that they make falsepromises to hostage takers and kid
nappers. We alsoknow officerswill strain the truth in order to spare the feel
ings of a rrime victim and his/her loved ones. Police officersaretrained to lie
and be deceptive in these law enforcement practices. They are also trained to
use techniques of interrogation which require deception and even outright
lying. Police officerslearn much of this in the police academy.Where they are
alsowarned about the impropriety of perjury and the need to record all inci
dents fully and accurately in all officialreports. The recruit learns that all rules
and regulations must be obeyed. He/she learns of the danger oflying to inter
nal affairsor a supervisor. The recruit istold to be truthful in his dealingswith
the noncriminal element of the public in that mutual trust isan important el
ement in police community relations. Once the recruit leavesthe academy
and in some departments where officers work in the fIeld before attending
rookie school-the officer soon learns from his/her peers that police lying is
the norm under certain circumstances.
Our purpose isto discussthe patterns oflying which might occur in a po
lice organization, the circumstances under which they occur, and the possible
consequences of police lying.
From F lu ff ing Up the Evidenc e and Cover ing Your Ass : Some Concept ua l Not es
on Pol ice Lying, Tom Barker and David Carter, Deviant ehavior V. 11, No.1,
Taylor Francis.Inc., Washington, D.C., pp. 61-73, 1990.Reprinted with permission.
All rights reserved.
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ccepted Lying
Certain forms of police lying and/ or deception are an accepted part of police
officers working environment. The lies told iu this category are accepted by
the police organization because they fulfill a defined police purpose. Adminis
trators and individual police officers believe that certain lies are necessary to
control crime and arrest the guilty. In these instances, the organization will
freely admit the intent to lie and define the actsas legitimate policing strate
gies. On face value, most would agree with the police that lies in this category
are acceptable and necessary. However, a troubling and difficult question is to
what extent, ifat all is i t proper for law enforcement officials to employ trick
ery and deceit aspart of their law enforcement practices (Skolnick, 1982,
italics added)? Aswe shall see, the answer to this question isnot so easy.Ac
ceptable liesmay be very functional for the police but are they alwaysproper,
moral, ethical, and legal?
The most readily apparent patterns of accepted police lying are the de
ceptive practices that law enforcement officers believe are necessary to per
form undercover operations or detect other forms of secret and consensual
crimes. Police officers engaged in these activitiesmust not only conceal their
true identity but they must talk, act, and dress out of character, fabricating all
kinds of stories in order to perform these duties. One could hardly imagine
that FBI Special Agent Joseph Pistone could have operated for six years in the
Mafia without the substantial number oflies he had to tell (Pistone, 1987).
However, the overwhelming majority of undercover operations are not as
glamorous nor asdangerous asworking six years with the Mafia or other or
ganized crime groups. The most common police undercover operations occur
in routine vice operations dealing with prostitution, bootlegging, gambling,
narcotics, bribery of public officials (e.g. ABSCAM, MILAB, BRILAB), and
spng operations.
These deceptive practices in undercover operations are not only acceptable
to the law enforcement community but considered necessary for undercover
operations to be effective. Nevertheless, such activities are not without prob
lems. The Dirty Harry problem in police work raises the question as to
what extent morally good police practices warrant orjustify ethically, politi
cally,or legally suspect means to achieve law enforcement objectives (Klockars,
1980). Marx alsoraisesthe issue that many of the tactics used by law enforce
ment officers in such recent undercover operations asABSCAM, MILAB,
and BRILAB, police run fencing or sting operations and anti-crime decoy
squads may have lost sight of the profound difference between carrying out
an investigation to determine if a suspect is, in fact, breaking the law,and car
rying it out to determine if an individual can be induced to break the law
(Marx, 1985: 106). One Congressman involved in the ABSCAM caserefused
the first offer of a cashbribe to only later accept the money after federal agents,
concluding that he was an alcoholic, gavehim liquor (Marx, 1985: 104).
Encouraging the commission of a crime may be a legally accepted police
practice when the officer acts asa willing victim or his/her actions facilitate
the commission ofa crime which was going to be committed in the first place.
However, it is possible for encouragement to lead the suspect to raise the
defense of entrapment. According to lack s L aw Dictionary entrapment is the
act of officers or agents of the government in inducing a person to commit a
crime not contemplated by him, for the purpose of instituting a criminal pros
ecution against him (277). For the defense of entrapment to prevail the de
fendant must show that the officer or his/her agent has gone beyond providing
the encouragement and opportunity for the commission of a crime and
through trickery, fraud, or other deception has induced the suspect to commit
a crime. This defense is raised far more times than it is successfulbecause the
current legal criterion to determine entrapment iswhat isknown asthe sub
jective test.
In the subjective test the predisposition of the offender rather than the ob
jective methods of the police is the key factor in determining entrapment
(Skolnick, 1982; Marx, 1985; Stitt and James, 1985). This makes it extremely
difficult for a defendant with a criminal record to claim that he/she would not
have committed the crime except for the actions of the officer. The objec
tive test of entrapment raised by a minority of the Supreme Court has fo
cused on the nature of the police conduct rather than the predisposition of the
offender (Stitt and James, 1985). For example, the objective test probably
would examine whether the production of crack by a police organization to
use in undercover drug arrests isproper and legal....
Police administrators are well aware of the possibility that the entire or
ganization may be labeled deviant because of the deviant acts of its mem
bers. The rotten apple theory of police corruption has often been used as
an impression management technique by police administrators who are
aware of this possibility (Barker, 1977). It is easier to explain police deviance
as a result of individual aberrations than admit the possibility of systemic
problems and invite public scrutiny. However, candor and public scrutiny
maybe the best way to insure that corruption and other forms ofpolice de
viance do not occur or continue in an organization (see Cooper and Belair,
1978).
Thus, accepted liesare those which the organization views as having a vi-
ablerole in police operations. The criteria for the lie to be accepted is:
It must be in furtherance of a legitimate organizational purpose.
There must be a clear relationship between the need to deceive and the
accomplishment of an organizational purpose.
The nature ofthe deception must be one wherein officersand the man
agement structure acknowledge that deception will better serve the public
interest than the truth.
The ethical standing of the deception and the issue oflaw appear to be collat
eral concerns.
6
PART I V ORGAN IZAT IONAL I NSTI TU TIONAL DEVI ANCE
T XONOMY OF POLI E LIES
FLUFFI NG UP THE EVIDENC E AND C OVERING YOUR ASS
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olerated ying
A second category of police lies are those which are recognized as lies by
the police organization but are tolerated as necessary evils. Police adminis
t rators wi ll admi t to deception or not exact ly tell ing the whole t ruth when
confronted with the facts. These types of s ituat iona l or white l ie s are truly
in the gray area of propriety and the police can provide logical rationales for
their use. When viewed from an ethical standpoint they may be wrong but
from the police perspective they are necessary (i.e. , tolerated) to achieve orga
nizational objectives or deal wi th what Golds tein has termed the basic prob
lems of pol ice work (Goldstein, 1977: 9).
The bas ic problems of police work arise from the mythology surrounding
police work; e.g. , s ta tu tes usually requi re and the publ ic expects the pol ice to
enforce all the laws all the time, the public holds the police responsible for
preventing crime and apprehending al l cr iminals, the public views the police
as being capable of handling al l emergencies , etc. (Golds te in , ~977). Most po
l ice administ rators wi ll not publ icly admi t that they do not have the resources ,
the training, or the authority to do some of the duties that the pubic expects.
In fac t, many police adminis trators and pol ice officers lacking the education
and insight into police work would be hard pressed to explain police work,
particular ly discretionary decision making to outside groups. They therefore
resort to l ie s and deception to support police prac tices .
Police administ rators often deny that the ir departments pract ice anything
less than full enforcement of all laws rather than attempt to explain the basis
for police discretionary decisions and selective enforcement. We continually
at tempt to dea l with socia l problems through the use of cr iminal sanct ions and
law enforcement personnel . Mandatory sentencing for al l offenders commit
ting certain felony and misdemeanor offenses is often seen as a panacea for
these offenses. For example, in recent years many polit ically active groups such
as Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (M.A.D.D.) have pressured legis lators for
s tronger laws wi th mandatory enforcement in drunk driving cases . However ,
thei r sent iment in cases not involving accidents may not be shared by the gen
eral public (Formby and Smykla, 1984) or the police. One can only speculate
as to the number of discretionary dec is ions st il l being made by pol ice off icers
in DUI offenses in departments where ful l enforcement i s the official policy.
One of the authors learned of an individual who had two DUI offenses re
duced and asked a police supervisor about it .
arker
The chief said that all DUI suspects are charged and those over the
lega l blood alcohol level never have the charge reduced. In fact , he said
this at a M.A.D.D. meeting. Yet, I heard that (--) had two DUI
offenses reduced.
Supervisor
That is true, Tom. However, (--) is helping us with some
drug cases. M.A.D.D. may not understand but they do not have to make
drug busts.
The point of note is that the police, in response to political pressure, make a
policy on DUI cases and vow that the policy will be followed. However, in
this case, that vow was not t rue. The pol ice made a discretionary judgement
that the assistance of the DUI offender in drug investigations was of greater
importance than a DUI prosecution. Thus, this policy deviation was tan
tamount to a lie to the M.A.D.D. membership-a lie tolerated by the police
department.
The publ ic al so expects the police to handle any disorde rly or emergency
s ituations . The American publ ic bel ieves that one of the methods for handling
any problem is call ing the cops (Bit tner , 1972). However , in many of these
order maintenance si tuat ions the pol ice do not have the authority , resources ,
or t rain ing to dea l wi th the problem. They often face a s ituat ion where some
thing must be done now ye t an arres t i snot legal ly possible or would be more
disruptive. The officer is forced to reach into a bag of tricks for a method of
deal ing with the cris is . Lying to the suspects or the complainants is often that
method. For example, .. . in domestic disturbances police off ice rs face volat ile
s ituat ions where the necessa ry condi tions for an arres t often are not present .
Frequent ly the re i s a misdemeanor where the off icer does not have a warrant,
an offense has not been committed in his/her presence, and the incident oc
curred in a private residence. However, the officer may feel that something
must be done. Consequently, the officer may lie and threaten to arrest one or
both combatants, or take one of the parties out to the street or the patrol car
to discuss the inc ident and arrest them for disorderly conduct or public in tox
ication when they reach public property. Another option is to make an arrest
and lie about the cir cumstances in order to make the arrest appear legal. Ob
vious ly, the lat ter s trategy will not be a tolerated pat tern oflying. I t would fal l
in to the pa ttern of deviant lying to be discussed later .
Off icers soon learn that the interrogat ion s tage of an arrest is an area where
cer tain lies are tolerated and even taught to police officers. The now famous
Miranda v. Arizona case decided by the U.S. Supreme Cour t in 1966 quoted
excerpts from Inbau and Reid s
Criminal Interrogation and Confession
text to
show tha t the police used deception and psychologically coercive methods in
thei r interrogation of suspects (George, 1966: 155-266). The latest edit ion of
this same text gives examples of deceptive and lying practices for ... skilled
interrogators to engage in (Inbau, Reid , Buckley, 1986).
As an illustration of these techniques ... the book notes that an effective
means to inter rogate multiple suspects of a crime is p laying one offender
against the other. In this regard it is suggested that the i nter rogator may
merely intimate to one offender that the other has confessed, or else the inter
rogator may actually tell the offender so (emphasis added, p. 132).
This attitude, which is borne in the frustrations of many officers, sets a
dangerous precedent for att itudes related to civil l iberties. When law enforce
ment officers begin to tolerate lies because it serves their ends-regardless of
the consti tu tional and e thica l impl ications of those lies -then fundamental el
ements of civil rights are threatened.
6
PART I V ORGAN IZAT IONAL I NSTI TU TIONAL D EV IAN CE
FLUFFI NG UP THE EVIDENCE AND C OVERING YOUR ASS
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ON LUSION
The effects of lying, even those which are acceptable or tolerated, are multi
fold. Liescan and do create distrust within the organization. When the public
Skolnick has suggested that perjury and corruption are both systematic forms
ofpolice deviance which occur for the same sort of reason: police know that
other police are on the take and police know that other police are perjuring
themselves (Skolnick, 1982: 42).
It isalso possible that other forms of police deviance will lead to deviant
lying. For example, the officer who commits an act of police brutality may
have to lie on the report to his/her supervisor and during testimony to avoid
the possibility of criminal sanction, a civillawsuit, or department charges. The
off icer who has sex on duty, or sleepsor drinks on duty may haveto l ie to a
supervisor or internal affairs to avoid department discipline. The officer who
causesan injury or death to a suspect which isnot strictly according to law or
police policy may have to l ie to protect himself or his fel low officers from
criminal and/or civilliability.
Other implications ... were clear: officerswere willing to lie during the
sworn deposition to protect themselves and others. They would swear to the
truth of facts which were plainly manufactured for their protection. More
over, their remorse was not that they lied, but that they got caught in miscon
duct. Similarly,a police chief in West Virginia recently told a federal judge he
lied to investigators in order to cover up for four officers accused of beating
handcuffed prisoners Law Enforcement News, March 15, 1989, p. 2). Again,
the illegitimate goal of protection surfacesas a motive for lying.
The typical police bureaucracy isa complex organization with a myriad of
rules and regulations. The informal organization, including many supervisors,
overlooks these rules until someone decides to nail someone. Given the
plethora of rules and regulations in most large urban police departments it is
virtually impossible to work a shift without violating one. It may be common
practice to eat a free meal, leave one's beat for personal reasons, not wear one's
ha t when out of the car , to l ive outside the c ity l imits, etc. All of these acts
may be forbidden by a policy, rule, or regulation. When a supervisor decides
to discipline an officer for violating one of these acts, the officer, and often
fellow officers, may resort to lies to protect themselves and each other. Mter
all,such minor lies are inherent in the Blue Code. Manning observesthat
rule enforcement by police supervisors represents a mock bureaucracy where
ritualistic and punitive enforcement is applied after the fact (Manning, 1978).
The consequences of these seemingly understandable lies can be disastrous
when discovered. The officer(s) may be suspended, reduced in rank, or dis
missed. The same organization where members routinely engage in accept
able, tolerated, and deviant lying practices can take on a very moralistic attitude
when it discovers that one of its own has told a lie to avoid internal discipline.
Nevertheless, the lies told in these examples are told in support of the illegiti
mate goal of avoiding departmental discipline.
9
Kitte l, N. G. 1986. Pol ice Perjury:
Criminal Defense Attorneys' Perspec
tive. Americanjournal of Criminaljus
ticeXI(I): 11-22.
Klockar s, C . B. 1980. The Di rt y Ha rry
Problem.
The Annals,
452: 33-47
(November).
Law Enforcement News.
1989. March 15: 2
Manning, P. K. 1978. Lying, Secrecy and
Social Control. In Peter K. Manning
and John Van Maanen (Eds. ), Policing:
A Viewfrom the S treet. Santa Mon
ica , CA: Goodyear Publishing Co. ,
238-255.
Marx, G. T . 1985 . Who Real ly Get s
Stung? Some IssuesRaised by the
New Police Undercover Work. In
F. A. Elliston and Michael Feldberg
(Eds.), Moral Issuesin police Work. To
towa, NJ: Rowrnan and Alianheld .
New York Times. 1989. Dead Officer,
Dropped Charges: A Scandal in
Boston. March 20: K9.
Pistone ,] . D. 1987. Donnie Brasco:My
UndercoverLife in theMafia. New
York: Nail Books.
Skolnick,]. 1982. Deception by Police.
Criminaljustice Ethics. 1(2): 40-54.
S ti tt , B . G. , and Gene G. James. 1985.
Entrapment: An Ethical Analysis. In
F. A. Elliston and Michael Feldberg
(Eds.),
Moral Issues in PoliceWork.
To
towa, NJ: Rowrnan and AlIanheld .
Wo1chover, D. 1986. Pol ice Perjury in
London.
New Lawjournal: 180-184
(February).
FLUFFING UPTHE EVIDENCE AND COVER ING YOUR ASS
R F R N S
Barker , T . 1977. Peer Group Suppor t for
Police Organizational Deviance.
Criminology 15(3): 353-366.
___ . 1978. An Empirical Study of
Pol ice Deviance Other Than Corrup
tion.
journal of PoliceScietue andAd
ministration. 6(3): 264-272.
Bittner, E. 1972. The Functions of thepolice
in Modem Society.
Washington, DC:
U.S. Government Printing Office.
Birmingham post-Herald. 1989. Sheriff's
Chemist Makes Crack. April 19: B2.
Bla ck, H. C. 1983 . Black s Law Dictionary,
Abridged Fifth Edition. St. Paul, MN:
West publishing Co.
Cooper , G. R., a nd Rober t R . Be lai r.
1978. Privacyand Security
if
Criminal
History Information: Privacy and the
Media. U.S. Department ofJustice.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office.
Dershowitz, A. M. 1983. The Best Difense.
New York: Vintage Books.
Formby, W. A ., and John O. Smyk la .
1984. Att itudes and Percept ion T
0
ward Drinking and Driving: A Simu
lation of Citizen Awareness. journal
of PoliceScienceand Administration.
12(4): 379-384.
George, ]. B. 1966. Constitutional Limita
tions on Evidence in Criminal Cases.
Ann Arbor, MI: Institute ofContinu
ing Legal Education.
Goldstein, H. 1977.
Policinga FreeSociety.
Cambridge, MA: Ballenger Publishing
Company.
Inbau, F. E .,] . E . Reid, and Joseph P.
Buckley. 1986. Criminal Interrogation
and Confessions, 3rd ed. Baltimore:
Williams and Wilkins.
learns members of the police lie or engage in deceptive practices this can un
dermine citizen confidence in the police. Aswe have seen some police liesvi
olate citizens' civil rights and others are told to cover up civil rights violations.
Police lying contributes to police misconduct and corruption and undermines
the organization's discipline system. Furthermore, deviant police lies under
mine the effectivenessof the criminaljustice system.
PART IV ORGAN IZATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL DEVIANCE
8