In the laws, there appears to be a very thin delineation between an ideal young police officer who joins the force to keep criminals off the streets and the overworked, thwarted police officer who eventually becomes a member of a criminal gang and realizing that the system is corrupt and there is little or nothing that can be done to professionally combat crime. In the police, there is little difference between an officer who accepts a free lunch or a free ‘symbol of gratitude’ and one who ends up wresting money in return for protection (Echazu). Hence, the definition of corruption in the police is a broad and extensive one. Police corruption is universal. It exists in all nations, even so-called developed and democratic countries. Some people join the force to make a difference and bring a great change to their community. Circumstances and pressure cause stress and often the examples others set make doing the right things difficult. (Schulhofer, Tyler, and Huq 2011) argue that the American police are deeply engaged in collecting and distributing patronage, are occasionally brutal and often corrupt. The act of corruption is synonymous with police work in both developing and developed …show more content…
Patrolling those societies and those with differentiated social structures tends to conform to a ‘‘divided society’’ model consistent with conflict theory: the police mainly safeguard the interest of dominant elites and subdue groups such as racial/ethnic minorities, the poor, or the political opposition. Of course, in any country frequent exceptions to the predominant model occur: police misconduct takes place where the functionalist model prevails, and the police occasionally solve crimes and arrest criminals where the divided society model prevails. The issue is: which model best typifies the performance of the police in a given national context? Among the distinctive characteristics of divided society policing are systematic bias of the police against subordinate groups, strong identification of the police with the ruling regime, and ‘‘polarized communal relations with the police, with the dominant group as a champion of the police and the subordinate group largely estranged from the police’’ (Weitzer