Over the decades, story after story after story has come out of misconduct and corruption among law enforcement and city officials in the United States, especially in smaller towns. Abusing their position of power for personal gain. Abusing the citizens in one way or another. Questionable behavior. Myriads of other forms of corruption. It almost seems like corruption is the norm.
One of the reasons why this is so prevalent and it so rarely is rectified and punished is that the top brass of such towns is almost invariably in cahoots with each other. In fact, in almost every small town there's pretty much a trifecta, a sort of "junta", formed by the police chief/sheriff, the city mayor, and the judge (especially in towns so small that there's only one small courthouse with one judge).
These three people are almost invariably drinking buddies, and they always, in every situation, look after each others' backs, and protect each other whenever there's even the slight sign of their corruption being exposed or their position challenged.
The funny thing is that it's precisely these three people, in their official positions, who are supposed to represent the three different branches of government: The legislative branch (city mayor), the executive branch (the police chief) and the judicial branch (the judge). And this "separation of powers" is supposed to exist in government as a form of "checks and balances", in other words, instead of all governmental power being concentrated on one single central entity, it's divided into these different branches who are supposed to watch each other and keep each other in check: If one branch of the government goes beyond what's permissible the other branches are supposed to point it out and intervene.
In small towns this principle completely fails because the top representatives of all three branches are in complete cahoots with each other, and rather than keeping each other in check, they conspire with each other, protect each other, and help hide the crimes and abuses of each other. If, for example, the police chief abuses his power in some way, good luck trying to get justice. It's more likely that the judge will punish you using some excuse instead. Or, at a very minimum, will put a huge amount of red tape in your way to stop you from being able to even accuse the police chief of anything.
Over the decades, dozens and dozens of stories of such corruption have been exposed. These are only the ones that actually get to the press. One can only imagine how many more instances of corruption and abuse there are that never see the light of day because they are successfully suppressed...
Comments
Post a Comment