Rookie Police Experiment
How’d We Do? You be the Judge…
While doing some fact-checking for the book, I heard from several of my 17th District Rookies that some critics labeled the experiment a failure. I would like to see the basis for that conclusion. Before you consider it, let me set the stage:
I read an article published in 2022 that details instances of corruption in the city dating as far back as 1907 and as late as 2020.
In 1971 The Pennsylvania Crime Commission officially opened an investigation after a series of articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on misconduct in the 17th District.
The captain of the adjoining district resigned. A local newspaper interviewed him. The article read, “About 90 percent of the officers, I suppose, are well aware of the corruption in the department. I guess a little less than half actually participate in one way or another.”
A former officer in the 17th said between 1967 and 1969, all but two officers in the whole district were corrupt. In 1971, with cases of corruption reported in 13 of 22 districts, the new commissioner, considered by many to be a straight-arrow, began a program of reassignments, moving seven police inspectors and 19 of 22 police captains.
The Pennsylvania Crime Commission released an 874-page report in 1974 in which they reported finding “police corruption in Philadelphia is ongoing, widespread, systematic, and occurring at all levels…”
That Crime Commission investigation ended with the arrest of seven 17th District officers.
Public outcry was getting louder, including an appeal to Congress for an investigation focused on Philadelphia, citing a “lack of confidence in police and the inability to determine which police are criminals and which ones aren’t. We are quite aware many of the criminals which terrorize the community are men walking around with badges.”
I remember other news stories during this period focused on one South Philadelphia District. I was in the academy when this was developing and was not privy to the planning about to affect the lives and careers of the two hundred of us.
In 1977, the 17th was again the focus of a corruption investigation, and the commissioner transferred 137 officers out of the district after the arrest of three officers for ignoring an illegal gambling operation.
The experiment began when they sent us, directly from the academy, to report the same day at midnight, literally and figuratively in the dark…
This is just a glimpse—there’s much more to uncover in the full book.