The most disturbing discovery of his Royal Commission, he said, involved Australia's elite anti-drug unit. This was a force comprised of detectives of supposedly high calibre, integrity and experience, hand chosen from the New South Wales Police Service and the Australian Federal Police, supported with the best available resources and tasked with targeting high-level drug dealers. Although it achieved a high conviction rate, it quickly became a hotbed of corruption, and there were strong suggestions that participation in corrupt practices became a rite of passage. In Washington, Joe McNamara cautioned that even in American cities heavily affected by corruption, the problem has to be kept in perspective. The damage that corrupt minority does, however, can be profound.
Any justice system relies on a community's faith that it is fair and effective.
Revelations of serious police crime destroy that faith, and undermine the justice system, as the justice system of Los Angeles is discovering in the wake of the Rampart scandal. Many police officials are increasingly concerned about this erosion of faith. The International Association of Police Chiefs, the oldest and largest organization of police executives, with 17,000 members in 100 countries, recently called for a national commission in the United States to examine police corruption, brutality and other unethical or illegal conduct. The fear of corruption, and the damage it does to public confidence, is as old as governments' efforts to stamp out drug use. But he was right about the corruption.