Police corruption, according to the academic and other literature and anticorruption commission reports we reviewed, is not a new problem and dates back to the establishment of the first organized local police forces. According to a report by the Knapp Commission, when the NYPD was established in 1844 as the first municipal police department in this country, it experienced immediate problems with extortion and other corrupt activities. Subsequently, the NYPD has experienced scandals and investigations approximately every 20 years. As in New York City, corruption has plagued police departments in many major cities at some point in their history, including Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. While it has been a persistent problem for law enforcement, the nature of police corruption has varied over time. Historically, police corruption involved such low-level and passive activities as bribery schemes and nonenforcement of the law. Also, early police corruption was often depicted as the result of a few dishonest individuals—commonly referred to as “rotten apples”—in an otherwise honest department. However, during the police corruption scandals of the 1970s and 1980s, the corruption uncovered in several cities was found to be systemic, rather than attributable to individual behavior. “The overwhelming majority of those who do take payoffs are ‘grass-eaters,’ who accept gratuities and solicit five- and ten- and twenty-dollar payments from contractors, tow-truck operators, gamblers, and the like, but do not aggressively pursue corruption payments. ‘Meat-eaters,’ probably only a small percentage of the force, spend a good deal of their working hours aggressively seeking out situations they can exploit for financial gain, including gambling, narcotics, and other serious offenses which can yield payments of thousands of dollars.” The Knapp Commission concluded that, while the meat-eaters receive the large payoffs and the newspaper coverage, the grass-eaters are the heart of the problem because their greater numbers make corruption respectable. Despite this history, disagreement still exists among criminal justice practitioners, researchers, and the public as to what type of behavior constitutes police corruption. Some definitions include behavior that ranges from brutality to questionable behavior such as verbal attacks on citizens. Two key elements of the various definitions of police corruption, as found in the academic literature we reviewed, are that the acts involve (1) the “misuse” of the officer’s professional role—“authority” or “official position”—and (2) the receipt or expected receipt of material rewards or personal gain. Enforcement of laws against all forms of vice (e.g., gambling, prostitution, and drugs) reportedly afford opportunities for police corruption. However, drug enforcement often exposes police officers to large amounts of cash and drugs held by individuals who are not likely to complain about illegal police behavior. Recent newspaper accounts, commission reports, academic studies, and other literature we reviewed suggest that today there are more opportunities than in the past for drug-related police corruption. Although the FBI and DOJ have jurisdiction for investigating and prosecuting public corruption, police corruption is generally investigated internally by local police departments and/or prosecuted by local district attorneys. The FBI, DOJ, and other federal agencies are involved in only some local public corruption cases, including police corruption, and the extent of that involvement varies among cities across the country. A number of the commission reports, academic publications, and other literature we reviewed and the officials and academic experts we interviewed described differences between the nature of drug-related police corruption and the nature of other types of police corruption; however, opportunities for financial gain were a key factor in both forms of corruption. Unlike other types of corruption, officers involved in drug-related corruption were found to be actively committing crimes, not just passively ignoring them or protecting criminals. These crimes ranged from stealing drugs and money from drug dealers to lying under oath about illegal searches. Usually these activities were carried out by small groups of officers, rather than by lone individuals. Moreover, drug-related police corruption was not found to be a systemic problem that infected entire departments or precincts. Although cases of drug-related police corruption have been identified in a number of large cities, we found that only limited data on the extent of the problem were available. Several of our sources described differences between the types of illegal activities generally associated with drug-related police corruption and those associated with other types of police corruption. Traditional police corruption usually involved a mutually beneficial arrangement between criminals and police officers (e.g., the former offered the latter bribes in exchange for immunity from arrest). In contrast, several studies and investigations of drug-related police corruption found on-duty officers engaged in serious criminal activities, such as (1) conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures; (2) stealing money and/or drugs from drug dealers; (3) selling stolen drugs; (4) protecting drug operations; (5) providing false testimony; and (6) submitting false crime reports. According to NYPD officials, some police officers also engaged in drug-related crimes while off duty. The Mollen Commission reported in 1994 that the most prevalent form of police corruption in New York City was police committing crimes, especially in connection with the illegal drug trade, whereas the Knapp Commission reported about 20 years earlier that the prevalent form of corruption was police taking money to overlook illegal activities, such as bookmaking. In summary, the Mollen Commission, in contrast to the Knapp Commission, found that the meat-eaters, as opposed to the grass-eaters, had become the rule among corrupt police officers, rather than the exception. The types of reported drug-related corruption engaged in by police officers, as well as the types of police corruption tolerated, differed among cities and even differed among precincts within the same city. Several academic experts, as well as officials in New York City, indicated that the levels of acceptance for different types of offenses committed in connection with drug enforcement activities varied, and that the perceived line between corrupt and acceptable police behavior was not fixed. For example, some of these sources suggested that an officer might view stealing money from a drug dealer as acceptable behavior, while the officer would draw the line at stealing and selling drugs. Over time, behavior, such as dealing in illegal drugs, which was previously viewed as unacceptable by even corrupt officers might become acceptable or at least tolerated. However, our sources also indicated that formerly acceptable behavior, such as lying under oath, might become unacceptable. In addition, certain sources suggested that in one department, officers might be more likely to report drug-related corruption but not acts of brutality; while in another department, the reverse might be the norm. As in the case of other types of police corruption, a primary reported motive for drug-related police corruption was financial gain, but profit was not the only motive identified. The Mollen Commission identified three motivating factors for corruption: (1) profit, (2) power, and (3) perceived “street” law enforcement ends. The commission further explained that while corrupt police officers usually raided drug locations for profit, they sometimes carried out raids because they (1) wanted to show that they were in control of the precinct’s “crime-ridden streets,” (2) wanted to feel the “power” and “thrill” of their badges and uniforms, or (3) believed that vigilante justice was the way to punish those who might otherwise go unpunished. Similarly, some of the officials we interviewed suggested such motives as job cynicism due to the perception that the revolving door of justice lets criminals go free, or officers’ dissatisfaction with how they were viewed and treated by the people in the community. Our sources also identified differences between the pattern of drug-related police corruption and patterns of other types of police corruption. The commissions and academic experts reported that drug-related police corruption typically involved small groups of officers. For example, the Mollen Commission described these groups, such as those found in New York City’s 73rd precinct case, as “crews” akin to street gangs. Similarly, the Chicago Commission reported that the officers they surveyed characterized corruption as isolated in small groups. In other cities, identified drug-related police corruption cases usually involved from 9 to 30 officers often working together, not individuals or entire departments. Drug-related police corruption usually did not involve such non-drug-related patterns as (1) just a few isolated individuals within a department who engaged in illegal acts or (2) low-level corruption pervading entire departments or precincts. The commission reports, as well as several federal and New York City officials and academic experts we interviewed, generally described drug-related police corruption as being organized differently from the corruption of earlier eras; however, these sources varied in their characterization of the new organizational forms. For example, in describing New York City’s 30th precinct case, a DOJ official said that, although numerous officers were involved, it was not one large enterprise. Rather, officers moved in and out of groups, depending on how opportunities presented themselves. The Mollen Commission compared the “standardized and hierarchical—almost bureaucratic” organizational forms of traditional corruption with the street-gang-like structure of the drug-related crews, which were “small, loyal, flexible, fast moving and often hard hitting.” The commission also noted that, in some cases, there were explicit agreements or pacts between officers to help ensure that officers observing criminal behavior would not report this behavior. The information sources used in this report generally concurred in their description of the nature of drug-related police corruption. However, since these sources’ observations were based on publicly identified cases of such corruption, which may not be representative of all drug-related police corruption cases, these observations may not completely portray the nature of the problem. We did not locate any centralized, systematically gathered, nationwide source of data that could be used to estimate the extent of the problem nationally.