LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION: COPS, ETHICS AND THE LAW

JPD Increases Training, Spot Checks

Jackson Police Lt. T. Daryl Smith doesn't feel good every time he nabs the
bad guy.

It's just the opposite. "It makes you sick," he said.

As head of internal affairs at the Jackson Police Department - a department
that saw eight of its own officers arrested in 2000 on corruption charges -
Smith oversees one of its most critical divisions.

"Credibility is everything when it comes down to a police officer doing his
job," Smith said.

The Jackson Police Department, like others around the country, is looking
at new ways to combat internal breakdowns and keep officers from straying
into trouble.

Last year, the department started ethics training for new recruits and
plans to expand the training later this year to include veteran officers.

Recruits also must go through criminal background checks and psychological
screening.

And the department does random "integrity checks" - using internal affairs
officers to check for unprofessional behavior.

But, in the end, there is no way to guarantee every dirty cop is weeded
out, Jackson's acting police chief, Jim French, concedes.

Or, as Michael Clay Smith, dean of graduate studies in criminal justice at
the University of Southern Mississippi, put it: "There is no police
department that isn't touched at some time, in some way, by integrity
issues. Any police officer that's been on the job six months knows what I'm
talking about.

"The nature of the work is such that it leads people to tempting
situations," Michael Smith said.

Just ask Jackson police chaplain Sgt. David Horton, a 22-year veteran.

"Drug dealers standing on the street corner - they are so bold," he said.

"Not only will they say, 'I am not going to move off the corner,' but,
better yet, 'If you leave me alone, there could be some advantages in it
for you,' " Horton said.

Veteran Detective Willie Mack has seen it, too.

"I've had folks tempt me," Mack said. "It's not worth throwing away a
career over."

But what about those officers who might be more susceptible to that kind of
temptation?

That's where Jackson's new program of ethics training comes in.

The training started with Jackson's last police recruit class, which
graduated in December. The current class should begin its ethics work soon.

Horton, Thomas Jenkins, a civilian who serves as a police department
chaplain, and Joe Austin, a police training officer, are passing on what
they learned last year during a week-long ethics instructors' course at the
Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers Training Academy.

Horton said the best way to teach the class is for recruits to consider how
officers might respond to ethical and moral dilemmas, and then examine the
consequences.

"On one side, put all the good results that can come out of making good
decisions," he said. "On the other side, put all the things to the contrary
that can come from making bad decisions and let them (the officers) look at
it and count up the costs for themselves."

Michael Smith agrees ongoing ethics training is vital. "If you don't think
about it, stuff can sneak up on you," he said.

And ongoing ethics training is a worthwhile investment of time in an effort
to prevent corruption, said the Rev. James Turner, a Jackson resident.

"I certainly think it would be very important," Turner said. "And I would
hope the voice of ministers and other people are included in the training."

The Police Department also does its best to screen out candidates who have
questionable backgrounds or display other signs pointing to trouble.

Police recruits undergo a polygraph test, psychological testing, interviews
with a psychologist and written exams. Recruits' work histories and
criminal records are also checked.

Among the most common reasons applicants are turned down are poor work
histories, failure to pass employment tests and past arrests, French said.

In the 1990s, the city learned the hard way the consequences of lowering
its standards.

In an effort to expand the force, Mayor Kane Ditto's administration allowed
the hiring of recruits with misdemeanor criminal records, such as
possession of marijuana.

The results were disastrous.

Of the 167 recruits who graduated from the police academy in 1992-1993,
eight were fired, 18 suspended and 21 reprimanded within three years. They
became known - not in glowing terms - as "Ditto's Rangers."

Even with the most rigorous screening, though, there are those who will
slip through the system or become corrupt at some point after they hit the
street.

They are the officers who eventually become the targets of the department's
Internal Affairs and Public Integrity Unit - the cops who police the cops.

It's not a glamorous assignment.

"We're not liked. We realize that," said Lt. Smith, who heads up the unit.
"But, at the same time, people realize we're needed."

It was the internal affairs unit along with the FBI that busted the eight
officers arrested in 2000.

Six were arrested after a 15-month sting. They were accused of taking
bribes from undercover federal agents posing as cocaine traffickers.

Former Sgt. Fred Gaddis, Patrolman Tim Henderson and Patrolman Nate Thomas
pleaded guilty and ex-Detective Stanley Butler was convicted by a jury.
Charges were dropped against former Sgt. Ronald Youngblood and Detective
Joe Wade, but federal prosecutors are still considering whether to
prosecute Youngblood, whose cooperation led to the indictments of his
fellow officers.

In separate cases, former Detective Alvaline Baggett was found guilty of
taking money from drug dealers to fix drug cases and former Detective
Wallace Jones, Baggett's brother, pleaded guilty to taking a bribe from a
federal agent posing as a cocaine trafficker.

"My personal opinion is these officers were not criminals when they came on
the department," French said. "Whether it was seeing the money that a major
drug dealer makes, whether it was financial problems ... Something made
those people make a really bad choice in life."

Horton said he learned from the class he took that many officers go wrong
when they have to make split-second decisions.

"Officers every day in this career, unlike many others, are faced with
dilemmas," Horton said. "Many officers have made bad choices. These choices
were due to the lack of ethical training with their department." Horton
said when he was a police recruit in 1980, he was not given any extensive
training on ethical behavior.

Horton said he was just warned to stay out of trouble.

The Jackson Police Department began making a more concerted effort to
remove corrupt officers from its ranks after a 1999 study of the department
hinted corrupt officers were on the force.

In response to the study, the department beefed up internal affairs, adding
seven officers, asked for the FBI's assistance in weeding out crooked cops,
moved internal affairs out of headquarters to a separate Amite Street
building and started conducting integrity checks.

Internal affairs was moved partly in hopes that people would feel more
comfortable filing complaints against an officer if they didn't have to
worry about bumping into him.

At the same time, the number of non-criminal complaints investigated -
things such as an officer verbally abusing a citizen - has tripled from 110
in 1996 to 339 last year. Lt. Smith couldn't elaborate on the nature of the
complaints against officers, citing they are personnel matters.

Lt. Smith attributes the increase, in part, to an increase in the size of
the internal affairs department and the ability to handle more complaints.

In addition to non-criminal complaints, there are also four criminal
complaints under investigation.

Lt. Smith would not elaborate on the criminal complaints.

The unit also began conducting integrity checks in 2000.

Internal affairs officers might randomly pull officers' incident reports to
see if the evidence cited on the report matches what's turned in to the
evidence room, or they might secretly respond to calls to see if a patrol
officer shows up.

French would not go into further detail about the checks. He has stopped
releasing the results since the first checks were done in 2000. But, so
far, none has turned up any corruption, French said.

In the integrity checks in 2000, when the results were released to the
media, 22 Jackson police officers failed.

The checks found 12 officers were often late for work, four failed to
respond to calls and six more had jobs outside the department but didn't
report them to the department as policy requires.

The same type of checks, however, have been credited with helping clean up
the once scandal-plagued police department in New Orleans.

The internal affairs division in New Orleans spends about 25 percent of its
time on integrity testing, said Terry Ebbert, executive director of the New
Orleans Police Foundation.

Those checks, he said, include even small things, such as how a traffic
stop is handled.

"The police officers know they are being watched on a continuous basis,"
Ebbert said.

French said, however, that the best remedy might be the focus on rigorous
ethics training.

"The bottom line here is we have officers making very poor choices," French
said.

"We have got to do things to make our officers make good decisions. No
matter what a parent teaches us when we are children, we face new dilemmas
when we become adults. There are things parents can't teach us how to handle."