BETTER EFFORST ARE NEEDED TO STOP BAD COPS IN FUTURE

It would be a mistake to simply dismiss Karl Waldon as a rogue cop.

It would be a mistake to say that Waldon and the three other Jacksonville
officers -- Aric Sinclair, Jason Pough and Reginald Bones - - who took part
in a vicious crime spree were just bad apples in a department filled with
good men and women.

It would be a mistake to make the excuse that in a department so large,
there is always the chance that there will be officers who become
lawbreakers themselves.

After a federal court jury found Waldon guilty on Wednesday of robbing and
murdering businessman Sami Safar in the back of a police car while Safar
begged for his life, police officers from Sheriff Nat Glover on down said
they were saddened and angered and embarrassed by what Waldon and the other
cops-gone-bad had done.

It would be a mistake to let this end with that.

Waldon, Sinclair, Pough and Bones had been entrusted by this community to
uphold the law, to protect its citizens from crime.

Instead, they greedily took money in drug rip-offs. They robbed people in
their homes, in their cars and on the streets. They trafficked in drugs.

Their crimes weren't isolated. They stretched over a long period of time.

The problem with simply dismissing them as rogue cops is this:

Other officers must have at least had suspicions that something evil was
going on.

And supervisors, if they had been doing their jobs with the vigor they
should, should have picked up that something was out of kilter.

Police officers are notorious for not ratting on their fellow officers. The
blue code of silence is not just Hollywood fiction. It can be all too real.

The officers who do their jobs day in and day out with integrity -- and
that's by far the vast majority -- are right to be angered and embarrassed
by this horrifying case.

But they -- as well as Glover himself -- need to take one more look in the
mirror and ask themselves:

How did this happen?

How did it go on for so long?

How did it continue until it ended with Safar's murder?

It would be a mistake to say this was just an anomaly.

It would be a mistake to just say safeguards have been put in place to
avoid such travesties in the future.

It would be a mistake for officers not to spend every moment of their days
working to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Safar was killed by a police officer who wanted his money, by a police
officer who had sworn to uphold the law.

The federal court jury will decide next week whether Waldon should get the
death penalty for his acts.

After that is done, and time has passed, it would be a mistake to forget
what was done and who did it.

That would be a mistake not only for the Sheriff's Office, but for the
entire community as well.