Procedural Justice

By: Christine Sun

For the general public, allegations of police departmental corruption and racism compel us to assess the degree to which we view our law enforcement as legitimate in wielding the power assigned to law enforcement occupations. In a recent New York Times article, a long-time veteran officer of the New York Police Department was arrested for taking part in robberies of drug dealers while in uniform and for supplying his crew “with police uniforms, paraphernalia and police vehicles”. He was also charged with conspiracy to distribute drugs, commit robbery, and for the unlawful use of a firearm.

            

While the main focus in our class recently has centered on the effects of racial profiling in deconstructing police legitimacy in the eyes of the public, other violations of procedural justice and the lack of transparency within police departments lend to the kind of corruption evidenced in this article. When those who are supposed to safeguard the law ironically make transgressions of those laws, people begin viewing the police as less and less legitimate. The decrease in trust of law enforcement leads to less likely cooperation on the part of the public, and they subsequently are less likely to internalize the law as a moral obligation.  The offending officer, Jose Tejada, engaged in blatant misuse of police power to the point of using his status to demand access to the home of an innocent family of three, hold them at gunpoint, and search their home for the very drugs he planned on unlawfully distributing. What are these innocent civilians to do? Call the police when the police are the very offenders they seek to report? 

Gau and Brunson’s research into the citizens’ perceptions of procedural justice and the effects they may have on their belief of police legitimacy can thus be applied to this episode of police corruption. Episodes of racism as evidenced by tactics that implement and perpetuate racial profiling are not the only public harassment that can have negative implications for police legitimacy.

           

The steps taken in the “ongoing Internal Affairs Bureau investigation” that charged officer Tejada with the crimes discussed above demonstrate that police transgressions of the law will not be overlooked. This may go far in compensating for the legitimacy lost in officer Tejada’s actions. However, it does not change the fact that police can and do commit the very crimes they are supposed to stop, which furthers the seed of mistrust and doubt that is already growing in the heart of the public after delegitimizing affairs such as Rodney King and other incidences of police racism and corruption. When procedural justice is not carried out in a fair and transparent way, the negative implications it has on police legitimacy are consequential and arguably irreversible.