This month, three officers were indicted on federal charges of stealing heroin from a drug dealer and giving it to an undercover agent in a sting operation. A week later, a former officer was convicted in a plot to rob a drug dealer of cocaine.
Another officer was fired this year after fabricating a story about being shot by a black man. The officer later admitted that he shot himself.
Ramsey said Friday he was drawing up a plan to present to Mayor Nutter for rooting out the bad officers who tarnish the work of good ones.
"We have too many guys who on occasion feel they have special privileges as police officers. Well, they don't," Ramsey said. "It's a few people, not the majority of people. But the few affect the many."
Devising such a plan won't be easy, police and criminology experts said. There is no way to predict what leads a police officer with a clean background to start breaking rules. Some officers find that misbehavior is condoned or encouraged by their colleagues. Many officers are unwilling to report police corruption, particularly if the offender is a friend or superior.
"For most police officers, they started out wanting to help people," said Rich Jarc, executive director of the Josephson Institute, a Los Angeles nonprofit that educates police departments on ethics. "But over time, some can get hardened. So when they take a bend off the straight and narrow, they don't see it as a big deal, because they've seen so many other worse things."
Crockett, 56, has been charged with first-degree misdemeanor counts of theft and receiving stolen property. He was committed involuntarily to a mental institution early Friday after learning he would be charged, District Attorney Seth Williams said, because his family feared he "was a danger to himself."
