From planting drugs to smuggling guns and fixing tickets, the New York Police Department keeps having to arrest its own officers, but isn’t even particularly good at scoping out corruption according to some experts. Instead of the Internal Affairs Bureau, it has often been outside agencies noticing the department blemishes, with a former internal investigator telling the New York Times, “There is no real detective work going on. … Everything in I.A.B. is all reactive.” Police corruption complaints from within have reportedly risen from about 45,000 to 65,000 a year in the last decade, but the number of cases is still at about 1,000 a year. “They hold steady miraculously,” said the ex-investigator. As for watching the watchmen’s watchmen, the Mayor’s Commission to Combat Police Corruption, the group charged with monitoring Internal Affairs, has a staff of just five people.
