Like any profession, the vast majority of police are good, upstanding people. But like any other profession, there are some bad apples among the bunch. And it's typically those cops, the ones who abuse their power, break the law, or just treat their fellow humans with little to no regard, who make the news. There always seems to be someone out there who just lets the power get to their head.
A Reddit thread recently asked current and former law enforcement personnel to reveal the worst cops they ever had the displeasure of meeting. All of the stories have been edited for clarity.
This Guy Had Zero Tolerance
“The worst I ever saw was a guy driving a government-vehicle off-duty, and in plainclothes, slugging back drinks and walking into a movie theater. Slugged another one when he came out, tossed the empty in the passenger seat, and drove off.
I reported him to Internal Affairs.
I don’t tolerate corruption or dirty cops. Not reporting it could have cost me my job and their actions not only made my agency look bad, but also taint public trust, which breeds animosity, which makes my job harder.
No breaks for minor things either. Cops should be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.”
Sometimes Someone Just Has To Speak Up Against This Type Of Injustice
“For me personally, probably the first year of law enforcement was the hardest for me because I worked in a very small town with a bunch of ‘old school officers.’
I wouldn’t say I’ve seen a lot of corrupt cops, but punk cops…I’ve worked with my share of those. My first year, I was very apprehensive about saying anything if I thought someone was going overboard, and I used to lose my temper at the drop of a hat and was one of those shady cops.
During my second year, I watched my sergeant at the time, cuss, berate, and treat a mentally handicapped individual like a dog. We had neighbors at nearby houses coming out on the porch and witnessing this happen and I couldn’t hold my tongue. I got in the middle of the argument and told my sergeant to cool off. I handled the rest of this certain situation myself and when we got back to the department, we got into a huge argument over how it was handled. It got bad enough that the chief was called to the department and as I said previously, I went on the record against this sergeant, and in the end, he was demoted after the parents made the complaint.
I later became a chief in a small town. I made it a point to make my officers wear body cameras. That way, if a complaint is made and it is valid, I can take punitive measures from there. I also make it a point to train my new officers on how to treat people and handle situations like that.”
Carrying His Victim To His Grave
“The worst thing I have personally witnessed was a police honor guard member carrying the casket of his partner that he had murdered.
The shooter was off-duty that night and was busy burglarizing a local business when his partner caught him in the act. From what we understand, the shooter wanted his partner to cover it up and not say anything. After his partner refused, the shooter distracted his partner by pointing at something, and when his partner turned to look, the shooter shot him in the back of the head with his service weapon.
The weapon he used to kill his partner was literally bumping the casket as he carried him to his grave.
It took about a week after the funeral for the detectives/investigators to put it all together. It wasn’t my agency – I was with the county Sheriff’s Dept at the time and this city was the county seat. He’s currently serving a life sentence for murder. He avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty, but we were all hoping the judge wouldn’t accept it and force a trial. No dice.”
“This List Goes On And On”
“My father is a cop. This is some of the stuff he deals with at the St. John’s County Sherif’s office in Florida:
A deputy known for beating girlfriends and being a heavy drinker has multiple reports, never punished for several years because he is a fishing friend of the sheriff, despite witnesses seeing him abuse women.
Another deputy drove into the ghetto, claimed people attacked his car (a lie) and got his friends on the SWAT team to come in and shoot pepper spray at people. This resulted in a riot. The victims sued and got a settlement.
A high ranking staff member acting very flirtatious and inappropriately with female staff
A girlfriend of Deputy Jeremy Banks was found dead with multiple wounds to her face. She was leaving him that night and told family to expect her. Locals claim they heard him screaming at her before the shots rang out. However, the response deputies who were friends of Banks moved (and even stole) evidence from the scene. This was declared a suicide despite the fact that she was shot multiple times in the face, and that she would have been holding the weapon at a nearly impossible angle to pull the trigger, and that this deputy has been rumored to be an abuser. Also, as Crime Scene Analyst Dr. Jerry Findley pointed out, there was blood splattered on her face, arms, and hands. Yet none on the weapon, as there would have been if she killed herself. The same analyst also pointed out that none of Bank’s DNA was on the weapon, which he had touched and used during work that day, leading many to believe that the weapon was wiped down before it was submitted for analyzation. Another little detail is that weapon was placed in the wrong hand. It was declared, but the Florida Department of Law Enforcement believes that this was a murder and has called for State Attorney, Brad King to take it to grand jury. But he refuses. Governor Rick Scott and his investigators won’t look into anything further or prosecute or even discuss the case.
A judge’s (I won’t say which judge, I don’t know if it’s public or not) high school aged son was caught buying large quantities of illegal substances while in school from an organized crime ring in Jacksonville. Not only were no charges brought, but the school allowed him to graduate (despite the school saying no, they were ‘convinced’ to let him).
The list goes on and on and on about the corruption that happens at that place.”
The Reason For Their Early Resignation
“I was a corrections officer for a short time. At the end of our training, we went to the state capital as a group to take our certification exam. We hung out in a group drinking with our instructors, who were also COs. At the end of the night, there were just a few of us still in the hotel bar area; a male instructor, three male trainees (including myself), and a female trainee. At that point, one of our instructors started to grope the female trainee and whisper things to her. She was extremely uncomfortable and the rest of the trainees and I made an excuse that we needed to leave, taking her with us.
The next day, I came forward and told another instructor. With the dirty instructor’s actions seeming so over the top, and the presence of two other witnesses besides myself, I thought this guy would easily get fired.
During the investigation, I was brought into a room with four high-level officers within my organization. They grilled me like I was the one that committed the crime and treated me like a liar that was just trying to get this guy in trouble. I had a positive view of him before the event in question.
Eventually, I found out that the other two male witnesses refused to give any information about what happened (or were intimidated to keep quiet). The victim was apparently treated way worse than I was, and she left the job not too long after that. I stayed on the job for a few months for a couple of different reasons. The dirtbag retained his position and as far as I know, is still in an instructor role.”
He Could Only Stand So Much Of His Partner’s Racism
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“I reported a probationary officer for making anti-Hispanic statements and general thuggish behavior (really pro using force). I ended up getting him terminated. Then I heard from my brass, he messaged another officer saying he knew it was me and I should watch my back. And that’s how my wife conceded to let me buy some protection for the house.
His exact words on the initial statement were: ‘I can’t wait until it’s open season on Mexicans.’ He then spoke at length about his plan to curb immigration (with force).
My city is like 30% Hispanic. That just won’t fly.”
He Was Fed Up Being The Mouthpiece
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“I worked in the suburbs of a low crime city. I backed another guy on a call, don’t remember what it was initially for. The guy we contacted at his apartment was Latino and I speak Spanish (I’m white), so I translated for the other cop.
He got the info he needed and then started telling me to ask him a bunch of legal status stuff. I went along with it for a minute or two until the cop started trying to get me to sling hate about illegals and stuff like that. I changed from more or less verbatim translation to ‘he says this and he says that’ and I started to leave a bunch of his rhetoric out.
When he (the cop) asked if I had told him everything he said, I replied that what he was saying was bull and I wasn’t going to sling hate. He started to rebut and I said, ‘We’re done here right?’ and walked off. The other cop was angry with at me and tried to talk to me about it later in the shift. I told him I didn’t feel the same way about immigration and that I wasn’t going to be his mouthpiece for that type of stuff and that if he wasn’t happy about it, he should learn Spanish so he could tell them himself. He was pretty ticked off at me.
I later talked to my sergeant about it because I was still pretty new, and the other cop got pulled into the office for a chat.”
“He Now Works For The Federal Government”
“I am no longer in law enforcement, but when I was on the job, our department had a terrible officer on the force.
My department had around 70 officers and was a busy city department on a major interstate (gangs, shootings, robberies, etc. almost every night).
Everyone knew that he was too physical with suspects, or would speak to them in a way that would incite violence. Although I never saw it first hand, it was rumored he would exaggerate facts in reports to support stops or arrests. It was interesting that supervisors, attorneys, and judges knew. And as a result, any case he brought to court, he better have another witness, or the judge would dismiss the case. I never saw him do anything illegal, and if I had, I would be meeting with the sergeant before the shift was over.
I had him show up at my scenes a few times but told him to leave. A calm situation would turn tense just by his presence. On the street, cops are known. Needless to say, we didn’t get along very well. Really, no one got along with him very well. I believe it was his ego that caused most of his problems.
Something eventually happened and he resigned. The facts weren’t released, but I speculate that his past finally caught up with him. I heard that he is playing the victim and bad mouthing the department. He now works for the federal government.”
Just A Few Of The Reasons He Wants Off The Force
“I work for a larger department that has had a very well publicized problem with corruption and bad behavior of officers. We have an awful reputation in the area as a result of stupid things officers have done, be it corruption, idiotic behavior or whatever.
Our ex-chief routinely would have officers called to his residence for large parties he would throw. These would normally involve a fair amount of underage people, drinks, and a lot of pills. It was common for the officers that responded to the call to suddenly be promoted or end up on a specialty unit of their choosing shortly afterwards.
Preferential treatment for certain officers or citizens due to their influence with command staff. At the same time, there was punishment for the officers who spoke out against the chief or his lackeys, specifically a supervisor who had his schedule changed routinely so he was always working opposite his spouse in an effort to ruin their marriage.
A former chief used his influence to trick me into dropping a felony case that involved charges in two jurisdictions stemming from the same incident. The chief contacted me saying the prosecutor for the other jurisdiction had worked out a deal whereby we dropped our charges and he pled to the more serious charge there. I later found out he sold that same line to the other jurisdiction so the defendant got off.
One of our school resource officers was caught with an underage streetwalker at a sleazy motel off duty in his patrol car. When cornered, he fled the scene, so we had county deputies in pursuit of a city officer in a marked patrol vehicle.
Stuff like this is why I’m trying to get out of this career field.”
It’s Still A Vivid Memory After All These Years
“My dad was a police officer in a ‘little’ town in Texas from before I was born until I was in the third grade. My mother was a dispatcher for the police department. I was the youngest of five girls.
My sister, who was two years older, and I used to go to a family friend’s house to pick strawberries in their backyard. They were an older couple whose kids had moved out of state, so they loved having kids around.
The husband died from old age so she was left alone. One night, when my mother was working the late shift (after 10 pm), she went to work and saw multiple calls from the same number with no action/help taken. She asked her supervisor what was going on and they said it was a prank call.
My mother looked more into it and saw it was the same number as our older family friend. She sent multiple police officers to the house (including my dad), and they found her house broken into. She was violated and tied to a chair with the word ‘harlot’ written on her stomach in permanent marker.
The police tried to cover up the whole investigation. Papers were lost, calls deleted. My parents quit the force and moved our family out of town shortly after.
It was horrible. It’s been 20 years, and I still remember that horrible police cover-up.”
One Report To Internal Affairs Ruined His Life
“My dad used to be a cop in Cleveland.
While there weren’t really any dirty cop stories, he would sometimes talk about how the police chief and a few detectives would use their power to ‘very shadily’ seize property and cash as evidence at times (which they would just keep).
My dad reported this to internal affairs when I was a kid and I remember that for the next year, my dad was run ragged. The chief would make my dad work nights for one week straight, then make him work the day shift the following week.
Years after this, my dad was still working at the same station and a lady on her cellphone crashed into my dad’s police cruiser. Soon after this crash, my family found out on top of the surgery he would need for his back, my dad would eventually need a liver transplant. What happened was my dad was given some kind of painkiller that is no longer given because it has been shown to cause liver failure. As time went on, and his conditioned worsened, my dad wound up needing more time off, and more medical attention, including more visits to the hospital each month, and having to see certain specialists.
While that was all happening, my parents also had to take his boss and the chief to court because they were actively trying to deny my dad the very coverage he needed in order to have affordable healthcare.
After many years of waiting, he wound up dying waiting for a new liver.”
The County Didn’t Appreciate How He Cleaned Up The Prison
“My father-in-law was retired FBI and took a job working Internal Affairs for Shelby County Corrections in the ’90s. He was hired by a new director who had been hired from out-of-state in an effort to clean up the lockup just north of Memphis. The new director figured an ex-Fibbie was a good bet for a cleanup man. The place was a mess.
The facility had gone smoke-free and almost overnight, the prison guards went into business smuggling smokes into the prison. They went for a buck each and, with one pack in each sock, and another rolled up in each sleeve of their under-shirt, they could clear over $80 a day. One day, he set up a surveillance and caught a group of guards lowering several cases of smokes down through a vent in the roof.
Many of the female guards were basically just streetwalkers for the inmates, and the flow of contraband into the prison was constant. In my father-in-law’s opinion, most of the guards at the facility were just a half-step away from being ‘guests’ themselves.
Sadly, the Memphis/Shelby-County political machine didn’t appreciate him investigating conspiring supervisors who happened to be appointed friends and relatives of the city mayor and other public officials, so they conspired to terminate the director and afterward made it impossible for my wife’s dad to do his job. One day in the middle of all this, while driving to work, he was rear-ended by a large truck with no plates in a hit-and-run while doing over 60 mph on the 240 loop, and was pretty sure it wasn’t an ‘accident.’ The job hadn’t been fun for a while, and he finally decided it wasn’t worth it, quit, and took up retirement full-time.
My family is now in another state, having left Memphis 12 years ago. What a terrible place that place is.”
“It’s That One Percent That Makes The News”
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“My former lieutenant deleted reports and erased emails in a case revolving around the assault of an inmate by another inmate. He also made us make a woman pay bond to get out of jail, who was arrested on a case of mistaken identity.
I wrote a statement for the woman’s lawsuit and quit not too long after that.
Honor, integrity, and respect are never betrayed. I will always hold myself and others accountable for having the courage to do the right thing.
In reality, 99 percent of the people I have worked with are great, lawful people. It’s that one percent that makes the news.”
Sounds Like A Crime-Ridden City, And Then There Were The Criminals
“Both my dad and uncle were firefighters in small cities from about ’78 to ’06, and they dealt with cops a fair share, and have lots of crooked stories. Most of them involved small abuses of power, racism, covering for each other with little lies, and lots and lots of depression and substance issues, likely from the job, which led to drinking and driving and assaults (never prosecuted).
But my dad also said that lots of things had changed, improved during the years he was working. There were just a lot of things you couldn’t get away with like the overtly racist stuff, and blatantly drinking on the job. Once the old school guys retired, a lot of that stuff died out.
One time, a cop got a call to a house because a guy there was completely strung out and panicking. The cops showed up and the guy completely freaked out and threw a mug at one of the cops, and it happened to hit just right (or wrong) and sliced one whole side of the cop’s face open. They brought him into custody, and the cops told the firefighters to wait outside and proceeded to beat the life out of the guy in a locked room. Afterward, the firemen went in to clean him up, and they found a bruised and broken man.
This was also in the same city where the mayor was found guilty of burning a guy with smokes while an off-duty cop held the guy down.”
When The “Bad Egg” Is In The Family
“I’m pretty sure my drinker of a grandpa was the ‘bad egg’ of his department.
I heard a story at the barbershop about how one day, he showed up while on-duty for a haircut and needed to use the restroom. Someone had locked the door after leaving, so apparently, instead of asking the shop owner for the keys, he whipped out his weapon and just started shooting at the door handle.
He also routinely had the cops called on him at home for noise violations, but nothing was ever done. He had these giant speakers attached to his record player and would put them in his front windows and just BLAST music at all hours of the night so he could listen to it while drinking out on the stoop.
He once broke into the church rectory to wake up the priest (again, while absolutely wasted) to demand that the priest baptize him that night. My grandma had just died and he was worried that he wouldn’t get to see her in heaven since she was Catholic and he wasn’t.”