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| ST. THOMAS—The U.S. Department of Justice has begun an extensive investigation of the Virgin Islands Police Department. The federal probe has been spurred by a special investigative report by the Virgin Islands Daily News which detailed 20 years of questionable and illegal uses of deadly force. The Daily News found that over the past two decades, police officers used deadly force 100 times—a considerable number given the Virgin Islands' population of less than 120,000. The officers shot 85 times and killed 15 people; other forms of deadly force were used on 15 people. Only 35 of the people were armed; only 17 of the 72 survivors were charged with a crime; and on only 10 occasions were the officers prosecuted for using deadly force.1 No doubt the investigation will call for more citizen oversight of the VIPD, new leadership, better police training, and innovative reforms. It is an old story. It has happened elsewhere—in Los Angeles and New York, in Philadelphia and Chicago, and in other large cities and small towns across the nation. But why do these police abuses occur, over and over again? Why do they persist? And more importantly, what accounts for police misconduct, and how might it best be controlled? 1. Lee Williams, "Deadly Force," Virgin Islands Daily News, December 30, 2003, 1–44; Virgin Islands Daily News, January 15, 2004, 1–7. These questions focus on two areas of police misconduct: corruption and violence. Police corruption involves illegal activities for economic gain, including payment for services that police are sworn to carry out as part of their peacekeeping role. Police violence, in the forms of brutality and misapplication of deadly force, involves wrongful use of police power. |