Hardly a day goes by without a law enforcement officer somewhere in the United States being charged with a sex-related crime. These are just a couple of reports from the past few days:
In Texas, the Houston Press reports that a police officer who had repeated sexual encounters with a 15-year-old girl in the back seat of her car was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison in a plea bargain agreement. Steven Wayne Morris, 28, was an officer for the town of Bullard in eastern Texas when he began texting the Bullard High School student in 2009. They eventually began having sex in the back of her car, according to the news report.
Several Illinois media outlets reported that Senior Patrol Officer Michael Collins resigned from the Edwardsville, IL police as of Tuesday, April 10, several days after being charged with photographing women at a tanning salon without their knowledge. Collins was on the police force for fifteen years, and was the fifth grade D.A.R.E. officer in the Edwardsville school district for several years.
According to the 2011 3rd Quarter Report of The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project, police officers were accused of sexual assault at a rate of 79 per 100,000 law enforcement personal. That is more than double the rate for the general public (28.7 per 100,000).
What is it about police officers and sex crimes? Is there something about the kind of people attracted to a law enforcement career that makes them more likely to commit these crimes, or is it something that happens to a person on this particular job? It would be interesting to hear what psychologistshave to say about the phenomenon.
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