Inquirer Editorial: Crooked cops

'The few affect the many." Those were the words of Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey in announcing last week's indictment of a former top executive - Police Inspector Daniel Castro.

Castro, who has been dismissed from the force, is charged in an eight-count indictment with extortion and lying to a federal officer. He allegedly tried to hire an enforcer to use violence to recoup $90,000 he lost on a real estate deal. The enforcer turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.

The 25-year veteran of the force thus became the 15th city police officer to be arrested since March 2009, including two officers charged with murder in off-duty shootings. As Ramsey said, you can't have that many members of any organization accused of crimes without being concerned about the entire body. But to his credit, Ramsey isn't crying about the problem; he's facing it.

Ramsey has increased the size of the Internal Affairs Division to 138 officers, and assigned a team to work with the FBI to investigate corruption. He is ordering more ethics training for officers, and has launched a hotline and e-mail address to log public complaints. That's all on the back end. On the front, Ramsey wants to raise the minimum age and educational requirements for recruits.

The commissioner understands his problem is a culture that tolerates or ignores criminal behavior by bad cops. The good officers, who are the majority, can't allow that to continue. They don't want to be branded as being dirty cops, too.