Define 'not guilty'

Any police officer who has had to bite his tongue as he watched a suspect walk free after a jury trial would likely agree with the statement that a not-guilty verdict isn't the same as innocence.

Remember that in considering last week's acquittal of six former members of an elite Philadelphia police narcotics unit accused of corruption. While a federal jury did not convict the accused, more than 80 pending lawsuits addressing their behavior suggest this story isn't over.

A lawyer for one of the defendants had the audacity to say Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey owes an apology to the former officers he fired. But Ramsey doesn't need to apologize for doing his job. He has been consistent in trying to root out corruption in his force.

The charges against the defendants sounded like the script from the movie Training Day, which depicts rogue narcotics cops who stole from drug dealers. Real-life Philadelphia drug dealers testified to being locked in car trunks, dangled from balconies, beaten, and robbed.

In the end, the jury apparently could not accept the testimony of drug dealers, who are not known for their honesty. Nor did it believe the testimony of a former partner of the defendants who pleaded guilty to corruption and said the other officers were guilty too.

The jurors aren't speaking, but it could be that some were also caught up in a national wave of sympathy for police officers that has developed in reaction to violent antipolice protests. While not all cops are bad - in fact, most aren't - a corollary is also true: Not all cops are innocent.