How police whistleblowers face retaliation

Protections for police who report misconduct, like Austin Handle, lag behind whistleblower protections in other fields. Most law enforcement agencies require officers to report wrongdoing up the chain of command, often to the same people they’re implicating.

✍️: Daphne Duret & 🎥: Chris Vazquez / The Marshall Project

Transcript:
CHRIS VAZQUEZ: Hey, reporter Daphne Duret? I got you something.

DAPHNE DURET: Oh, it’s

CHRIS: A card for National Whistleblower Day.

[Crickets chirping]

CHRIS: Is it weird that I’m this into National Whistleblower Day?

DAPHNE: No, it’s…just that it already passed.

CHRIS: I missed it?

DAPHNE: And on the actual day, former police officer Austin Handle talked to lawmakers about what happens when cops report misconduct.

CHRIS: Is he more TikTok famous than me?

DAPHNE: Next question.

CHRIS: Who is Austin Handle?

DAPHNE: He says he was fired in retaliation for posting a viral TikTok where he promised to expose claims of corruption within his own police department. His old bosses tried to keep him from getting another police job, and they tried to stop him from getting unemployment. Police departments use these tactics against whistleblowers a lot.

CHRIS: Has he been able to get another policing job?

DAPHNE: Nope, even though he has a clean record. But cops with bad records often land policing jobs easily. Like, remember the cop who shot Sonya Massey inside her home in Illinois? Journalists found that he had a bunch of red flags from his previous jobs.

CHRIS: What’s being done to change all this?

DAPHNE: There were some big reforms proposed, but they all failed in Congress and in state legislatures.

[alexthewrecker]

Really hard to pretend that its just a few bad apples when whistleblowers are treated like this. Almost like the corrupt cops will always look after their own

[feistsorcerer]

Not to mention the guy recently who was going to testify and was beaten to death by his department. Allegedly a "training accident" but their reports of the events don't line up with the autopsy or other evidence.

[djraptorx]

Even bigger departments, like say the NYPD, will involuntarily commit their offices to keep them from blowing the whistle

[TheBriar_]

The cop who shot Sonya Massey had a terrible record and look what happened to her

[nickydancy]

This reminds me of the movie Code of silence starring Actor Chuck Norris....portraying the corrupt chgo police dept

[post-leftluddite]

There's no such thing as a "good" cop

[gohanrice]

Interesting, so did he ever release any corruption? Or had he actually not found any and just promised it for clicks, and pissed off his department?