Government Corruption News Articles

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Nine of the 12 members of a high-level congressional commission charged with advising on the US's nuclear weapons strategy have direct financial ties to contractors that would benefit from the report's recommendations or are employed at thinktanks that receive considerable funding from weapons manufacturers. While the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (CCSPUS) purports to recommend steps to avoid nuclear conflict, it does nothing to disclose its own potential conflicts of interest with the weapons industry in its final report or at rollout events. "What we've consistently seen is the nuclear weapons industry buying influence and that means we cannot make serious decisions about our security when the industry is buying influence through thinktanks and commissioners that are skewing the debate," said Susi Snyder, program coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. "Instead of having a debate about the tools and materials we need to make ourselves safe," she added, "we're having a debate about which company should get the contracts." The most recognizable member of the CCSPUS is its vice-chair, Jon Kyl, who served as a senator. In 2017 Kyl, personally, was registered to lobby for Northrop Grumman, which manufactures the B-21 nuclear bomber that the commission recommends the US should purchase in greater numbers, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $700m each.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

The US must acknowledge the right to food in order to transform its broken food system in the post-pandemic era and make it more resilient in the face of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, according to a United Nations hunger expert. "Whether we're talking about right to food, food justice or food sovereignty, there has been growing momentum over the last 10 years to understand that food is not just something we just leave to be determined by what is available or by corporations or the status quo," said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. Last month, Fakhri presented a report on the right to food – which would entail that adequate food be available and accessible to all people – as a means of food system recovery and transformation to the UN general assembly. The right to food, which can also be characterized as a right to culturally appropriate nutrition that a person needs to live a healthy and active life, is recognized in the UN's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In 2021, the US and Israel were the only countries to vote against a United Nations committee's draft that asserted food as a human right. The draft also expressed alarm that the number of people lacking access to adequate food rose by 320 million to 2.4 billion in 2020 – nearly one-third of the world's population. In 2022, 44.2 million people in the US lived in food-insecure households.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the food system from reliable major media sources.

One month since Hamas's surprise attack, little is known about the weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel. Whereas the Biden administration released a three-page itemized list of weapons provided to Ukraine, down to the exact number of rounds, the information released about weapons sent to Israel could fit in a single sentence. A retired Marine general who worked in the region, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized by his former employer to speak publicly, attributed the secrecy to the political sensitivity of the conflict. In particular, the retired officer said, weapons used in door-to-door urban warfare, which are likely to result in civilian casualties, are not going to be something the administration wants to publicize. The goal of removing Hamas completely from power is widely expected to take a significant commitment to a long-term ground presence and heavy urban fighting. According to the New Yorker, Israeli officials told their American counterparts that the war could last 10 years. Hamas's attack on Israel ... resulted in a cascade of arms assistance from the U.S. Though the Biden administration at first declined to identify any specific weapons systems, as details trickled out in the press, it has gradually acknowledged some. These include "precision guided munitions, small diameter bombs, artillery, ammunition, Iron Dome interceptors and other critical equipment," [said] Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. What "other critical equipment" entails remains a mystery.

Note: From 2018-2022, the US was responsible for 40 percent of global weapons exports. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

The number of corporate prosecutions under President Joe Biden's Department of Justice in 2022 hovered near the lowest level in decades, according to a new analysis published by the good government group Public Citizen. Federal prosecutors concluded just 99 criminal cases against corporations in 2022, the same number as Donald Trump's DOJ during his second year, and only a modest increase from the 90 cases the agency brought in 2021. As a consequence, the pace of new prosecutions is at its lowest point since the start of the Clinton administration. "The light-touch approach to enforcement creates opportunities for corporate scofflaws to push the limits of what is legally allowed – risking our health and safety, our environment, our finances, and our communities – in their efforts to maximize profits," the report warned. The slow pace of enforcement continues a two-decade decline that started after 2000, when there were three times as many corporate prosecutions as today. The Biden administration has also presided over a decline in deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements, which the DOJ can use as an alternative to filing charges for corporate malfeasance. These more lenient agreements typically involve large multinational companies. In 2022, there were just 11. Biden's DOJ has also expanded a policy that allows corporations to self-report misconduct in exchange for the government's guarantee not to prosecute.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Policing expenses mount quickly: $18,000 for technology to unlock cellphones in Southington, Conn.; $2,900 for surveillance cameras and to train officers and canines in New Lexington, Ohio. And in other communities around the country, hundreds of thousands for vehicles, body scanners, and other equipment. State and local governments are turning to a new means to pay those bills: opioid settlement cash. This money – totaling more than $50 billion across 18 years – comes from national settlements with more than a dozen companies that made, sold, or distributed opioid painkillers, including Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, and Walmart, which were accused of fueling the epidemic that addicted and killed millions. In August, more than 200 researchers and clinicians delivered a call to action to government officials in charge of opioid settlement funds. "More policing is not the answer to the overdose crisis," they wrote. Years of research suggests law enforcement and criminal justice initiatives have exacerbated the problem. "Police activity is actually causing the very harms that police activity is supposed to be stemming," says Jennifer Carroll, an author of that study and an addiction policy researcher. In Louisiana ... 80% of settlement dollars are flowing to parish governments and 20% to sheriffs' departments. Over the lifetime of the settlements, sheriffs' offices in the state will receive more than $65 million – the largest direct allocation to law enforcement nationwide. And they do not have to account for how they spend it.

Note: Explore past news articles we've summarized on opioids, a crisis fueled by US drug companies and captured government agencies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.

In response to a spate of coups by U.S.-trained military personnel in West Africa and the greater Sahel, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has authored an amendment to the 2024 defense spending bill to collect information on trainees who overthrow their governments. It would require the Pentagon for the first time to inform Congress about U.S.-mentored mutineers. "The Department of Defense, up until this point, has not kept data regarding the people they train who participate in coups to overthrow democratically elected – or any – governments," said Gaetz. The Intercept has found that at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror. At least five leaders of the Niger coup in late July received American training. They, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as governors. The Intercept identified more than 70 other African military personnel involved in coups since 2001 who might have received U.S. training or assistance, but when provided with names, State Department spokespeople either failed to respond or replied, "We do not have the ability to provide records for these historical cases." Gaetz's proposed legislation ... would require the defense secretary to submit a report listing "the number of partner countries whose military forces have participated in security cooperation training or equipping programs or received security assistance training."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the military from reliable major media sources.

Anthony Fauci, who was previously the top public health official leading the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic, will be joining the faculty at Georgetown University, in Washington DC. University officials announced in a statement on Monday that Fauci will join as a "distinguished university professor" in the university's School of Medicine and McCourt School of Public Policy. Fauci and his family have deep connections to Georgetown. Fauci's wife, Christine Grady, is a Georgetown alumnus. The couple were also married at Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart, a chapel on Georgetown's campus. All three of Fauci's children were born at Georgetown University hospital. In December, Fauci, 82, stepped down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases after serving for 38 years, to "pursue the next chapter" of his career, though not naming what that would entail. Fauci is, arguably, the country's leading expert on infectious diseases. He has served under seven presidents, providing guidance on infectious disease outbreaks in the US, including Ebola and the HIV/Aids epidemic. In 2008, Fauci was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his "determined and aggressive efforts to help others live longer and healthier lives" in efforts to address the HIV/Aids epidemic.

Note: Significant concerns surround Fauci and his part in the rising "biosecurity state," given his controversial past in shaping public health policy that put corporate profits and the special interests of US intelligence over the health of the people. Read a compelling investigation that explores the extensive financial and political relationship between the CIA and Georgetown University, often considered the number one school for CIA recruits. Not only does the investigation reveal how Georgetown teaching staff is filled with former CIA agents and spies, the article makes a solid case for the CIA's continued role in covertly shaping public opinion through propaganda and disinformation.

When Edward Snowden blew the whistle on mass surveillance by the US government, he traded a comfortable existence in Hawaii, the paradise of the Pacific, for indefinite exile in Russia, now a pariah in much of the world. But 10 years after Snowden was identified as the source of the biggest National Security Agency (NSA) leak in history, it is less clear whether America underwent a similarly profound transformation in its attitude to safeguarding individual privacy. Was his act of self-sacrifice worth it – did he make a difference? On 6 June 2013, the Guardian published the first story based on Snowden's disclosures, revealing that a secret court order was allowing the US government to get Verizon to share the phone records of millions of Americans. The impact was dramatic. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, who earlier that year had testified to Congress that the NSA did not collect data on millions of Americans, was forced to apologise and admit that his statement had been "clearly erroneous". The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a constitutional lawsuit in federal court. It eventually led to a ruling that held the NSA telephone collection program was and always had been illegal, a significant breakthrough given that national security surveillance programs had typically been insulated from judicial review. You will not find any coherent statement by any US security official that says clearly what harm was done by these disclosures.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

This week, Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donald tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. "For those in the press, this easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here," he pleaded. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined "Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden." For many of us, it was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren. The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as "Russian disinformation" before the election. That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic. But the media then ignored what was on that "authentic laptop." Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries. The media simply fails to see the story.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

Frank Forrester Church sat in the US Senate for 24 years. He battled for civil rights and came to oppose the Vietnam war. He believed Americans were citizens, not subjects. Chairing the intelligence select committee was his most enduring accomplishment. James Risen, a Pulitzer-winning reporter now with the Intercept, sees him as a hero. The Last Honest Man is both paean and lament. "For decades ... the CIA's operations faced only glancing scrutiny from the White House, and virtually none from Congress," Risen writes. "True oversight would have to wait until 1975, and the arrival on the national stage of a senator from Idaho, Frank Church." For 16 months, Church and his committee scrutinized the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and their many abuses. Political assassinations, covert operations and domestic surveillance finally received scrutiny and oversight. A plot to kill Fidel Castro, with an assist from organized crime, made headlines. So did the personal ties that bound John F Kennedy, mob boss Sam Giancana and their shared mistress, Judith Campbell Exner. Giancana was murdered before he testified. Before John Rosselli, another mobster, could make a third appearance, his decomposed body turned up in a steel fuel drum near Miami. Against this grizzly but intriguing backdrop, Risen's book is aptly subtitled: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys – And One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy.

Note: Read more about James Risen's courageous reporting on the intelligence community. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

The government of Saudi Arabia is an investor in the private company that owns a virtual monopoly on software that powers Democratic candidates – including management of the Democratic National Committee's all-important voter list. Sanabil Investments, the company that manages Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, recently published its first list of investments. The list includes two private equity firms involved two years ago in the sale and acquisition of EveryAction and NGP VAN, the companies that make up the Democratic Party's campaign tech apparatus. Federal regulations are designed to stop sovereign wealth funds from interfering in domestic politics. If a particular investment includes a national security risk, federal regulators can force the transaction to be undone through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States under the Department of the Treasury. Most of that risk is typically mitigated because sovereign wealth funds tend to be invested in companies through intermediaries. Investment in a company that deals with data related to voting and politics could be of potential concern to the Committee on Foreign Investment, even if the investor has no real influence over relevant data. The Sanabil investment doesn't mean the Saudi government has an interest in the functions of the companies. Instead, said progressive strategist Gabe Tobias, the disclosure is a further indication that the fate of EveryAction and NGP VAN is not a priority for their owners.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on elections corruption from reliable major media sources.

The Georgia Army National Guard plans to combine two deeply controversial practices – military recruiting at schools and location-based phone surveillance – to persuade teens to enlist, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept. The federal contract materials outline plans by the Georgia Army National Guard to geofence 67 different public high schools throughout the state, targeting phones found within a one-mile boundary of their campuses with recruiting advertisements "with the intent of generating qualified leads of potential applicants for enlistment while also raising awareness of the Georgia Army National Guard." Geofencing refers generally to the practice of drawing a virtual border around a real-world area. The ad campaign will make use of a variety of surveillance advertising techniques, including capturing the unique device IDs of student phones, tracking pixels, and IP address tracking. It will also plaster recruiting solicitations across Instagram, Snapchat, streaming television, and music apps. The campaign plans not only call for broadcasting recruitment ads to kids at school, but also for pro-Guard ads to follow these students around as they continue using the internet and other apps, a practice known as retargeting. While the state's plan specifies targeting only high school juniors and seniors ages 17 and above, demographic ad targeting is known to be error prone, and experts told The Intercept it's possible the recruiting messages could reach the phones of younger children.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

A 2020 reform law was supposed to remake the way the California juvenile justice system looks. "De-escalation rooms" stocked with essential oils and weighted blankets are among the changes some county youth facilities have been pushed to install. It was all part of an effort to make the system less punitive and more therapeutic. But this air of change might be news to young people held in Los Angeles County, where this week, California Attorney General Rob Bonta asked a state judge to sanction local officials for what he called "illegal and unsafe conditions." County officials across the state pushed back against the 2020 law – which phased out state-run juvenile facilities in favor of county-run ones. Tasked with rolling out the changes, local officials formed a multi-county non-profit organization – not subject to public information laws – to share resources and data. Some local advocates worry that this approach is creating a "shadow jury and justice system that operates outside of the public," reports the Sacramento Bee. The way this has played out in California may be instructive to Texas, where some lawmakers are seeking a similar overhaul for a juvenile system long-plagued by abusive conditions and mismanagement. As in California, county juvenile justice officials in Texas oppose the changes. A recent report from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found 1,762 confirmed incidents of young people being sexually harassed, abused, or assaulted in juvenile facilities between 2013 and 2018.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.

A set of secret national security documents burst into public view last week. The intelligence documents appear to have entered the public domain in an unusual way – someone began sharing them, starting late last year, on an obscure Discord server called Thug Shaker Central. The alleged leaker, Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested. It is traditional for the government to exaggerate the alleged harms of classified information becoming public, and this appears to be happening again. The real problem isn't what's leaked, but what's classified. Almost every news story about the latest disclosures has noted that the Pentagon and other government agencies will now put tighter lids on secret documents, even though, as historian Matthew Connelly points out in his new book, "The Declassification Engine," the government already puts way too much material behind its moat. In fact, the human harm caused by unauthorized leaks is almost always inflicted by the government itself in the form of egregious prosecutions of leakers. Although Snowden, [Chelsea] Manning, and, more recently, Reality Winner, revealed secrets that the public had a right to know, the government charged all of them under the draconian Espionage Act. While Snowden sought safety in Russia, Manning served seven years in prison (she was originally sentenced to 35 years), and Winner was sentenced to more than five years for leaking just a single document.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

Across Ukraine's vast expanse, there are thought to be 174,000 square kilometres which are contaminated by landmines. It is an area of land larger than England, Wales and Northern Ireland combined. In the war-scarred Kharkiv region, warning signs occasionally appear next to brown, barren fields which were once front lines. Even more infrequent is the sight of demining teams sweeping their metal detectors across small, taped-off areas. A literal scratching of the surface. More landmines have been found in the Kharkiv region than anywhere else in Ukraine. The Russians deployed landmines to both defend their positions and slow the Ukrainians. After leaving in a rush, a lethal footprint was left behind. In the small town of Balakliya, on a patch of land next to an apartment block, Oleksandr Remenets' team have already found six anti-personnel mines. They'd earlier uncovered around 200 nearby. "My family calls me every morning to tell me to watch where I tread," he says. "One of our guys lost his foot last year." The day after we spoke, another member of his team was wounded by a mine. Since September, 121 civilians have been injured in the Kharkiv region alone, according to the State Emergency Service. 29 were killed. More than 55,000 explosives have been found in the area. So-called butterfly mines [are] the most common in the area. They're only three to four inches wide, propeller shaped, and are scattered from a rocket. They're banned by international law. That hasn't stopped them from being used in this war.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

It had been 15 years since the U.S. invaded Iraq when, on March 19, 2018, the celebrated Iraqi novelist and poet Sinan Antoon published a blistering op-ed in The New York Times. He took readers through his observations of the steady deterioration of Iraqi society since the war began, but the most scathing words came toward the end. "No one knows for certain how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago," Antoon wrote. "Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again. The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in the United States as a ‘blunder,' or even a ‘colossal mistake.' It was a crime. Those who perpetrated it are still at large." That the invasion was not just a moral catastrophe but an egregious war crime has been echoed by everyone from United Nations heads to human rights leaders. With the 20th anniversary of the invasion now approaching, the sanitizing of the war's major culprits – or, at the very least, the soft forgetting of their crimes – continues. As the very top decision-makers faded into retirement, the next layer of war pushers, enablers and overseers – the top defense and national security officials and the celebrity generals – went on to profit immensely following their leadership of an illegal war, darting through the revolving door to snag coveted corporate board seats and prestigious university appointments. Many of them remain in these positions with defense industry giants, tech firms and Wall Street investors today.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and war from reliable major media sources.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation regularly seizes cash, cars and other valuables that belong to people who aren't accused of any crimes. Months later, many of those people receive a dense, boilerplate notice stating that the FBI plans to keep their property forever, without any explanation of why–a blatantly unconstitutional practice. That's what happened to Linda Martin. When the FBI took her life savings from a safe-deposit box during a 2021 raid of US Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, Calif., she assumed her money would be returned. The company's alleged wrongdoing had nothing to do with her. But several months later, she–and hundreds of other innocent people who had their safe-deposit boxes taken–received a notice stating that the government wanted to forfeit her money. The [notice] didn't accuse Ms. Martin of any crime or even lay out why the FBI was trying to take her property. The FBI sends out similarly inscrutable notices whenever it wants to forfeit property, in a clear violation of the Fifth Amendment. Federal agencies keep the proceeds from forfeited property. In the US Private Vaults case, the FBI admitted under oath that even before the raid occurred it had decided to pursue property forfeiture against everything worth over $5,000 in the renters' boxes. Using federal forfeiture records, the Institute for Justice calculated that from 2017 to 2021 Justice Department agencies gained more than $8 billion through forfeiture, with the FBI taking in more than $1.19 billion of that bounty.

Note: Read more about the government's theft of private property under civil asset forfeiture rules. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.

Last week, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides appeared to endorse a plan for Israel to attack Iranian nuclear facilities with U.S. support. Nides's words come after recent high-level military drills between Israel and the United States intended to showcase the ability to strike Iranian targets, as well as recent acts of sabotage and assassination inside Iran believed to have been carried out by both countries. The Israeli escalations mean that the U.S. now faces the unsavory prospect of a major crisis flaring up in the Middle East at the exact moment when its bandwidth is already stretched thin because of a major war in Europe and its deteriorating relationship with China. "The decision to leave the JCPOA ... allowed Iran to restart its nuclear program and raise once again the question of what the U.S., Israel, or anyone else might do about it," said Stephen Walt ... at the Harvard Kennedy School, referring to the nuclear deal by the initials of its former name, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The nuclear deal was intended to avoid the Middle East confrontation now visible on the horizon. Signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, the deal traded strict limits on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for its reintegration into the global economy. When President Donald Trump violated the deal ... this pragmatic arrangement went out the window – not only removing limits on Iran's nuclear program, but also politically empowering hard-liners inside Iran who had balked at negotiating in the first place.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Since U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf began his second tenure as the agency's head in February 2022, he has made combating "misinformation" one of his top priorities, arguing it is "a leading cause of preventable death in America now" – though "this cannot be proved," he said. In an interview ... Califf, who also headed the FDA between 2016 and 2017, reiterated his pledge to "save lives" by policing online content. The FDA may be facing an uphill battle, as multiple factors are combining to foster public mistrust toward the agency. For instance, in January, Frank Yiannas, the FDA's deputy commissioner for food policy and response, resigned over concerns about the FDA's oversight structure. A 2022 study by The BMJ found that the FDA gets 65% of its funding for drug evaluation from industry user fees, while another 2022 study found that 95% of the members of an HHS committee that establishes dietary guidelines for Americans have one or more conflicts of interest with industry actors. Members of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee have also been found to have conflicts of interest with the very pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers they are meant to be regulating. And while public health authorities in other countries have begun to come forward with admissions that the COVID-19 vaccines resulted in cases of myocarditis and death, no such admissions appear to be forthcoming from the FDA at this time.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

American policing is plagued with many problems, but when it comes to the inappropriate use of violence, one culprit is weaknesses in the selection of police officers and in academy training. Better selection and better training can reduce the problem of police brutality, and one strategy for improving both is expanding the use of police apprenticeships as an alternative to the traditional police academy. Unlike the shorter police academies, future officers serve as apprentices or cadets for a two-to-three-year program involving comprehensive learning through years of field experience and classroom instruction. Most officers spend far less time receiving field training than they do in a classroom, where they are insulated from the realities of police work. While average training in the U.S. is about 20 weeks in the academy and 13 weeks of field training, Japan's officers undergo 15 and 21 months of training, and many European countries require two to three years of training, much of which is in the field. Moreover, other countries emphasize communications and interpersonal skills far more than the U.S. does. In Switzerland, psychological training and "softer" qualities are considered essential for a professional police officer, and the recruit curriculum focuses largely on appreciation of emotion, sensibility, and understanding of a variety of situations. In Scotland, communication skills are emphasized throughout the recruit curriculum, particularly when teaching de-escalation skills and dealing with people in crisis.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.

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