The police badge should be a shield for the public, not a cloak for predators. Yet across America, a dangerous undercurrent flows beneath the thin blue line: officers fired for brutality, lies, theft, even criminal acts, are quietly recycled back onto the streets where they often dishonor the badge again. They are known as “wandering officers,” drifting from one police department to another, their tainted records obscured by secrecy laws, shielded by powerful unions, and enabled by desperate hiring practices. 

Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Tyre Nichols, Sonya Massey—their names echo as tragic monuments to a system that not only fails to expel its worst actors but actively facilitates their return. How does an officer deemed unfit, fired for falsifying reports, beating citizens, or even facilitating a fatal raid, simply slip into uniform again in the next town over? The answer lies in a broken structure of accountability—a labyrinth of lenient arbitrators, concealed misconduct files, and impoverished departments forced to hire from the disciplinary scrap heap. This isn’t about a few “bad apples.” It’s about a rotten orchard, where the mechanisms designed to protect communities instead shield the very individuals who betray them. The revolving door spins, justice stalls, and the public pays the price—often with their lives.

Before leaving office, President Biden enacted the Federal Prison Oversight Act, aimed at enhancing much-­needed transparency and accountability in federal detention centers and the private entities that operate them. He did not address any proposal for a bill to force law enforcement agencies nationwide to better track fired rogue officers who drift from agency to agency while engaging in unlawful beatings and shootings of citizens. Such officers sometimes falsify government documents, lie in criminal cases, and commit theft, drug use, and assault. In many cases, these problematic officers are hired, allowed to resign, and then rehired to continue their misconduct.

At a minimum, police departments tasked with safeguarding and serving the community should be obligated to root out corrupt officers from their ranks, ensuring that police authority is accompanied by accountability. While it is not a frequent occurrence, some law enforcement personnel do make efforts to identify and remove problematic officers.

Since 2006, the largest police forces in the nation have dismissed over 1,881 officers for actions ranging from ethically dubious to outright immoral. These individuals should be required to seek employment in fields where they cannot betray public trust or, in some instances, jeopardize community safety.

However, a Washington Post investigation reveals that in at least 450 of these instances, officers were rehired or reinstated to the force. The Post sought data on hiring and firing from the 55 largest police departments in the country, with 37 responding. Time and again, investigators found that officer terminations were reversed during the appeals process, often despite undisputed misconduct.

Arbitrators hold significant authority in the cases they examine and can override decisions made by police chiefs and other officials, even when an officer’s culpability is clearly established. Reinstatement can occur for various reasons, including procedural mistakes and other technicalities. In some cases, even officers who faced significant criminal allegations were permitted to return to their positions because arbitrators deemed the penalties too severe.

A Nationally Growing Problem

In January 2021, Officer Myles Cosgrove from Louisville, Kentucky, was terminated for violating standard operating procedures regarding the use of deadly force in the shooting of Breonna Taylor. He was hired by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office in 2022. Cosgrove discharged 16 rounds when officers entered Taylor’s apartment during a narcotics operation on March 13, 2020. Her boyfriend, unaware they were officers, returned fire with his legally permitted weapon, prompting the officers to shoot back, resulting in Taylor’s death in the hallway.

Neither Cosgrove nor the other officer whose bullet struck Taylor faced homicide or manslaughter charges, as the Kentucky Attorney General determined the officers acted in self-­defense. Officers failed to activate their mandatory body cameras during the warrant service, which violated department policy. In November 2022, the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council voted not to revoke Cosgrove’s certification, allowing him to seek employment elsewhere. In May 2023, a Kentucky Appeals Court upheld Cosgrove’s firing from the Louisville Metro Police Department, citing his failure to follow protocol.

The issue of officers retaining their positions or being rehired after committing serious job-­related misconduct is alarmingly prevalent. In August 2021, Wisconsin Public Radio reported that approximately 200 officers who had been terminated or resigned amid misconduct probes were still employed by the state. This reflects a troubling lack of judgment or information on the part of the hiring agency. Research, including a study published in the Yale Law Journal, has shown that officers previously fired are more likely to be fired again or face complaints regarding “moral character violations.”

The case of Timothy Loehmann is a classic example of a wandering officer. Loehmann shot and killed 12-­year-­old Tamir Rice in Cleveland in 2014. He had previously resigned from the Independence Police Department in Ohio after being deemed unfit for duty due to emotional instability. The Cleveland Police Department hired him without thoroughly reviewing his personnel file. In a different case, in April 2006, Eddie Boyd III resigned from his position as an officer in St. Louis, Missouri, after striking a 12-­year-­old girl in the face with his gun or handcuffs and claiming it was accidental. Boyd was employed by a St. Ann, Missouri, police agency shortly thereafter and later moved to Ferguson, Missouri—the town where Michael Brown was shot to death by an officer in 2014.

Florida’s German Bosque, referred to as “Florida’s Worst Cop,” was fired for multiple infractions, including excessive force and falsifying reports, and was rehired seven times. Bosque’s last body camera footage showed him coaching a subordinate to hide evidence. Additional charges included theft from suspects and abusing police firearms.

As observed by Ben Grunwald, a professor at Duke University’s law school, hiring organizations occasionally desire someone with a reputation as a “cowboy cop.”

The “Buffalo 57” refers to 57 police officers who resigned in solidarity after two of their colleagues were suspended for pushing a 75-­year-­old protester to the ground in Buffalo, New York, in June 2020. The “Atlanta 6” are a group of law enforcement officers charged with felonies after assaulting two college students during Black Lives Matter protests in Atlanta in May 2020. The local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police in Brevard County posted on Facebook in 2020 that it was open to hiring officers like the “Buffalo 57” and “Atlanta 6” in Brevard County, Florida, as part of an advertisement to attract controversial officers.

Multiple factors contribute to this dangerous trend. Robert Miller, the chief deputy in Carroll County, was aware of Myles Cosgrove’s record when he hired him. In some cases, administrative errors or oversights occur. Subpar background checks are also common. The arbitration system is a significant factor. None of these excuses suffice when the issue involves recruiting state agents permitted to use deadly force legally.

Are Officers Adequately Trained to Avoid Excessive Force?

A Washington Post-­ABC poll conducted in early 2023 revealed that only 39% of respondents were confident that police are adequately trained to avoid using excessive force, the lowest level since polling began in 2014. Similarly, a 2022 Gallup poll found that only 45% of surveyed Americans were generally confident in police, lower than in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

Recent deaths at the hands of police, such as those of Jayland Walker, Roderick Brooks, Tamir Rice, Patrick Lyoya, Amir Locke, Ronald Greene, Laquan McDonald, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and Sonya Massey—a Black mother who sought assistance from law enforcement—serve as tragic reminders of the pressing need for further reforms at both federal and state levels. This issue extends beyond racial justice and fairness; it is also vital for maintaining ethics and transparency within government.

For instance, Portland, Oregon, spent nearly $1 million in legal expenses, engaged two mayors and a police chief, and endured years of conflict with the police union to uphold the termination of Officer Ron Frashour—only to ultimately reinstate him. Today, this veteran officer, who shot an unarmed Black man in the back in 2010, remains on the force.

Many unfit police officers may be fired from one agency for serious misconduct or even a crime, then rehired, fired again, and continue to work as police officers by drifting from one agency to another. The arbitration system often contributes to officers being rehired after being fired, keeping problematic officers on the force. Such actions lead to citizens’ outrage and distrust of the police system.

Officer Jarrett Gilbert at the Georgetown, Texas, Police Department, in an interview with a Washington Post reporter, said of the Portland Police Department, “Like many departments across the country, they are understaffed and struggling with recruiting.”

Sam Adams, the former mayor of Portland, expressed that the unsuccessful disciplinary attempts in Frashour’s case revealed “how little authority we had” over the police. “This was the worst aspect of government I had ever witnessed. The government can kill someone and escape accountability.”

In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, police departments are now confronting new state legislation, ballot initiatives, and procedures aimed at curbing abusive conduct. Cities like Portland have appointed new chiefs and are enhancing civilian oversight. Some municipal officials have reacted more swiftly than ever to prominent claims of misconduct: so far, over 40 officers have been dismissed for excessive force or racist actions.

Police Reform

The rampant use of unlawful force by police officers highlights a critical need for improved transparency and accountability in law enforcement. State laws exacerbate the challenge by restricting access to police misconduct records. This lack of transparency protects problematic officers from scrutiny and prevents accountability.

For example, police departments in New York State continue to fight against the release of unsubstantiated or unproven police misconduct records, despite the 2020 repeal of a state law that previously allowed only the release of substantiated allegations or those that led to an officer’s discipline.

In 2021, the Illinois legislature passed a bill aimed at requiring more expansive reporting of officer misconduct to the state’s Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board. However, a last-­minute amendment restricted public and court access to statewide police misconduct records, forcing requesters to file state Freedom of Information Act requests with each of the nearly 900 Illinois law enforcement agencies. Additionally, police misconduct records are sealed after four years under Illinois law, rendering public access nearly impossible.

Politically powerful police unions, which have historically used collective bargaining and political donations to influence policies and procedures that shield officers from accountability, consistently resist calls for reform. As a result of this considerable political influence, many officers who commit violations, even serious ones, retain their badges.

However, there is a path forward to mitigate these systemic failures. The Special Inspector General for Law Enforcement Act is a strong starting point. This federal law would create a special inspector general to investigate misconduct at every level of law enforcement and protect whistleblowers from retaliation. It aims to shatter the code of silence and address conflicts in internal investigations. The Ending Qualified Immunity Act, another systemic reform, would allow civil lawsuits against public officials personally to deter instances of misconduct, ensuring real accountability.

Accountability must go hand in hand with transparency to be truly effective, and legislative vehicles are needed to ensure this. For example, Maryland passed model legislation that promotes adequate transparency measures by granting public access to police misconduct records for free or at minimal cost. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would tackle abuses head-­on by creating a public National Police Misconduct Registry, establishing a centralized database on police complaints and wrongdoing, making it easier to track behavior patterns and hold officers accountable.

All law enforcement agencies should be required to use the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, designed to improve hiring, promotion, and retention by tracking criminal convictions, suspensions, terminations, civil judgments, and other complaints of serious misconduct.

Recruiting Challenges

While horrific cases of police misconduct have garnered nationwide attention, they are just the tip of the iceberg. Many officers who have wrongfully killed people already had other misconduct violations. While the Federal Prison Oversight Act provides new tools for accountability in the criminal justice system, more reform is needed.

Two years ago, the San Francisco Police Department was short by over 600 officers, nearly 30 percent of its full strength. The Phoenix, Arizona, Police Department requires approximately 500 additional officers to achieve full staffing, according to a 2023 Arizona Republic article. The police force in Washington, D.C., is at its smallest in half a century, even with rising concerns over gun violence and carjackings, as officers depart faster than they can be recruited.

Law enforcement agencies nationwide face challenges in maintaining personnel levels, leading many current and former officials to describe the situation as a potential public safety crisis. Proponents of police reform view this as an opportunity to recruit a new generation of officers and rethink policing strategies. Yet, as departments seek new hires, they encounter a decline in qualified candidates compared to previous years, prompting some to take the risky step of lowering hiring standards to bolster their numbers. Deputy recruits are undergoing training at the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office academy in Daytona Beach, Florida.

“We’re having to work really hard to fill what we have,” said Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County, Illinois (quoted in the Chicago Tribune), whose department is short more than 300 sworn officers. “And we’re still not filling at the rate we would want.” To make matters worse, police officers in that department are often tasked with manning the local jail, which is also chronically understaffed.

With over 5,000 detainees in Cook County Jail, officials cannot afford to cut corners for safety reasons, so the patrol division often runs understaffed, Dart said in an interview. Smaller police departments in the county’s villages and towns are also short-­handed. Sheriff Dart has been asked to assist with those shortages as well.

“Before, I’d occasionally get a department that needed help on a weekend or something like that,” Dart said. “Now, I get departments calling to ask me to cover entire shifts for them, sometimes for weeks, because they just don’t have the personnel.”

Christy E. Lopez, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who served in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 2010 to 2017, said this is not encouraging for the future of law enforcement. “Dart’s situation doesn’t look good,” she said. Lopez played a key role in assisting departments shaken by wrongdoing in negotiating court-­approved reform programs.

Lopez added that, despite advising departments, the Justice Department rarely emphasized hiring. According to Lopez, high staffing targets can create a culture that prioritizes retaining officers over accountability and lowers academy standards.

“You really want to avoid putting the department under pressure to get people on the street,” Lopez said. “Leadership becomes so worried about people leaving and ‘officer morale’ that they avoid actions that upset them, like disciplining officers. That has disastrous consequences.”

Among the 239 agencies that responded to the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police’s request to assess their personnel issues last year, 60% reported being understaffed, and 19% stated they were short more than 10% of their budget. In 2020 and 2021, transfers from other agencies accounted for about half of all new hires, a sharp and unprecedented increase. According to the Washington Post, Illinois police chiefs admitted in an anonymous poll that they had relaxed recruiting standards to address the shortages.

Lower Standards

As street violence increased since 2017, then-­Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland announced a recruitment drive for his police force due to a staffing shortage. A Washington Post article states that the city lowered training standards in response to pressure to graduate more officers. Among those hired were five officers who were later charged with the beating death of Tyre Nichols in January 2023 and subsequently fired.

Lopez explains that many departments do not feel the full effects of lowering hiring requirements for years. She supports eliminating targeted and saturation policing and supplementing emergency responders with mental health professionals.

“This is a very difficult job that few people can do well,” Lopez added. “If you’re just trying to hire more and more people, it becomes less likely that those ranks will be filled—or even half-­filled—with people who have the unique skills required.”

Fast Recruiting

Cities have increased recruitment drives, reduced entrance requirements, established hiring bonuses, and broadened their regional recruitment focus to fill their police academies. Many agencies have invested city funds in advertising, a tactic that proponents of police reform caution may backfire unless the advertisements convey a fresh message about the primary motivation for becoming a police officer.

Cory Tchida, the police chief of Georgetown, Texas, has said in interviews that law enforcement needs a rebrand, seeking recruits who thrive on community engagement. Tchida, whose department is located in a suburb of Austin, said it was 10 percent short of its budgeted roster. He stressed the need for law enforcement rebranding. “We need to start selling the sense of purpose over the sense of adventure,” he said, referencing a webinar presentation by former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best.

“You hear old-­school cops say, ‘It’s not my job to be a social worker,’” Tchida said. “Bro, that is the vast majority of your job. You’re definitely a social worker.”

Police Departments Spending ‘Hundreds of Thousands’
on Recruitment

Sam Blonder, co-­founder of Epic Productions, a Phoenix-­based producer of media, including digital marketing videos, said the police recruiting wing of his business has exploded since George Floyd was killed in the custody of Minneapolis police.

Departments that once relied on simple photo shoots featuring K-­9 units and SWAT teams are now spending up to $500,000 to produce cinematic renditions of police work. “They’ve never had this kind of need before,” Blonder said in a Washington Post interview. “In the past, they would put an ad in the newspaper, 5,000 people would show up, and they just had their pick of the litter.”

In some cases, police departments are recruiting from other law enforcement agencies (lateral recruiting), which used to be rare. Tchida recounted an instance of the Austin Police Department sending recruiters to smaller agencies elsewhere. “You never had to compete with or try to steal from other agencies before. Now we’re desperate to hire. The challenge is to avoid hiring desperately.”

Kenny Winslow, a former Springfield, Illinois, police chief who now heads the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, said the changing political environment in liberal areas has left many veteran officers disillusioned.

His traditionally blue state is losing officers to more conservative states like Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, and Iowa. In Illinois border towns, Winslow said, the allure of more conservative communities, legislatures, and prosecutors has been enticing to law enforcement veterans.

Criminals in Uniform

In March 2022, Greg Marohn was hired as a law enforcement officer by the Holly Police Department in Michigan, as reported by ABC 7 Detroit. Less than a year and a half earlier, he had “resigned in lieu of termination” from Michigan’s Oakland County Sheriff’s Department. Why was Marohn forced to resign instead of being fired? That’s difficult to determine; there were plenty of reasons from which to choose.

It could be due to his “poor driving record,” which he allegedly mentioned to Holly Police Chief Jerry Narsh when hired. Perhaps it was because he confessed to illegally acquiring prescription drugs while on duty. It could also be that he was recorded using racial slurs in public.

ABC 7 Detroit reported that on December 4, 2020, the dashcam in Marohn’s police vehicle activated and captured footage of him. The camera activates automatically when an officer’s vehicle exceeds 90 MPH.

With his dashcam recording, Marohn was heard sending a voice-­to-­text message from his phone. “I’m going to need a few minutes or I don’t know what,” Marohn said. “I need to go to the bank, so it’s kind of messed up right now. I have enough to loan you the hundred.” Marohn, officials would learn, was sending texts to a man he later admitted he was purchasing Schedule II narcotics from without a prescription. “Loan you the hundred, and then I’ll have to get it out and give the money to you tomorrow,” Marohn was recorded saying into his phone, “unless you have it and you have the pills already or whatever you did.” Marohn later admitted to meeting the man on duty, in uniform. The dashcam captured more.

While arranging the meetup, Deputy Marohn passed a woman walking her dog and was recorded using racial slurs. “(Expletive) you (expletive). Little evil (expletive),” he said aloud. “Imagine this (expletive) monkey, or whatever you are, Hispanic, or (n-­word). They live in a nice house and think they’re something,” Marohn groused.

After the recording emerged, Marohn became the subject of an internal affairs inquiry and eventually acknowledged purchasing drugs while working in uniform at least 10 times previously.

The sheriff’s office took action to fire Marohn after the investigation concluded, but ultimately, the sheriff reported to the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards that he “resigned in lieu of termination” for “conduct unbecoming.”

So, how did Marohn get reinstated as a police officer elsewhere? He was subsequently hired by the Holly Police Department. According to Holly Police Chief Jerry Narsh, “He was a good officer. He treated the people of Holly and the staff here with respect.” The fact that Holly is 93% White may have influenced perceptions, but it seems clear that Marohn hadn’t resolved his drug addiction. News media outlets reported Marohn showed up at his new employment on July 4, 2022, looking glassy-­eyed and impaired. Once behind the wheel, he couldn’t drive more than 10 mph, had “extreme difficulties” operating his police radio, and kept losing his phone. Marohn resigned again after acknowledging his unlawful drug use. The question remains: How did Marohn initially get rehired as a police officer?

“There was nothing specific or anything relating to addiction or medical issues discovered in his file,” Narsh said. Holly Police did investigate Marohn’s background, but it wasn’t thorough. Marohn’s Oakland County personnel file was examined by a background investigator, but they were not shown the investigation that led to his resignation. Subsequently, a county clerk denied Chief Narsh’s request for a copy, stating that the department does not make copies of internal investigations available. Narsh claims he accepted Marohn’s explanation without further investigation into why he left his previous position. Marohn indicated to Narsh that his departure was due to his poor driving history.

Elsewhere, the wandering officers’ issue gained attention in Arkansas when a viral video of a suspect being beaten by three officers during an arrest in Northwest Arkansas made national headlines in August 2022.

According to the Arkansas Advocate: “One of the officers, Thell Riddle of the Mulberry Police Department, was previously fired from one department after a pair of domestic disturbances and forced to resign from another after a series of problems. Another officer involved in the viral arrest, former Crawford County Deputy Zack King, had been reprimanded six times, including twice for excessive aggression with prisoners. King and another former deputy, Levi White, were charged with federal civil rights violations in January 2023 in connection with the viral arrest. Riddle has since been reinstated with the Mulberry Police Department.

In another stark example of wandering officers in Arkansas, an officer convicted of negligent homicide after shooting and killing a suspect in 2010 became the police chief in a neighboring town three years later.”

Arkansas remains 1 of 15 states that maintain the confidentiality of their officers’ identities.

Meanwhile, over 30 other states have edited or structured officer certification data to be shared with a collection of news organizations nationwide, including neighboring states like Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Missouri.

High transparency levels correlate with enhanced perceptions of legitimacy, compliance, and collaboration with law enforcement. Barriers to transparency hinder public accountability and contribute to perceptions of wantonness and criminality by police. Dave Tyler, an assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, stated in an interview with the Arkansas Advocate that, without publicly available data on police, “citizens can only judge the scale of the wandering officer problem by anecdotes.”

“There is significant value in having this level of transparency in our criminal justice system, not just from a political and philosophical standpoint but from a functional one,” he said. “High levels of transparency lead to greater perceived legitimacy, compliance, and collaboration with police. When the public has higher trust in the police, they are more likely to help and collaborate on various issues.”

Case Study: Robbins, Illinois, Police Department

Robbins, Illinois, faces challenges such as a weak commercial and industrial tax base, a declining population, and neglected infrastructure. Census data reveals that approximately 34% of the village’s residents live below the poverty line, and the city is millions of dollars in debt.

Struggling with limited property tax revenue, Robbins cannot offer its police officers competitive salaries, often resulting in hiring individuals fired from other police departments.

In an interview with the Atlanta Black Star, Robbins Mayor Darren Bryant said, “Sometimes we take what we can get” when hiring part-­time, low-­paid police officers. “Just because you got fired doesn’t mean you can’t grow or learn from your last job,” he said. “It’s almost a restorative practice.”

Unsurprisingly, Robbins PD has faced significant controversy for its hiring decisions. The department hired two officers fired from the Chicago Police Department for their roles in the Laquan McDonald case—one for lying in testimony and another whose history of misconduct must be disclosed to defense attorneys whenever he testifies in court. The latter was fired for submitting a vacation request with a forged signature of his police chief.

Officer Sharita Horton, who resigned in 2023, crashed into a private residence and was charged with DUI.

Antonio Madix was hired by the Robbins Police Department in 2022 after being arrested for domestic battery.

The Brady List is a national registry of police officers deemed untrustworthy in statements or testimony, affecting their reliability as witnesses. The name comes from the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), in which the Court established that the prosecution is required to disclose all exculpatory evidence to the defense in criminal cases.

Many Robbins officers are or have been on the Brady List. For instance, Janet Mondragon was fired from the Chicago PD after lying in an officer-­involved shooting investigation and concealing her relationship with one of the subjects of the investigation.

Larry Hall became chief of Robbins PD after losing his job as a police officer in the neighboring town of Flossmoor. Hall was terminated after beginning a sexual relationship with an 18-­year-­old woman he met while serving as a high school resource officer. The relationship was inappropriate, and Hall and his paramour had sex multiple times in his squad car and transported her while driving with his emergency lights activated.

Speaking to the Atlanta Black Star, reporter Casey Toner said, “Departments like Robbins that most often hire fired cops are at the mercy of diminished property tax bases to fund their operations. They pay just above minimum wage and hire fired cops who then use their status as police officers to secure higher-­paying private security jobs or salvage their policing careers before moving elsewhere. In turn, residents are often left with a police force that gets more attention for the misdeeds of its officers and the crimes it doesn’t solve than those it does.”

Former Robbins Police Commander Anthony Burnett, who left the part-­time department, noted that starting pay for patrol officers is just $15 per hour. This is a trend: smaller and poorer areas pay less and sometimes serve as a dumping ground for the unimpressive, incompetent, or disgraced. Poorer departments often rely on wealthier, better-­resourced ones to train officers and then collect the washouts, saving on training budgets but introducing new issues and risks. As Burnett said, “It’s pretty much that Robbins is the last resort.”

Bryant, the Robbins mayor, acknowledged the problems in the village’s police department after a video surfaced in 2021 showing Robbins Deputy Chief Byron Redmond drinking alcohol in his police office. Bryant issued a statement suspending Redmond because, in the Village of Robbins, “image matters.” Redmond was fired but later rehired as a sergeant and subsequently sued Bryant and the village. The lawsuit alleged other Robbins town administrators drank on the job, including Bryant, who lacked the authority to fire him.

Redmond said he was rehired after enough Robbins residents complained about his firing. He noted that, after being fired, locals still called him with crime tips because he had his “ears out there.” “Basically, I dealt with people appropriately,” he said. “I was very fair with people, and that’s why they wanted me back.” Bryant said in an interview that Redmond’s allegations were false but that he deserved a second chance, which is often the case for officers coming to Robbins. “I’ll say this, you need someone to respond,” he said. “It’s not like we don’t have anybody responding. It’s somebody rather than nobody.”

One former Robbins police officer, Clifton Heard, joined the department in 2016 after the University of Illinois-­Chicago Police Department fired him for an off-­duty fight in the Little Italy neighborhood in 2015, where he removed his duty weapon from his waistband and handed it to another officer, his then-­girlfriend, according to discipline records. In a deposition filed in his wrongful termination lawsuit, Heard said he earned twice as much in private security as he did in Robbins, where he made $10.25 per hour. For other fired officers, Robbins is a useful reentry point before moving on.

Since 2000, about 17% of all officers hired by the department—46 in total—joined or rejoined directly after being fired, according to state data. By comparison, the Chicago Police Department hired or rehired just 15 officers this way. Entry-­level pay for full-­time Chicago police officers begins at $54,600 and jumps to $82,500 within 18 months.

Robbins is in a situation similar to nearby impoverished “inner-­ring” suburbs of Chicago, such as Dixmoor, Markham, and Phoenix, which have hired or rehired 76 police officers directly after they were fired. This phenomenon is not unique to Cook County.

More than 16% of all police officers who worked in the former Southwestern Illinois town of Alorton came to the department after being fired in the past 24 years. Three years ago, Alorton merged with two nearby municipalities to become Cahokia Heights. Nearly 60% of Alorton residents lived below the poverty line before the merger. This is a brief survey of one exurban part of only one state. Extrapolate these challenges and multiply these examples by scores, and you begin to see the magnitude of the issue.

Conclusion

The revolving door of police accountability remains stubbornly and dangerously open. Myles Cosgrove, Timothy Loehmann, Greg Marohn, and countless others are not anomalies; they are symptoms of a system fundamentally broken. Shielded by lenient arbitrators, protected by powerful unions, hidden by sealed records and confidentiality laws, and ultimately recycled by departments desperate for warm bodies or indifferent to past transgressions, officers who betray the public trust find new badges with alarming ease. 

Places like Robbins, Illinois, become the dumping grounds for this toxic cycle, where impoverished communities pay the price twice: first in lost opportunity, then in policing by the disgraced and the dangerous. This is not merely a recruitment challenge or a public relations problem. It is a profound corrosion of justice. Until the structures enabling this wandering are dismantled and replaced with genuine, enforced transparency and accountability, the badge will continue to be worn by those who have already proven unworthy, and communities will continue to pay the ultimate price.  

Sources: Arkansas Advocate; Illinois Project; Reuters; The Washington Post; Casey Toner, Police Department for Hire, May 2024.

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