Decertification of Police: An Alternative to Traditional Remedies for Police Misconduct

Abstract

This article is the first in-depth examination of revocation of peace officer licenses for citizen abuse. Unlike the more familiar remedy of terminating the officer’s employment, license revocation, more commonly called decertification, has the advantage of disabling the officer from continuing to work in other departments within the state, just as occurs for myriad other professions and occupations. To determine what type of misconduct led to revocation, a file search was made of all revocations by the Florida Criminal Justices Standards and Training Commission during the time period October 1976 – October 1983. Florida was selected because it has been a national leader in decertification. Of the cases involving citizen abuse, the majority involved extorting money or sex in exchange for not arresting the citizen and demanding sex outright. None of the cases involved gathering evidence in violation of the Fourth Amendment and thus the exclusionary rule would not have come into play. The article concludes that it would therefore be inadvisable for the Supreme Court to rely on decertification as an effective remedy for Fourth Amendment violations.