THE MOBBING PORTAL

Cops and Mobbers

Resources in this section deal specifically with workplace mobbing in law enforcement.
As an introduction to the topic, we open with an excerpt from the book The Envy of Excellence:
Administrative Mobbing of High-Achieving Professors by Kenneth Westhues.

Police officers are skilled in nailing people. They have to be. It is part of their job. They are expected to use their skills even against one of their own, if an officer breaks the law. Yet sometimes they use their skills against a law abiding officer who threatens the powers that be.
I have studied at length the two-year ordeal of a veteran Ontario officer. He is a straight-arrow type, a man who defines integrity as what you are in the dark, and who quotes Lord Acton about absolute power corrupting absolutely. When he learned of what appeared to be wrongdoings in the higher ranks, this officer gathered the documentation and reported it to the police watchdog and to the Ministry of the Solicitor General.
The brass pounced: subjected the whistleblower (see Martin 1999b) to hours of interrogation in the middle of the night, demanded a written report he had no time to prepare, and hired a psychologist who pronounced the man mentally ill, without having spoken to him. Two months later, the officer was suspended, required to turn in his badge and gun, charged with insubordination, breach of confidence, and discreditable conduct, and told to get counselling. Rumors circulated about what terrible things the officer must have done.
True to his police training, this mobbing target was exceptionally cool under fire. He was intellectually equiped, moreover, to understand what was going on and fight back. These personal qualitites, and the support of fellow officers, family and friends, sustained him. His disciplinary hearing lasted one day before dissolving into two years of legal wrangling. In the end, the charges against him were stayed. He lost a day's pay. It was a modest victory. The concerns that got him in troube in the first place were not acted upon.
This officer reminds me of Danny Coulson who arrested Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing.
After 29 years with the FBI, Coulson was suspended in 1995. He was not told what the charges were. Two years later the prosecution backed off. Coulson quit.

-Kenneth Westhues, The Envy of Excellence: Administrative
Mobbing of High-Achieving Professors Lewiston: NY:
The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004, 2006