After a conversation on Twitter last month, I volunteered to collect examples of “good cops”, both to make them available for reference and to provide a forum where folks could add to the list.

I was reluctant to do so on Twitter, because that would allow any chud, cop apologist, white supremacist (sorry, getting redundant), to hijack the conversation. So, I decided to start the list here where anyone can comment, but I control whether or not those comments get seen (which also allows for anonymously adding to the list).

Unfortunately, all the examples I found of “good cops” — police who reported or tried to stop malfeasance by other cops — are no longer working in law enforcement. They had been killed, fired, suspended, or driven off the force.

Below I’ve listed (in order of the media reports I link to, not necessarily in order of occurrence) 19 “good cops” all of whom suffered repercussions for trying to do the right thing. They represent less than .003 percent of the approximately 697,000 full-time law enforcement officers employed in the United States.

If you know of a cop who, while on the force of a police or sheriff’s department in the United States during this century, spoke out against police brutality; reported another cop for malfeasance; interfered with/reported when a cop violated department policies, broke the law, and/or harmed someone; testified against a cop who was guilty of police brutality or other misconduct and who as a result was fired, killed, or driven off the force, and you have documentation, such as a link to a news stories in a “reputable” publication (which eliminates Faux News, social media, etc.), please share that information in the comments.*

• Shannon Spalding and Daniel Echeverria suffered “years of ostracism and intimidation at the hands of commanders and fellow officers” of the Chicago Police Department after they “were part of a 2012 investigation which led to charges against” two officers who were accused of stealing proceeds from drug dealers. Spalding and Echeverria filed a federal lawsuit because “‘My life, my safety my freedom was threatened,’ Spalding told NBC 5 Investigates. ‘I was subjected to daily harassment.'”
• Curt Stansbury was fired by the Wilmington (North Carolina) Police Department after sending a hostile workplace environment complaint to a city official. “I told him that rookies were being hazed and pressured to quit. I informed him that divisions were not communicating with each other and that the communication was at an all time low and that is cause of some of the violent crime issues.”
• Adrian Schoolcraft was forcibly hospitalized in the psychiatric ward at Jamaica Hospital by the New York City Police Department after recording conversations at the 81st Precinct which documented corruption and abuse within that precinct. He started recording those conversations after “he came to believe that the NYPD’s obsession with statistics was driving a wedge between police officers and the community”. He was suspended and harassed until, unable to get anyone in the NYPD to investigate his misconduct reports, he went public. The information on the tapes resulted in a series of articles in the Village Voice.
• Andrea Heath was demoted to trainee status, put on disability retirement, and driven to suicide by Desert Hot Springs police officers who retaliated against her for cooperating with an FBI investigation into use of excessive force. She “saw many Desert Hot Springs (California) officers ‘falsely arrest, beat, tase, pepper-spray and otherwise torture’ detainees and arrestees, according to court documents.”
• Max Seifert was forced into early retirement by the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department after investigating a road-rage incident and finding that a Kansas City man, Barron Bowling, was the victim of excessive force from a Drug Enforcement Agent and testifying for the defense when Bowling was falsely charged with felony criminal damage to property. “Seifert was shunned, subjected to gossip and defamation by his police colleagues and treated as a pariah”. It should be noted that the DEA agent, Tim McCue, was promoted to a recruiter for the agency, despite an $833,250 jury award against him for the injuries he inflicted on Bowling and a Federal judge’s opinion that “much of McCue’s testimony in the case lacked credibility”. Meanwhile, the retaliation against Seifert followed him to a civilian job with the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office.
• Christopher Dorner was stripped of his badge by the Los Angeles Police Department after reporting his training officer for kicking a houseless man in a misuse of force, went berserk as a result, and was hunted down by law enforcement.
• Laura Schook was fired by the New Albany (Indiana) Police Department Merit Commission after she informed the Merit Commission of “serious criminal conduct by members of this department, an alleged corrupt police administration and facilitation of a discriminatory and hostile work environment”. Of course, the “report issued in the case found no wrongdoing because the “alleged offenders were allowed to investigate themselves”.
• Shanna Lopez was terminated by the Dallas Police Department the after she mentioned illegal activity by her training officer, David Kuttner, to another trainer. Kuttner, who “came under scrutiny several times”, committed suicide after he was finally arrested, nine years later, for sexual assault.
• Joe Crystal resigned from the Baltimore City Police Department after he was harassed and threatened and his career destroyed, because he blew the whistle after witnessing an off-duty cop brutally beat a handcuffed suspect, a detective covering it up “with a police report full of lies”, and his sergeant approving the whole thing. “Police in Baltimore have rallied around cops who have killed or beaten suspects, cops facing criminal charges, and cops who turn a blind eye to misconduct. But one thing some Baltimore police couldn’t tolerate was a ‘snitch.'”
• Sean Gannon was fired by the Boston Police Department after taking evidence to the FBI about a colleague who framed innocent black teens and fabricated evidence in a “gruesome murder case” and was guilty of at least one case of sexual assault that the department helped cover up. The colleague, Trent Holland, retired after an on-camera appearance led to his identification by the victim as her rapist when she was a minor, 14 years previously. “Holland has a long history of prevailing against complaints of official wrongdoing.”
• Stephen Mader was fired by the Weirton (West Virginia) Police Department for refusing to shoot an emotionally disturbed, suicidal man during a domestic disturbance. Another officer fatally shot the man “minutes later and within seconds of arriving at the scene”. In addition, the city punished Mader through a campaign of press conferences, misinformation, and falsehoods about his performance. “To tell a police officer, when in doubt either shoot to kill, or get fired, is a choice that no police officer should ever have to make and is a message that is wrong and should never be sent.”
• Matt Swanson took concerns about a detective’s “gross misconduct”, including ignoring child sex abuse allegations and making racist comments about crime victims, to his supervisors. Instead of investigating the detective, the Clackamas County (Oregon) Sheriff’s Office “supervisors created a hostile work environment” for Swanson.
• Isaac Lambert was removed from the Chicago Police Department’s detective division and reassigned to a patrol shift as retaliation after he refused to approve a false investigatory report covering up the 2017 officer-involved shooting of an unarmed teen. “Officers who try to do the right thing are not only not protected, but retaliated against.”
• Sean Suiter was murdered by the Baltimore Police Department the day before he was scheduled to testify in a federal case against eight officers of the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force. “The Baltimore Police Commissioner was quick to rule out any foul play” and months later police “concluded that Suiter’s cause of death was not murder after all — it was suicide.” The Baltimore City Police sergeant who led the investigation, James Lloyd, was charged with kidnapping and extortion involving a home improvement project several years later.
• Cariol Horne was fired (one year short of qualifying for her pension) by the Buffalo Police Department for intervening when a colleague had a suspect in a chokehold. “The message was sent that you don’t cross that blue line and so some officers — many officers don’t.” Edited 4/19/21 to add: Thirteen years later, the New York State Supreme Court vacated a previous ruling upholding Horne’s firing and she now will receive her pension as well as back pay and benefits through August 4, 2010. According to the judge, “the current societal view toward the use of chokeholds and physical force in effecting arrests along with the City of Buffalo’s expression of specific disapproval of such force by legislative enactment, has altered the landscape”.
• Florissa Fuentes was fired by the Springfield (Massachusetts) Police Department after she expressed support on her private Instagram account for her niece who attended a Black Lives Matter rally. “There’s a lot of officers who are afraid to speak up about this issue and don’t want to be targeted as well.”
• Ja’Quay Williams was fired by the Greensboro (North Carolina) Police Department after he made a TikTok video in which he said “I am disgusted with the things that happened in Minneapolis. Pure and point-blank, things could have went way different. At the end of the day, let’s talk facts: Guy’s on the ground. He’s laying on his stomach. He had handcuffs on. It’s four of y’all, one of him. Four of y’all, one of him. Who has control of the situation? It’s not much one person could do against four people.” In the video, “Williams is wearing his uniform and is seated in his patrol car, but doesn’t identify himself as a Greensboro police officer and the agency isn’t identifiable on his badge.”
• Austreberto Gonzalez is on leave from Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department “and in fear for his life” after testifying about deputies who “have matching tattoos and belong to a violent clique called the Executioners”.
• Tom Gissler quit his position as an Atlanta police officer rather than charge Black renters with violations so they could be kicked out of their Section 8 housing by an apartment building owner who wanted to empty his building, tear it down, and replace it with expensive apartments. As a result, Gissler was forced to leave the city because, in retribution, false reports alleging child abuse were filed against his family with DFCS as well as a false allegation of animal abuse. He stated that “APD is filing random charges and administrative punishments around the department to discourage the hemorrhages in staffing. It has worked and people are quieting and hiding. It effectively stops officers from transferring or retiring if they are under investigation.”
• Liani Reyna, the first gay Latina woman assigned to the Portland Police Department’s Special Emergency Reaction Team (SERT) suffered “vicious retribution”, blacklisting, and was denied work opportunities when she raised concerns on numerous occasions about inappropriate conduct, including excessive use of force, lying, sexist and appalling hazing, and other criminal conduct. She was “marked as a troublemaker who could not be relied on” The officer misconduct “was swept under the carpet and the offenders escaped discipline.” Those few SERT officers who were disciplined received weak punishment such as letters of reprimand. (Added 12/16/20)
• Sgt. Javier Esqueda shared footage with a reporter showing how his colleagues slapped a handcuffed Black man in medical distress, restricted his airway, shoved a baton in his mouth, and drove him to the police station instead of hospital hours before his death and then tried to cover it up. Prosecutors cleared the cops caught on camera torturing the dying man “of any criminal wrongdoing.” Esqueda on the other hand, now faces up to 20 years prison for releasing the footage and was expelled from the Joliet Illinois Police Union. (Added 11/17/21)

*Comments aren’t visible until I approve them so please also note whether or not you want to be credited and with what name/handle. As long as I can verify the link, information can be added to the list anonymously. (For now, I’m not including corrections officers, former officers who file report after they leave the force, or members of police oversight boards.)