One bad apple will spoil the bunch

There’s a reason the saying is “one bad apple will spoil the whole bunch.”

This famous adage describes the way one rotting apple can cause the rest of the harvest to begin rotting faster. In fact, its first use to describe a bad person who will spread corruption was in a morality tale published in 1340 A.D. In other words, this is longstanding wisdom.

So why are we ignoring it?

The lawsuit against Westover police officers Zachary Fecsko and Aaron Dalton as well as Chief Richard Panico on behalf of Andre Howton brings home the point. The incident in question occurred on New Year’s Day 2019 when Fecsko and Dalton were called to remove a different person from Howton’s home and instead dragged Howton out of his house and beat him — all of which was captured on one of the officer’s bodycams.

Please allow us to repeat that: Officers beat a homeowner who had called them to come remove an unwanted individual from his property.

We recommend reading “Westover police sued for civil rights violations” (DP-07-27-20) for details regarding the incident.

So here’s the problem when people respond to police brutality with “well, it’s just a few bad apples”: They are ignoring the wisdom of the ages that warns us that all it takes is one “bad apple” to ruin the whole bunch. It only takes one bad police officer to fracture the public’s trust in their local law enforcement. It only takes one bad police officer to get away with brutality to completely shatter the community’s trust in the people sworn to serve and protect.

Because here’s the thing: Both Fecsko and Dalton were known “bad apples” before Westover PD hired them. Fecsko had been charged with domestic battery and burglary in 2015, two years before WPD hired him. Fecsko ultimately pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of destruction of property in exchange for dropping the other two charges, and he was sentenced to a year of probation. Please see “Westover police officer has criminal past” (DP-07-21-19) for more details.

Dalton, on the other hand, was released from his employment with the Fairmont Police Department before signing on in Westover. Dalton had been involved in an “unprovoked attack” that led to a lawsuit against Fairmont. Dalton’s personnel file has the note, “[h]e was involved in a lawsuit filed against the city for racial profiling??”

This is why we scoff at the notion of “only a few bad apples.” Both officers were known to be violent before they were hired by Westover, long before the night they beat a Black man in his 50s so severely that the North Central Regional Jail wouldn’t accept him because his injuries were too serious. And then the officers’ actions were deemed appropriate by the department.

This solid wall of blue that welcomes and protects “bad apples” is why law enforcement has a bad reputation. There can never be “only a few bad apples” when the system does more to shield violent officers from the consequences of their actions than it does to shield civilians from those actions. Instead of being passed around and reassigned, these “bad apples” need to be thrown out. Until that happens regularly and consistently, the whole bunch of law enforcement will be viewed as rotten.