DAYTONA BEACH - A Daytona Beach police officer was arrested on Friday afternoon for taking seized property.

Officer Bobby Rush, 29, and member of the Crime Suppression Team, has been with the Daytona Beach Police Department for five years. He is facing charges of official misconduct and is now in jail.

According to police officers, he will be fired after getting a 72-hr notice.

The officer's own team members suspected that evidence from the results of arrests wasn't making it to the property room. Also, there had been complaints from citizens that had been arrested but did not get all their property returned upon release.

Psychologists have long determined that, when exposed to daily acts of malfeasance by superiors, such as the politicians in control of Daytona Beach, and watching their acts being committed with impunity, underlings get a sense that acting honestly has no meaning. Under such environment, perfectly honest people can and often do, turn.

A criminal environment leads to criminal behavior.

The "father of sociology", Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), had a life-long interest in crime and its role in society. His innovative ideas on how social structure affects human behavior influenced sociologists for generations to come. Durkheim believed that crime is natural behavior whose composition is the result of many diversified forces.

Durkheim's ideas led to the famous Chicago School of Sociology, a set of principles that became very popular in the 1930s. This school of thought focused upon society as the embryonic force behind criminal behavior.

Robert Merton, a disciple of Durkheim, said criminal acts were the result of socially-created behavior rather than momentary impulses. Merton said that society offers the same goals and rewards to all its citizens. But the means and opportunity to reach these goals are not the same for everyone in society. As a result, anomie, French for "normlessness" results. Merton said people will commit crimes because they feel cheated out of something to which they were entitled.

When the powerful commit crimes, they indulge in offenses that are different from "ordinary" criminals. Corrupt politicians in power do not hold up bodegas, steal cars, shoplift or commit muggings. Rather, they share inside information with cronies, take kickbacks, under-price public assets in sales to friends, commit frauds and intentionally disregard laws when friends or campaign donors break them. The impact of their crimes can be enormous.

Sometimes even good guys can go bad...

Mike Chitwood
Daytona Beach Police Chief

Daytona Police Chief, Mike Chitwood has been working hard at driving away the criminal element off Daytona Beach, a task that has been compared with running in the sand.