You really have to be a hero, if not a martyr, to honor your badge - the code of silence is so strong. No institution can survive when in order to behave decently, you have to be heroic. We have to create a situation where it's easier for police to do their jobs, including reporting wrongdoing by their fellow officers, without risking everything to do it.

Journalist Jamie Kalven examines the mechanisms of silence within the Chicago Police Department, and explains how an investigation into a drug protection racket within the CPD reveals massive flaws in the structures of law enforcement and the news media, as well as class relations across American society.

Jamie wrote the stunning, four-part series Code of Silence for The Intercept.