Police officers in the District of Columbia have a hard time staying on the right side of the law.

More than 90 officers from the DC police force have been arrested over the past three and a half years, according to an investigation by Aubrey Whelan of the Washington Examiner.

Of the 90 arrests, the majority were for DUI and domestic violence arrests. Others, though, were charged with crimes such as possessing child pornography, sexual assault and murder.

The newspaper compared the DC police to their counterparts in Philadelphia. So far in 2012, 18 DC officers have wound up behind bars. In Philadelphia, only six out of 6,600 were arrested this year.

“My impression is that the Washington numbers are just unprecedented,” Samuel Walker, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and an expert on police accountability, told the newspaper. “The other occasions when you’ve had large numbers of arrests are a major corruption scandal. Those are sort of clustered when you get a major scandal. Washington appears to be different on that score.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

90-Plus Arrests of D.C. Cops in under 4 Years (by Aubrey Whelan, Washington Examiner)