*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD, DM
In the course of my research on organized crime and institutional integrity, I came to understand a reality that many textbooks only hint at but rarely capture with full accuracy: corruption inside an anti-crime institution is never merely a failure of ethics. It is a failure of architecture—of how institutions carry their past into their present, and how remnants of previous leaderships can quietly shape the future long after they have formally stepped aside.
My fieldwork and institutional observations revealed that transitions in leadership do not erase old loyalties, habits, and networks. They simply rearrange them. While new directives are issued from the top, the deeper life of the institution—its unwritten rules, its informal loyalties, its personal debts—continues to operate beneath formal structures. This is where the real vulnerabilities emerge. These residual networks, forged during earlier administrations, do not dissolve when leadership changes; instead, they recalibrate themselves within the new landscape, preserving their influence through individuals who remain in key operational posts.
Humanizing this phenomenon requires acknowledging that many of these individuals do not necessarily act with malicious intent. Some are shaped by years of proximity to power. Others have built careers and reputations under a previous leadership and continue to navigate the institution according to the same logic that once guided them. But these personal histories—and the loyalties that accompany them—become dangerous when criminal enterprises find ways to align themselves with these informal networks.
During my research on POGO-associated criminal activities, cyber-scam hubs, drug trafficking routes, and human trafficking schemes, I repeatedly encountered anomalies that pointed to the presence of internal protection. Certain criminal hubs exhibited resilience that could not be explained by operational skill alone. Targets appeared to anticipate raids. Intelligence reports showed inconsistencies that were too patterned to be accidental. Case build-ups weakened at critical moments, often in ways that were administrative rather than investigative: delayed documentation, questionable downgrading of charges, and unexpected clearance of individuals previously identified as high-risk.
As I analyzed these incidents through theoretical frameworks, it became clear that what I was witnessing matched classical descriptions of state capture and bureaucratic subversion. But because I had observed these patterns up close, I could also see the human dimension behind them. These were not abstract theories unfolding in a vacuum. These were real officers, real decision-makers, real intermediaries whose personal relationships and professional histories intersected with criminal organizations seeking state protection.
The most troubling realization in my research was that organized crime does not need to overpower a state institution to compromise it. It only needs to find the cracks already present. It capitalizes on internal fragmentation, past loyalties, and the persistence of informal channels of authority. When remnants of previous leadership hold influence over target selection, case validation, and inter-agency coordination, criminal groups gain access to an invisible shield—one built not through overt conspiracy, but through the subtle reactivation of old networks operating inside the institution.
Throughout this work, I struggled with the unsettling contrast between the commitment of many officers and the quiet sabotage committed by a few. Even as dedicated operatives pursued cases with integrity, the presence of residual networks created conditions where their efforts could be undermined without their knowledge. This duality—the coexistence of genuine service and institutional distortion—became a recurring theme in both my field observations and analytical findings.
The human cost of this distortion became especially clear in the context of human trafficking. In interviews with victims rescued from exploitation, a painful pattern emerged: the people they expected to protect them were sometimes the same people whose inaction prolonged their suffering. When internal actors weaken enforcement, the consequence is not merely institutional inefficiency. It is human devastation. It is the continuation of exploitation that could have been stopped. It is the protection of offenders at the expense of the vulnerable.
Reflecting on these findings, I realized that institutional reform cannot be reduced to the replacement of personnel or the issuance of new policies. It requires confronting the institution’s own memory—its informal power structures, its unresolved loyalties, and the networks that linger long after official transitions. It requires leadership that understands how corruption embeds itself not only in transactions, but in relationships. It requires scholars and practitioners to look beyond surface explanations and engage with the deeper sociological mechanisms that enable criminal infiltration.
What my research ultimately taught me is that institutions have shadows. They are cast by past leadership, carried by individuals who remain, and extended by criminal groups who learn to operate within those shadows. Yet the presence of these shadows is not a reason for cynicism; it is a call for clarity. It is a reminder that institutional integrity must be actively cultivated, not assumed. And it emphasizes that vigilance must be directed not only outward, toward criminal syndicates, but inward, toward the subtle processes that allow those syndicates to survive.
In writing this
commentary, I return to one central insight from my research: the fight against
organized crime is not only a struggle against external threats. It is also a
struggle against the invisible forces within our own institutions—the remnants
of the past that must be understood, confronted, and ultimately transformed if
genuine reform is to take place.
