Offering a reason for some police behavior without making an excuse, a case from Florida shows that some police officers are mentally ill, even if they are able to understand the wrongfulness of their actions. 

A female Florida sheriff's deputy handcuffed naked girls to a desk, spanked them with a leather paddle and sent the seamy homemade videos to a boyfriend she met on a fetish web site, authorities said.

Robin Leigh Pagoria, 45, subjected her two victims - described as girls between the ages of 10 and 18 - to multiple torture sessions, authorities said.

"There aren't words to describe my anger with her," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told the Orlando Sentinel, adding that the arrest "came out of nowhere."

Pagoria, a divorced Marine veteran, shackled the girls' wrists and ankles to a homemade "spanking bench" in her home and pounded (sic) their backs, legs and buttocks, the report says.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/05/27/2011-05-27_robin_pagoria_florida_sheriffs_deputy_busted_for_spanking_girls_and_making_porn_.html#ixzz1ZiNpwSjD

So, where are the local police union and chief elected officials who would normally insist that barbaric behavior is justified by the circumstances and the police officers' fear that not spanking these children would have led to even greater harms?   Does either of the girls have a court history that would explain the officer's need to engage in video-taped beatings of naked girls and them put them on the Internet? Apparently, there is at least some police atrocity that even police officers and their supervisors cannot defend.