SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian police in an armed robbery squad modeled themselves on violent characters in Quentin Tarantino’s film “Reservoir Dogs,” dressing in black suits and sunglasses, and regularly used excessive force. The Armed Offenders Squad in Victoria state acted as an unofficial force within the police, with members swearing allegiance to the squad and changing the police uniform to include a tie with two gold, intersecting revolvers. A Office of Police Integrity report on the AOS, released this week, examined four decades of the squad’s history and found a disproportionate number of complaints against its detectives for using excessive force in arresting suspects. “Rather than upholding the law, these officers took the law into their own hands,” said the report.

In one case, a hidden camera in a police interview room filmed detectives bashing a suspect during an interview. The suspect was repeatedly slapped and kicked, pinned to the ground and hit with a telephone when he asked to call someone. The detectives then tell the suspect not to “bleed everywhere.” The integrity report found the AOS, disbanded in September 2006, had an elitist subculture and an “us-vs.-them” mentality that led them to take the law into their own hands.

“Squad members became renowned for wearing black suits, white shirts, dark sunglasses and a team-issue black tie,” said the report. “The outfits imitate the costumes worn by a network of violent criminals in the film Reservoir Dogs.” “The deliberate identification with Reservoir Dogs was reinforced when a well-known image from the film was used to advertise the squad’s annual social function, ‘Robbers Rock’.”

I suggest more training until cops finally realize that they really are “public servants”, like it or not.