I've been watching The Mentalist dvds and I am towards the end. A covert group of people, politicians, sheriffs, cops, judges have formed a secret society called the Blake Association which involves members of multiple federal, state and local government agencies within the California area. It's a system of officials and agents of various ranks who commit crimes such as murder, rape, drug use and trafficking, and who help each other cover up their crimes. The structure of the organization seems to be divided into small circles. Members of each of these circles only personally know members of their same circle, but not all of the others, and take orders anonymously. They use a code word for "Distress" or "Identifying a Member".

Although the members of the organization help each other in many circumstances, when one of them is caught or discovered, another member is sent to assassinate him in order to protect the secrecy of the organization.
Continued in comments.