Ethics in Policing
Richard N. Holden, Ph.D.
Central Missouri State University
Crisis in Law Enforcement
• According to Human Rights Watch, an
international public watchdog group, federal
prosecutors in 1998 brought charges against
police officers in less than 1% of the cases
investigated by the FBI involving allegations
of police abuse.
» Earl Ofari Hutchinson
» The Plain Dealer
» March 23, 1999
Crisis in Law Enforcement
• The tragic killing of Amadou Diallo, shot
41 times by four New York City police
officers, has focused attention on police
brutality. This attention has revealed the
police practice of racial profiling, which
includes stopping and searching
people--mostly blacks and Latinos-because they fit a certain “profile”. Tony
Newman USA Today
Crisis in Law Enforcement
• “…the perception of too many
Americans is that police officers cannot
be trusted.”
– Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States
Ethics in Policing
Professional Police Conduct
Primary Responsibilities
• Serving the Community
• Safeguarding Lives and Property
• Protecting the Innocent
• Keeping the Peace
• Ensuring the Rights of All to Liberty,
Equality, and Justice
Philosophy of Minimalism
• Best Approach to Law Enforcement.
• Principle of “Least Intrusive Action.”
• “Select the Option that Solves the
Problem While Doing the Least Amount
of Harm.”
Professional Standards of
Behavior
• Police Officers Will Be Responsible for
Their Own Professional Conduct.
• The Necessity for Professional Growth
is Prevalent in All Professions,
Especially in Policing.
• Officers Will Seek Opportunities For
Expanded Learning and Continuous
Development of Relevant Skills and
Concepts.
Police Deviance
How Bad is the Problem?
Police Deviance
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Brutality
Abuse of Authority
Lying
Sexual Misconduct
Theft
Alcohol/Drug Abuse
Deliberate Inefficiency
Brutality
• Individual police brutality is a often a
product of immaturity. It is caused by
fear.
• Institutionalized brutality is a by-product
of:
– Poor training.
– Peer support.
– Lax/incompetent supervision.
Abuse of Authority
• Legal.
• Physical
• Verbal.
Lying
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Falsifying Reports
Falsifying Evidence
Cover-ups.
Lying in Court
Sexual Misconduct
• The patrol car has been referred to as a
“rolling bedroom” due to its heavy use
for sleeping on duty and illicit sexual
encounters.
• Sexual Bribery/extortion.
• Sexual liaisons.
• Voyeurism.
Crimes for Profit
• Theft of Property
• Bribery
• Extortion
Alcohol/Drug Abuse
• Drinking on duty is more common than
most people suspect.
• Drug abuse among police officers has
been a growing concern for over a
decade.
• Officers have ready access to both
alcohol and drugs.
Deliberate Inefficiency
• Sleeping on Duty
• Shirking Duty
Organizational Pathology
Causes and Symptoms
Mismanagement by Budget
• Public agencies are not punished for
inefficiency; they are rewarded.
• An agency failing to spend its annual
budget will lose funding for the following
year.
• Overspending the budget is often
rewarded by an increased budget.
Parkinson’s Law
• “Work expands to fill the time allocated
for it.”
– C. Northcote Parkinson
• There is no relationship between
organizational growth and
organizational effectiveness.
Peter Principle
• “In any organization, people rise to their
level of incompetence.”
– Lawrence Peter
• Ultimately, all management positions
may be filled with incompetent people.
Organizational Life-Cycles
• Five stages in the life of an organization
– Adolescent
– Prime
– Maturity
– Aristocratic
– Bureaucratic
Adolescent Stage
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Time of organization’s creation.
Productivity is low.
Original policies formulated.
Training cliques develop.
Value system begins to form.
Morale is high.
Strong informal interaction.
Prime Stage
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Organization is results oriented
System is stable.
Productivity is optimal.
Organization acutely aware of external
demands.
• Support services are predictable and tuned to
the needs of line elements.
• Emphasis on planning but coupled to high
expectations.
Maturity Stage
• Organization’s sense of urgency declines.
• Risk taking declines; less emphasis on
research and development.
• Aspirations are held low as both labor and
management enjoy past success.
• Procedures and policies become more
important as formal climate develops.
• Birth of internal political systems seeking
power at organization’s expense.
Aristocratic Stage
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Business as usual.
Organization becomes backward looking.
Ritual becomes important.
Tenure becomes important.
Dress codes are developed and understood.
Jargon stage—subculture language fully
developed .
• Training focuses on organizational symbols
and getting along on the job rather than doing
the job.
Bureaucratic Stage
• Production falls as organization slips
into stagnation.
• Research and development ignored.
• Management paranoia, political
infighting, and blame placing.
• Guiding principal: “Put it in writing.”
• Unit isolation enforced.
• Private organization – bankruptcy!
Trained Incapacity
• Trained incapacity refers to that state of
affairs in which one’s abilities function as
blind spots.
• Training a person to do a job one way
simultaneously trains that person to not do
the job any other way.
• Training for one set of conditions becomes
dysfunctional when conditions change.
Occupational Psychosis
• Occupational psychosis is a product of
the socialization process.
– The new member must replace values and
beliefs with those of the subculture.
• In policing this is known as the “John
Wayne” or “Wyatt Earp Syndrome.”
Occupational Psychosis
• Symptoms
– Dualism-viewing the world as good vs.
bad.
• “You are either for or against me.”
– Loss/warping of sense of humor.
– Distancing from outsiders.
– Preoccupation with organizational value
system
Fundamental Ambivalence
• A form of occupational blindness or
tunnel vision.
• A way of seeing becomes a way of not
seeing anything different.
• Every event is screened through the
value laden viewpoint of the subculture.
Sanctification
• Sanctification is the process wherein
bureaucratic norms become sacred
values.
• Agency members develop an overreliance on organizational symbols and
provide these symbols a legitimacy of
their own.
Fear
• A by-product of the sanctification
process is organizational fear. The
values become so accepted no one
dares challenge the system.
Goal Displacement
• Adherence to rules, originally devised
as means, becomes transformed into
ends.
• Ends become obscure or lost.
• Means become sacred.
• People/organization lose sight of their
mission.
Espirit d’Corps
• Group cohesiveness, necessary for
successful military operations, has a
destructive component for civilian
agencies.
• It is the belief that the “worst” of us is
better than the “best” of them.
• We have “bad cops” because “good
cops” protect them.
Organizational Arrogance
• Caused by a perceived power
differential.
• The organization is powerful, therefore
the member is also powerful.
• The citizen, representing no one, is not
powerful and not worthy of respect.
• The result is institutionally sanctioned
rudeness.
Police and the Minority
Communities
Overcoming History
Police-Minority Relations
• There is a history of discrimination
against minorities by all aspects of
society.
• This history is centuries old.
• The problem is compounded by the
absence of economic power in minority
communities.
Police-Minority Relations
• Minority frustrations with police
practices are compounded by a lack of
support from the majority community.
• Police support derives mostly from the
majority community, thus increasing
minority community isolation.
• Minority communities have few means
to obtain redress for concerns with
questionable police practices.
Improving Police-Minority
Relations
• Open communication between the
police and minority communities.
• Establish community task-forces to
identify problems and propose
solutions.
• Initiate changes in department
procedure based upon task-force
recommendations.
Improving Police-Minority
Relations
• Ultimately, it is the behavior of individual
officers towards members of the
minority community that will determine
the department’s relationship with the
minority community.
• No amount of good will can overcome
improper police conduct!
Ethics
Ethics is a Management Issue!
Ethics
• Department value statements and
public relations initiatives are useful.
• Police conduct, however, determines
the public’s perception of law
enforcement.
• Ethics is about behavior.
• Behavior is determined by
accountability.
Ethics and Accountability
• "Police departments like to claim that
each high-profile abuse is an
aberration, committed by a `rogue'
officer. But these human rights
violations persist because the
accountability systems are so
defective."
– Kenneth Roth executive director of the
human rights watch.
Accountability
• The greater the officer’s ability to avoid
accountability, the greater the amount of
police misconduct.
• The police subculture often defeats
accountability.
• We have bad cops because good cops
protect them.
Experience vs. Procedure
• Many officers rely more heavily on
experience than department procedure.
• Personal experience is inherently
flawed; it rests on subjective
impressions filtered through biased
expectations.
• Officers often remember when a
technique to a problem works, but forget
the many times in which a similar
approach did not work.
Police Information Sources
• Over reliance on
emotional sources:
– War stories
– Personal
experiences
– Rumors
– Fictional crime
stories.
– Organizational
mythology
• Under reliance on
factual sources:
– Established
procedures
– Training
– Case law
– Research Reports
– Professional
Journals
– Text books
Police Subculture
• Corrosive influence.
• Emphasizes collective experience over
training and procedure.
• Emphasizes group loyalty over duty.
• Built on distrust of outsiders.
• Alters definition of police success.
Views of Police Success
• Department view
– Community focus.
– Problem addressed.
– Appropriate approved
procedure used.
– Accurate record of event.
– Actions taken
legally/morally
defensible.
• Subculture view
– Officer focus.
– Problem masked.
– Least demanding
procedure used
(shortcuts).
– Self-serving record of
event.
– Actions often
questionable, sometimes
illegal.
Ethics and the Line Officer
• People are responsible for their own
behavior.
• Each officer must make it clear to
colleagues that improper behavior will
not be tolerated in his/her presence.
• Each officer must intervene quickly to
prevent/stop improper conduct from
fellow officers.
Ethics and Supervision
• Too many supervisors are more
interested in being liked by officers than
in holding them accountable for their
behavior.
• Supervision is not a popularity contest.
• Supervisors must make expectations
clear and hold subordinates
accountable for their behavior.
Ethics and Middle
Management
• Mid level managers must clarify and
solidify department expectations.
• Managers must hold supervisors
accountable for the behavior of their
officers.
• People who will/can not supervise
others must be removed from
supervision.
Ethics and the Chief
• The chief creates the ethical climate of
the department.
• Internal affairs is only as effective as the
chief wants it to be.
• The chief must be fair, but abuses of
authority and inappropriate conduct
must be handled quickly and firmly.
Department Ethics
A police department has as much
misbehavior as it is willing to
tolerate.