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

• 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

• 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• 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• 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• 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 over-reliance 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.