Noble Cause Corruption Case Study

The “Noble-Cause” corruption is often compared to the Dirty Harry problem asking whether it was necessary for the officer to inflict pain on a suspect in order to acquire information that would save an innocent victim (Pollock, 2015). Sometimes because of the limited resources that an officer has or the mindset that an officer has where everyone is the enemy offers them no other choices but to venture out into the unethical world.

When officers decided to use an unlawful means to gain a desired end they damage the system that they were sworn to represent. The Code of silence or blue curtain of secrecy is another element of the police sub-culture. This is the practice of officer to not come forward if when aware of the ethical transgressions of other officers (Pollock, 2015). This can come in many forms such as unnecessary

In January of 2017 it was no different. Agents who had been watching a suspect whom they believed was selling heroin and other drugs began searching an alley where they thought the suspect had been storing those drugs. Officers had searched the alley but one of the officers had went back, turned his camera on unaware that it would capture moments before and then allegedly planted drugs in a can that would implicate the suspect leading to his arrest (Hermann, 2017). The ethical dilemma presented was the planting of evidence which is an absolute no-no in policing but for some officers they blame this form of lying as a way to get their suspect. This is a form of the noble-cause corruption which simply states the end justifies the means (Pollock, 2015). In other words, the method the officer uses might be illegal but he justifies it as a mechanism to protect the citizen by getting the suspect off the street. When an officer goes to court after being caught most times they will plead the fifth refusing to testify on the grounds that it might incriminate