scenes, domestic disturbances, accident scenes, large gatherings, and noisy parties. Police officers must be able to dispute any activity that’s being conducted with the power and authority they have been granted. Access to police service is valuable because they have the authority over all who might threaten the security of another individual, and equal access emphasizes that each of us is entitled to the same protection without discrimination. Fair access denies any favoritism to specific individuals. I can’t deny that favoritism exists within the relationship of police officers and members of society because I know it does, but providing training in this specific field could help an officer be proactive in preventing a situation like this …show more content…
Another kind of favoritism is the kind that affects the friends or fellow officers. When an officer gives some people exceptions to speeding tickets or from arrest of a drunk driver just because they are either co-workers, family members, or friends, in this situation the officer is in violation of the standard of fair access (Cohen, 1991). Neglect is the second major violation of fair access standard because people can be victimized by neglect when departments or groups of officers don’t make an effort to serve specific neighborhoods, racial, or ethnic communities. Most of the time this happens because that community has developed a reputation with the force and the force deems it as a hopeless environment. The fair access standard stresses that officers should make themselves available to the public at all times in which favoritism and neglect should be avoided (Cohen, 1991, p, …show more content…
Allowing them to rely on their own moral values, common sense, or religious beliefs will fail them in the career of policing. “Senior officers could potentially be a great candidate to instill good moral judgment into new officers, yet every officer should develop their own beliefs after they have received the proper training from the department. Senior officers have a tendency to be salty after a while. Not necessarily setting standards you want the new guys to develop. Take pointers but don’t completely adopt their beliefs especially since times change and outgrow the old salty dogs” (C. Elliott, personal communication, 3 June, 2015). Even though the IACP has developed a code of ethics and an oath of honor, there needs to be more ethical training incorporated into the profession. Both the code of ethics and the oath of honor leave little training for the officer when they are faced with ethical dilemmas in every day circumstances, especially when they are still trying to learn their own beliefs. Even though some police leadership training programs have required officers to read Cohen and Feldberg’s book, other forces have yet to incorporate the five moral standards into training. Which should be in accordance with the code of ethics and the oath of honor in order to make ethical police training
The job of a law enforcement officer sometimes can be tough. Officer are sometimes plagued with situation that test their ability to enforce the law and maintain order. Police officers today face a constant battle to maintain higher ethical standards. This mission becomes tougher each day when one considers the importance of fighting terrorism, drugs, human trafficking,
Officers are known as public servants, they are held at higher standards than everyday citizens. According to Wyatt-Nichol & Franks(2009) when officers behave unethically, it is a violation of public trust and damages the image of law enforcement everywhere (p. 40). Officer should receive in-death training of cases that make headlines within the newspapers or media. For example, the Freddie Gray or Eric Garner case could be used in scenarios with the steps taken to avoid any ethical dilemmas they could possibly run into. Updated training should be conducted every 6 months for ethics alone in addition to the yearly training that’s already in place. The civilian review board can recommend more training of officers that engage in unethical behavior or misconduct. Intense training, followed through with morals is important factors to avoiding the civilian review board and their process in reviewing investigations against officers. When all training officers receive has been overlooked and failed to comply. Police officers should be held accountable for their actions, through training officers learn to understand their position and need within the community. Although training is offered yearly and on an as need basics, officers are held to a high standard within their community. Some tend to lose sight of their mission of daily duties which are to maintain order and
Dempsey, J. S., & Frost, L. S. (2012). Police Ethics and Police Deviance. An Introduction to Policing (6th ed.). Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Cengage Learning.
While on the job, police must put all their personal opinions aside. They must provide everyone with an equal and fair chance. It is important in a democratic society for police to not know too much about the community they are policing. It allows them to ...
Minority groups have always been underrepresented in police forces across the United States. One of the main reasons minority groups are underrepresented in police department is due to the negative interaction White officers have had with citizens of minority groups. According to McNamara and Burns (2008), members of minority groups feel police officers abuse of their authority by overstepping the boundaries of procedural laws, which dictates how the police are to use their powers. The conflicts between minorities and White officers has caused many individuals from minority groups to not be attracted to the police work. Moreover, individuals from minority groups do not apply for police work because they feel they would not be accepted in policing,
It is a myth to believe that an officers job is spend fighting dangerous crimes, in reality officers spend more time handing smaller cases. For example, police officers spend a lot of time doing daily tasks such as giving speeding tickets and being mediators in disputes (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Handing out speeding tickers and handling minor disputes are far from fighting crime. Police officers spend more time doing preventive measures (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Preventive measures involve officers intervening to prevent further altercations. Victor Kappeler and Gary Potter discussed the myth of crime fighting as invalid and misleading notions of an officer’s employment.
Everyday law enforcement personal have the possibility to face dangerous events in their daily duties. In performing such duties a police officer could come by a seemingly ordinary task, and in a blink of an eye the event can turn threatening and possible deadly. When or if this happens to an officer they won’t have
Police ethics are extremely important because ethics are the typical of “fair and honest conduct” (pg 460). People may have a different definition of what is fair and what is honest, and there are different circumstances where officers may not be able to be honest; such as covert investigations. Society in general determines what our ethical standards and moral principles are. Individual morals vary among all of us as they are what we as an individual consider to be right or wrong. We also have morals that are set by society. These are what we as a society consider to be right or wrong and may go hand in hand with individual morals. Morals change as society and people change, therefore we as a country have to adapt to what the changing morals are.
Police discretionary practices vary from officer to officer and every officer is differently trained by departments. Without the proper use of discretion out on the field, police officers are left open for legal suit actions however, if the officers are trained and exercising the use of discretion in a good manner, each individual officer can be held accountable. The second disadvantage of use of police discretion is that it allows the police officers to have too much power on making decisions which can affect the life, safety or liberty of an individual (Bargen, 2005). Police discretion presents a clear danger to society because the average officer can make a poor decision and affect the life of a person or persons. If discretion in law enforcement is used in a wrongful manner, it has great potential for being abused out of the field. Discretion allows police officers to “perform a duty or refrain from taking action” (Gaines & Kappeler, 2003, p. 251). Police officers are supposed to enforce equality under the law, people in society all should have equal rights and should be treated the same. However, discretion allows police officers to misuse it by treating offenders of different genders, race, class, ethnicity, religion, age and more inappropriately (Pepinsky, 1984). Law enforcement officers are
In the line of police force it is imperative to think outside of the box. Many people confuse a police officer’s curiosity as racial profiling and racism. However, this is how a police officer often finds the majority of their evidence. In many neighborhoods, there a dominant races that live within the community. For example, if a wealthy white man was driving around a predominantly minority-based community, it would be acceptable for a police officer to grow skeptical at this situation. It is obvious that man is out of place, and it is the police officer 's duty to further investigate the
"A policeman’s first obligation is to be responsible to the needs of the community he serves…The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist in which an honest police officer can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers. We create an atmosphere in which the honest officer fears the dishonest officer, and not the other way around.", -Frank Serpico.
A police officer is a law enforcement official whose job is to protect and serve all people, not to ignore racial equality. Because the U.S consists of many different races and ethnic groups, the ongoing conflict between police officers and citizens of color is constantly rising. Although police officers today are no longer allowed to have racial bias, which can be described as, attitudes or stereotype used against individuals of color to define their actions and decisions, officers sometimes abuse their authority going around racial impact tools and policies. This results in citizens viewing it as discrimination and mass criminalization. By changing the way laws and regulations unfairly impact Black and Brown communities can improve the justice
A Critical Assessment In defining police ethics, ethical policing and police ethics are not synonymous or interchangeable connotations to or for one another. Aside from establishing a police role independently from establishing any definition of ethics or police ethics, the semantics tend to complicate the defining process. Some of these complications include, but are not limited to, sociological aspects, psychological conditions, or philosophical reasoning. Examples of sociological complications include historical, political, cultural, or economic aspects. Some psychological examples include one’s ability to discern sociological implications from other implications; namely, the condition of post-traumatic stress disorder, hydrophobia, or even weary dreams. Lastly,
Police Officers Oath of Office and Code of Ethics, A Question of knowledge Richard W. Deshon (2000) retrieved from: www.emich.edu/cerns/downloads/papers/PoliceStaff/
It is often said that power brings corruption, but in reality it is an individual’s lack of character, self-discipline, and integrity that leads to corruption. Law enforcement can bring many temptations on the job, and maintaining an up most level of personal integrity can often times be very difficult. The very nature of the job surrounds officers with all of the bad things that society, produces. There can be an endless amount of training and rules put into place to try and deter officers from committing unethical acts, but in the end it really just comes down to the specific individual and their willingness to do the right thing.