Introduction
The police officers operate under circumstances that are characterized by uncertainty. They must ensure that their lives are not exposed to dangers while respecting the rights of members of the public. This situation may result in conflicts concerning the ethical principles that prescribe the officers’ expected behavior. Consequently, they are likely to remain as targets of blame for their decisions. This case establishes a strong possible relationship between police ethics and their morale. As the targets of blame, they are likely to have low work morale. This paper discusses how these two issues play out in the daily work routine of members of the police force or a police organization.
Ethics in Police Organizations
What is Police Ethics?
Ethical codes of conduct that are anticipated from police organizations form an important aspect of the police culture. The code of conduct plays a critical role in ensuring that the individual members of the police force execute their roles according to the rules set out to guide the operations of a police organization (Chae & Boyle, 2013). One of the mechanisms for ensuring that police officers operate harmoniously entails orienting them to a common organizational behavior through the prescription of universal organizational police codes of ethics. Ethics implies the standards of behaviors or conducts. It involves the evaluation of individual values and knowledge on communal principles (Byrne, 2011). It also entails the development of the capacity to make well-informed choices, including the realization of the impacts of the choices made, both in the short and long term. Where choices result in undue outcomes that may impair police organization or individual police force member’s achievement of the preset standards of conduct, codes of ethics demand such persons to take responsibility for the repercussions of their choices.
Aspects such as making decisions and taking actions in an environment of conflicting and competing values and interests define the professional daily work routine of any police organization. Such decisions are taken in some situations while lacking adequate information in a very high emotional and dynamic environment. In some cases, police officers make decisions and/or act while under intense pressure. While attempting to subscribe to the ethical codes of conduct that define their profession, they may become objects of accusation by those people who believe that the applied actions have influenced them negatively. In some cases, the officers may be required to shoot when their lives are at risk (Chae & Boyle, 2013). Nevertheless, they may end up in jail for murder or a related crime. This situation leaves them lowly motivated and in fear of personal suffering while executing and implementing specific orders. However, it is necessary to ensure that they remain assured that what they do is within their ethical codes of conduct, provided it is backed by evidence that necessitates such actions.
Police officers are required to uphold the highest behavior standards. This requirement emerges from the fact that they act as stewards of public trust. Where necessary, they are also given the power to apply a force that is anchored on constitutional privileges (Regehr, LeBlanc, Jelley, & Barath, 2008). Burke and Paton (2006) assert that police officers also take oaths to comply with professional codes of conduct while at the same time operating under various regulations, laws, and rules. The subject of police ethics is significant since the officers’ interaction with members of the public is not only important but also a precondition for making well-thought-out decisions that help them to act accordingly.
Issues with Police Ethics
Laws and regulations limit persons from violating the constitutional rights of others. State laws prevent and/or reduce crime rates (Peak, 2012). However, such laws need to reflect both legal and ethical soundness in their application and absorption in the police subculture. However, issues have emerged in which police ethical foundations have been challenged. For example, stop and frisk laws that are applied in the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the role of police in schools are some of these important issues, which call for the re-examination of the police force’s ethical conduct in their work.
As one of the constitutional rights, people have the freedom and right to move without any violation of their privacy, unless a court order justifies such a violation. However, this observation is not the case in the State of New York. In the early 1990s, the ‘stop and frisk’ law found its way into state laws to promote proactive policing (Kuh, 2005). The procedural law in the State of New York under Section 140:50 has a provision for hands-on policing. The ruling by the US High Court on the case of Terry v. Ohio informs the law. It gives the New York Police Department (NYPD) a legal justification for stopping and frisking pedestrians in search of contrabands, including weapons. Nevertheless, although such a move is strongly anchored on the legal provisions, stop and frisk laws face ethical challenges in the manner in which police make decisions and/or take actions on whom to stop and search.
One of the ethical norms of the police subculture is to apply and enforce laws without discrimination, irrespective of people’s ethnicity, race, age, or any other diversity aspect. However, the stop and frisk laws have been regarded as discriminatory. In 2011, the NYPD stopped and searched almost 70000 people majority of whom were Latinos and of African-American racial background (Berginski, 2013). Berginski (2013) adds that from 2004 to 2012, the NYPD had stopped close to 4.5 million people in the effort to implement the ‘stop and search’ strategy. Between 2011 and 2012, close to 90 percent of those stopped were of Hispanic or African-American origin (Berginski, 2013).
In all the people who were stopped, only about 13 percent were viable suspects of criminal activity. Based on this finding, issues such as the application of the ‘stop and search laws and how the law enforcement body implements such directives arouse concerns of racial discrimination, even though the agents enhance the reduction of crime. Indeed, racial discrimination is evident in the statistics of the illicit materials that were gathered in the process between 2004 and 2012. For the close to 4.5 million people stopped in this period, Whites accounted for 10 percent. Blacks took the biggest share of 52 percent while Hispanics accounted for the rest. Despite this racial preference in the stoppages, “Both Blacks and Whites had the same total amount of illicit materials seized, 16,000, and there were 14,000 illicit materials seized from Hispanics” (Berginski, 2013, p.18). Hence, even though many Whites went without being stopped and frisked because they did not look ‘suspicious’, they posed higher security threats compared to the groups of people who were targeted by the ‘stop and frisk’ ruling. In the context of these statistical observations, a significant question arises concerning whether the acts of ‘stopping and frisking’ people are founded on police ethical responsibility of protecting and enforcing the law.
The above concerns of a police organization, namely the NYPD, raise important ethical issues that surround the body when it comes to its law protection responsibility. However, it is also important to note that police officers may face false accusations for exploring racially discriminating policies because the frisked and arrested people are more from one ethnic background. While such arrests may be ethically and legitimately judged, members of the public may judge them differently. This situation can lower the morale of the police officers when executing their enforcement roles by portraying them as racially biased when making decisions on whom to arrest.
Apart from the NYPD, ethical issues in the police subculture are important across the United States. For example, the population of law enforcement personnel within American schools has been on the increase since the 1950s (Mckenna & Pollock, 2014). This high population is justified by the 1994 Safe School Act that was established through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). The primary goal was to minimize and eliminate the risk of occurrence of tragedies, for instance, shootings, in the school environment. Therefore, police officers participate in the protection and enforcement roles. They also have additional roles (ancillary roles) of mentoring and educating students. Nevertheless, Mckenna and Pollock (2014) assert, “the use of police in schools has also been associated with the formalization of student discipline and the criminalization of minor misconduct” (p.164). The author also informs that the increased presence of police in schools has translated into increased arrests for minor offenses. This case raises the question of whether police officers are well prepared to face the ethical challenge of balancing their socialization coupled with training and mentoring duties in school settings to mitigate the emerging conflicts between students and them.
Addressing Issues that Concern Police Ethics
The issues discussed in the above section attract the necessity of setting specific standards for the police officers to ensure that they make decisions that are in line with their requirement to abide by rules and regulations, which define their behavior. Any decision and action should not be justifiable because the appropriate legal guidelines or regulations can be invoked for the police to escape liability. The decision to act in a certain manner should be warranted by the fact it is the best thing to do under the specific circumstances and that such a decision does not violate the right to whom law enforcement is invoked to apply. Therefore, resolving the issues considered above requires taking the initiative of ensuring that the officers make ethical judgments during their actions. These approaches should include training recruits on the balancing and compulsory nature of deploying ethics in professional police responsibilities.
The issues discussed above attract ethical concerns. Hence, ethical principles should dictate what is bad or good. From the paradigms of the ‘stop and frisk’ law, the main question revolves around the ethical rightness of stopping and frisking people because they look suspicious. A major ethical issue encompasses how the NYPD determines the suspiciousness of a person. Do suspicious people have a particular manner of behaving? From the arguments raised before and from the statistics of people who have been stopped and frisked, apprehensive individuals are more likely to come from a particular racial background. This claim suggests a relationship between the suspiciousness and racial orientation of a given person. It is unethical to label people as more likely to carry a weapon or a substance simply because they belong to a particular race. This situation underlines the necessity of training police officers in a curriculum that integrates aspects of multiculturalism.
The second issue demands police education and training to focus on understanding the nature of people to whom they protect and/or enforce the rule of law. For example, police officers who are deployed in schools should have the capacity to exercise their protection, enforcement, and mentoring roles without conflicts, which may lead to the wrongful conviction of students for minor mistakes following inadequate information. Sufficient information to help in the decision-making process that leads to rightful conviction requires the creation of an information-sharing police culture between the accused and law enforcement agents. This accomplishment can only occur when police officers behave ethically to help in winning the trust of the accused and the community. With a trustful environment, information dissemination becomes possible to help the police to not only mitigate crimes passively but also to provide appropriate mechanisms for taking reactive action just when it is appropriate.
Morale in Police Organizations
Morale defines the ability of the mind of any employee to function effectively for some given responsibilities. Indeed, morale is important for newly recruited and functioning police leaders. Commitment to police organizational ethics is critical in eliminating any conflicts between the police officers and the people to whom they enforce the law. Such conflicts are likely to translate into negative profiling of police officers, thus creating a work environment of poor cooperation, which may lower work morale. In some situations, police may make wrong decisions. Hence, they act inappropriately due to the insufficiency of information arising from low cooperation between them and members of the public. Where it emerges that one made an inappropriate decision, perhaps leading to wrongful convictions, such officers or police leaders will most likely have a low attitude towards their duty. This situation has the effect of reducing their work morale.
Morale is important in ensuring that police officers remain committed to their work. Although all police leaders and individuals have the responsibility of maintaining positive work morale, the main concern is how to ensure that such self-confidence produces positive effects. In an individual capacity, an officer can change his or her behavior and attitude within the workplace to adopt those that comply with ethical-moral foundations. However, their administrators and supervisors are in a better position of taking control and influencing low-ranking officers. Police administrators have an ethical responsibility of creating and maintaining a productive work environment by eliminating stressors. Therefore, even if morale is a responsibility of every individual who serves in the police force, leadership takes the greatest responsibility of inducing it.
Amaranto, Steinberg, Castellano, and Mitchell (2003) conducted research that addressed work-related stressors that arise from people’s exposure to violence within different police units. Discussing this research, Chae and Boyle (2013) assert, “the majority of survey participants noted low morale and the lack of acknowledgment regarding achievement as two major issues related to job stress” (p. 94). Amaranto et al. (2003) link work stress in police departments to issues that include turnover, lower work drive, decreasing motivation, and job dissatisfaction. Morale is critical since it helps to improve efficiency in police organizations.
Morale helps to build discipline enthusiastically and voluntarily, rather than seeking to enforce it. This goal can be achieved when police leaders subscribe to ethical leadership principles, which permit other people to act to their level of giftedness. For example, it is unethical to assume that one knows the right course of action without communicating it openly, positively, effectively, and honestly. Creating morale requires working towards eliminating any conflicts. This situation applies in the two cases discussed in the paper.
Conclusion
Ethics is important in a police organization to help officers in building an environment of trust and cooperation with people with which they have the responsibility to protect and/or enforce the rule of law. Any conflict emerging from this interactive process may lead to the consistent making of decisions and taking of actions that are informed by the choices that widen the mistrust gap. Consequently, the individual police officers may have lower job satisfaction and work morale due to the perception that they are making ineffective decisions that are inconsistent with the public interest. Therefore, it is important for police officers to follow ethical guidelines in their professional conduct when relating with each other and the public to build a police subculture that is guided by principles of cooperation, information sharing, and trust.
Reference List
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