Code Of Silence among police officers - Essay Example

Second, members are expected to observe a certain way of life in which they find emotional identity. Third, the tribe needs an enemy. An enemy provides strong motivation, with emotions going deeply to the level of survival, that keep the tribe in existence. A police officer said to me, "Ninety-eight percent of the people in the world are sorry S.O.B.'s and the two percent that are good are cops." He didn't include anyone above the rank of sergeant in the two percent and only about half of them were included.

An extreme statement Yes! A unique attitude No! That officer succinctly stated a common conclusion of a prevalent value system in police-the tribal value system. Ethics in law enforcement has become a popular topic in police literature and courses, and I am glad. Ethical behavior by police is important-more, it is crucial. But I am concerned about the approach taken in the articles I have read and the seminars I have attended. The approach has followed a legal model. Authorities make pronouncements about how officers "shall" or "will" behave and what they "shall not" or "will not" do.

The language is in the imperative voice with an expectation that officers will follow these ethical imperatives because they have been officially stated. The motivation for following is similar to obeying the law (Morrison 2001). Laws must be obeyed and ethical principles should be heeded, but the two are not the same. The legal model assumes that there is only one system of values, the authority based system, and that assumption is false. Notice the change in wording from "ethics" to "values".

The two are not the same, but they can't be separated. People's ethics reflect their values. There are several value systems by which people decide right and wrong, and the authority value system is only one means by which people build ethics. Each system exists in all people at varying degrees in different circumstances and times in their lives. For example, one system may predominate at home and another at work. Likewise, the values most affecting a rookie are not the same as the predominant values in an officer of ten years.

The concept of values emphasizes a living process through which people come to their ethical conclusions. The things important to people change throughout their lives, and as a result, their ethical understandings change. The legal model of ethics assumes a static authority value system in all officers in all phases of their careers and is weak because officers do in fact change. Authoritative pronouncements will not and cannot determine the ethical standards and behavior of officers. If the current dialogue in ethics is going to have any real effect, we must deal with the realities of police-who they are and where they live.

I want to focus on the tribal value system-the one that allows an officer to believe that almost all people are bad, as expressed in the first sentence. This system dominates in almost all officers at some point in their careers. Keep in mind that very few people are aware of different value systems in them vying for dominance. They are just aware of struggling with right and wrong without being able to articulate the process going on in them (Pinker 1994). The National Institute of Ethics has concluded the most extensive research ever conducted on the police Code of Silence.

Between February, 1999 and June, 2000, 3,714 officers and academy recruits from forty-two different states were asked to participate in the