law enforcement ethics: using officers' dilemmas as a teaching tool

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Law enforcement ethics: Usingofficers' dilemmas as a teaching toolJoycelyn M. Pollock a & Ronald F. Becker aa Southwest Texas State UniversityPublished online: 18 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Joycelyn M. Pollock & Ronald F. Becker (1995) Law enforcement ethics:Using officers' dilemmas as a teaching tool, Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 6:1, 1-20,DOI: 10.1080/10511259500083301

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LAW ENFORCEMENT ETHICS: USING OFFICERS' DILEMMAS AS A

TEACHING TOOL

JOYCELYN M. POLLOCK RONALD F. BECKER

Southwest Texas State University

This article addresses the use of officer-generated dilemmas in teaching law enforcement ethics classes for both in-service training and university students. The personal dilemmas provide the grist tbr discussion about decision making and about the philosophical framework from which the decisions derive. Included are descriptions of the more common ethical philosophies, how they may be used to resolve various officer-generated dilemmas, and how recognizing d~emmas and different ethical philosophies may result in different resolutions. The article concludes with the statement that the identification of common dilemmas and the employment of ethical philosophies in resolving them lead to the development of a personal ethical philosophy.

A growing body of literature discusses the importance of teaching ethics in criminal justice curricula (Kleinig i990; Pollock 1994; Sehmalleger and MeKenriek 1991; Silvester 1990). In this literature, law enforcement ethics has received the most attention of all the criminal justice subsystems. One issue concerns the place where such teaching should be conducted; it is recognized increasingly that both the college classroom and the law enforcement academy are important locales for instruction in ethics. Another question is whether ethics teaching is properly placed in an academy recruit class or as part of in-service training. Again, it is probably true that a focused, guided discussion of ethical issues is needed at both of those points in a law enforcement career.

Law enforcement ethics is particularly relevant, according to Kleinig (1990:4), because of the number of issues relevant to police, the discretion- ary nature of policing, the authority of police, the fact that they are not "habitually moral," the crisis situations, tile temptations, and peer pressure. The goals of police training typically include all aspects of performance related to the job; recently other elements have been introduced, such as communication skills, multicultural understanding, child abuse, and the "battered woman syndrome." The training schedule, however, often does not include the role of the police in a free society, due process, or ethical issues involved in investigation and enforcement.

JoOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE EDUCATION, Vot. 6 No. 1, Spring 1995 1995 Academy of ~rimin'al Justice Sciences

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2 LAW ENFORCEMENT ETHICS

In this article, we discuss ethics training for practitioners and, to some extent, for criminal justice students. Usually the content of such courses is suggested as a combination of philosophy and discussion of hypothetical or researched ethical dilemmas. Swift, Houston, and Anderson (1993), for instance, suggest that utilitarianism is the appropriate philosophical system because most people (they included correctional and police officers in their study) can identify with the concepts of utilitarianism and use them intui- tively. Other authors also suggest a philosophical foundation in addition to practical issues as the content of such a course (Klenig 1990; Schmalleger 1990; Souryal 1992).

The content of ethical dilemmas for criminal justice students and practitioners can be gathered from newspapers, books in the field, and articles. Delattre's (1989) book, for instance, can be used as a source for a number of ethical problems, as can Cohen and Feldberg (1991). Pollock (1994) provides dilemmas for law enforcement personnel as well as for members of corrections and other criminal justice professions. Pollock (1993) also discusses a number of sources for law enforcement ethics; and these can be used to develop other dilemmas. In the literature one can identify the following issues among others (these do not form an exhaustive list) gratuities, corruption, bribery, "shopping," whistle-blowing and loyalty, undercover tactics, use of deception, discretion, sleeping, sex on duty and other misfea- sance, deadly force, and brutality. Barker and Carter (1991) develop a ty- pology of police officer deviance including use of force, misconduct (violation of rules or laws) and corruption (gratuities and/or any misuse of position for expected reward).

One might assume that these are the most problematic ethical issues in law enforcement because they are found in the literature. Officers themselves, however, may not necessarily perceive them as the most problematic. For instance, although undercover tactics (e.g., deception) have received a great deal of attention in the literature, many officers are never faced with this issue because they work in patrol, not in investigation. The issues of deadly" force and brutality are certainly important, but they may not be day-to-day concerns for the many officers who rarely encounter these situations. Also, although most of the ethical issues mentioned thus far involve officer deviance, some issues do not involve misconduct. That is, in some situations neither decision that the officer could make may be clearly wrong. Few attempts have been made to determine what ethical concerns the officers themselves identify; if they do this in academy class- rooms, the findings have not found their way into the literature.

Barker (1978) is one of the few researchers who has sought officers' own views on ethical issues. In this study he asked 50 officers in a small police department how many of their number participated in specific examples of unethical activity other than corruption. The officers were to respond to five activities: excessive force, police perjury, sex on duty, drinking

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POLLOCK AND BECKER 3

on duty, and sleeping on duty. Barker also asked the officers to rank the perceived seriousness of these acts. The officers believed that sleeping on duty and engaging in sex while on duty were the most frequent forms of misconduct; these were also rated as less serious. Survey respondents reported that 39.58 percent of officers have engaged in sleeping on duty, 31.84 percent of officers have engaged in sex on duty, 39.19 percent of officers have engaged in police brutality, 22.95 percent of officers have committed perjury, and 8.05 percent of officers have drank alcohol o n duty.

Perceived extent evidently was related to perceived seriousness because the officers ranked the activities as follows (from most serious to least serious): drinking on duty, police perjury, sleeping, sex on duty, brutality. Another measure of seriousness was the officers' willingness to report another officer for an activity. In regard to this point, the officers responded as follows: 56 percent would always report drinking, 28 percent would always report perjury, 19 percent would always report sex on duty, 14 percent would always report sleeping on duty, and 12 percent would always report brutality.

One might expect that the perceived extent and seriousness of various types of wrongdoing would vary fi'om city to city. In an informal survey using the same array of activities as Barker's, one of the authors fotmd that officers in a large city reported significantly more drinking among their fellow officers and less sex and brutality than the officers in Barker's survey. The changes also may be related to the time when the surveys were conducted: Barker's study was conducted in the late 1970s, before officers were sensitized to the problem of police brutality.

Barker's study still does not fully explore what officers themselves perceive to be problematic issues because it used a restricted list of activities. In this article we discuss an approach to teaching ethics to a criminal justice audience which allows class participants to submit their own ethical dilemmas and to analyze these dilemmas using a philosophical framework. The approach is based on the assumption that students will submit dilemmas which are relevant to them. Personalizing course content and providing practitioners with a basic understanding of ethical analysis will ultimately help them to recognize and resolve ethical issues.

Each of the authors has had the opportunity to teach ethics to law enforcement officers. One of ns has taught an in-service ethics class for police officers in a large city for several years; each class has contained about 50 officers: The other has used the same format in teaching ethics to small rural agencies with fewer than 20 participants. As a pedagogical tool, the instructor employs ethical dilemmas submitted by class participants as the basis for half of the course content. In this procedure, the instructor first defines the term ethical dilemma as a situation in which the person did not know the right course of action; or in which it was difficult to do what he or she considered to be right, and/or what was wrong was very tempting.

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Then the officers in each class are asked to write down an ethical dilemma they have faced. This is done after several hours of introductory material on ethics, ethical codes, morals, and value systems, but before any issue- based material has been presented. As a result, officers have not yet focused on any specific type of dilemma such as gratuities or brutality. Ask- ing the officers to give an example of an ethical dilemma is not the same as asking them what they believe is the most difficult ethical issue in policing, but over the course of many class sections, the pattern of responses has revealed what officers consistently identify as problematic ethical issues.

Another exercise that is used in every class is to ask the officers to write their own code of ethics, and to limit this code of ethics to one sentence. That is, they are instructed to write down what they consider the most important elements of a code for police officers or what makes a good police officer. These one-sentence codes are collected and then read to the class, which analyzes the values expressed in each and identifies the values cited most frequently. In all classes, the officers identify five common elements: legality (enforcing and upholding the law), service (protecting and serving the public), honesty and integrity, loyalty, and some version of the Golden Rule, or respect for other persons. These elements are always mentioned in every class, although the relative rank or emphasis given to each varies somewhat.

These concepts parallel closely' to the Code of Ethics promulgated by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Specifically, legality is represented by "I will be exemplary" in obeying the law and the regulations of my department;" service is expressed as " . . . m y fundamental duty is to serve the community . . . . " Honesty and integrity are reflected in "Honest in thought and deed both in my personal mad official life . . . . " The Golden Rule or some version of respect for other persons is exemplified in the words in the Code which relate to never acting officiously or permitting personal feelings, prejudices, or friendships, among other things, to influ- ence decisions. Loyalty, in fact, is the only issue identified by officers which has no counterpart in the Code. Because loyalty is a subject of concern for both officers and writers in the field of ethics, it is interesting that the Code, in a recent revision, specifically cites the duty to comply with investigations of wrongdoing: "I will cooperate wdth all legally authorized agencies and their representatives in the pursuit of justice."

The five elements that officers view as important to a code of ethics are (not incidentally) tied to the dilemmas they identify. Legality can be discussed in terms of discretion, - - tha t is, what to do in particularly difficult situations where no clear solution presents itself and where the law is not very helpful. Service is relevant to duty issues; these cover instances in which it would be inconvenient or perceived as a waste of time to perform a task that duty requires. Honesty, of course, is related to whistle-blowing and to loyalty issues as well as the temptation to take money from a scene

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or accept a bribe. Finally, the Golden Rule is related to all of those situations in which it is difficult to keep ones' temper or to treat people respect- full), because of anger, the exigencies of the moment, or some other reason.

Four categories - - discretion (legality), duty (service), honesty, and loyalty ~ are represented in officers' dilemmas. The two most frequently cited categories are loyalty versus whistle blowing and the use of discretion in difficult situations. In the remainder of this paper, we discuss these dilemmas and the procedure used to analyze them in a classroom discussion of dilemmas.

Discretion

Discretion can be defined as the power to make a choice. Obviously', all ethical dilemmas involve making choices--for example whether or not to take a bribe. The situations categorized in this area of discretion involve decisions in which either of the two possible actions may be defined as right. The purview of what is known as police discretion--whether or not to arrest, whether or not to ticket, what to do when faced with an alterca- t i o n - h a v e not been identified as ethical issues in the literature. In some of these situations, however, officers either felt uncomfortable about what the law- or departmental regulations required them to do or report that they were sincerely confused as to the appropriate course of action.

Some incidents occur when the officer does not know whether to enforce a law and/or is uncomfortable about enforcing it. Typically the law involved is relatively minor--a traffic citation, violation of city warrants, or some other misdemeanor. The officer hesitates or feels that the decision presents an ethical dilemma because of situational elements such as the offender's age or poverty, or the perception that the offender deserves a break. The following examples are representative. All are almost verbatim transcriptions of officers' submissions.

Dilemma:

Officer received a call regarding business holding a shoplifter. A 75 year old female was being held for shoplifting and needed medications. However, store insisted on filing charges on her.

Dilemma:

K Mart calls for a wagon call. You get there and find a 70 year old lad)' arrested for trying to steal hearing aid batteries. She was on a fixed income and unable to purchase items. She even looks like your mother.

Dilemma:

While on patrol one day, I was dispatched to a disturbance at a gas station. Upon arrival I spotted a kid I saw in the neighborhood a lot. I

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knew this kid lived with his grandmother and that they were barely making ends meet. I had run into problems before with the kid begging for money and washing people's windows at gas stations without being asked to. The gas station attendant wanted the child arrested for trespassing because he stated the child harassed the customers.

In these situations, the offender almost always is extremely poor and/ or elderly. The stores often insist on prosecution, leaving the officer in a struggle between compassion and enforcing the law. In the next set of situations there is no demanding complainant, but the officer believed that strict legality might not serve the ends of justice, or at least felt torn about enforcing the law.

Dilemma:

Officer A was faced with arresting a person on a parole violation. Of- ricer while talking to family members learned that parole violator had just started a new job, which was verified by employer. What should Officer A do? (Parole violation was for first DWI.)

Dilemma:

I arrested a lady with a baby for numerous traffic warrants. Do you take the baby to juvenile and her to jail, make arrangements for someone else to care for the baby, or just let her go and tell her to take care of the warrants on her own? She has no money and gave us no trouble,

Dilemma:

Riding with a partner we stopped a person on traffic for multiple violations, no insurance, no drivers license, no identification at all, and who would face going to jail for traffic violations on Christmas Eve. Would you discourage your partner from taking him to jail?

Most of these types of incidents involve women and/or families with children stopped on a traffic violation. Some officers were very clear about the criteria they used to guide their discretion; others were less sure about the ethical role of the police in traffic enforcement.

In another category of discretion, no law or policy may be involved, but the officer was perplexed as to how to resolve the situation. These were almost always ~ family disputes in which a real problem existed, but the officer had trouble deciding on the appropriate or ethical course of action. Here the officer's dilemma arose from a sincere desire to do the right thing but not knowing what it was. Referral sources in the community, although plentiful, are often unavailable or overused. The large number of these dilemmas indicates that officers perceive ethical issues in this area of policing and that it is not necessarily a question of doing something wrong, but rather of finding the best solution to a difficult problem.

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Dilemma:

What do you do when called to a scene to transport and find some type of housing for an elderly parent whom the family no longer wants because of mental impairment, knowing that the family has used, in the past, the parent's resources as their mainstay?

Dilemma:

Office A received call in regard to trespassing. Officer spoke with complainant at residence, who wanted a female removed from his house. Female had a small child and was complainant's ex-girlfriend who had no family and no place to go.

This last dilemma is the most frequent type of situation in this category. Typically boyfriends want girlfriends removed, girlfriends want boyfriends removed, parents want children removed, and husbands want wives removed, or vice versa. The officers also express the frustration inherent in dealing with these difficult interpersonal problems, as in the examples below.

Dilemma:

You and your partner are dispatched to a disturbance at a low income apartment complex. It involves a drunk husband and drunk wife calling the police for no reason. No crime has been committed. After being dispatched to the same apartment unit 3 or 4 times in one night, how should an officer resolve the situation? Arrest one or both for public intoxication inside their own residence? Unplug the phone? Continue to run the call every time they call?

Dilemma:

Officer A goes to a disturbance at a residence. It is his third time there. The problem is the same each time, Father gets drunk, he then tells his son, wife and kids to leave his home. The son refuses to take his family and leave. The real problem is the father being drunk and stupid, yet the father has a legal right to tell his son's family to leave. What should you do?

Some dilemmas arose because of a personal or professional relation- ship between the officer and the subject. Typically this involved stopping a speeding car and finding that the driver was a fellow officer, or responding to an altercation involving another officer or family member who was probably at fault.

Dilemma:

You are on patrol, riding one man, at approximately 10 PM. You and one other vehicle are stopped at a red light, The light changes, and you and the other vehicle start driving. Suddenly you observe the other vehicle

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8 LAW" ENFORCEMENT ETHICS

weaving from lane to lane. You turn on your lights and siren, and after about an 8 block drive the vehicle finally pulls over. You exit your vehicle and find that not only is the driver very intoxicated, but he is also your first cousin. What should you do?

Dilemma:

Working a side job at a nightclub you notice a disturbance on the far side of the club. As you handle the problem, you discover that the instiga- tor of the problem is an off duty officer, who is extremely intoxicated, and refusing to follow your instructions. Mso the other party involved, who is not an officer, is claiming that the officer assaulted him. . . the other party does not know he is an officer.

Dilemma:

Officer A is on patrol. Suddenly he spots a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed. Officer A stops the vehicle and finds out that the person is a law enforcement officer from a different agency. Officer A observes that he is highly intoxicated. What should he do?

By presenting these situations as dilemmas, officers indicate that they consider it questionable to give special treatment to other officers, even if most officers would defend the preferential treatment.

Discussions based on these dilemmas concerning the use of discretion can examine which criteria may be considered ethical and which have less ethical support. Because full enforcement is obviously not an option, police will always have to use discretion in enforcing the laws. Therefore it is important for them at least to recognize the ethical issues involved in employing that discretion.

Duty

Duty may involve situations in which there is a question about a police officer's duty in a certain situation, or it may involve situations in which the officer knows that the job requires a particular action, but that the action is either inconvenient or is considered a useless waste of time. In the first situation, some of the examples of discretion given above may also apply to duty. For instance, in the case of a family altercation, when a police officer responds and finds that no crime has been committed, what is his or her duty? Is there a duty to try to resolve a volatile situation before it erupts into a crime? Some police officers believe they have a duty to help poor and homeless persons find shelter; others see no such duty. This type of discretion inevitably brings out differences of opinion and is fundamental to how officers see their role in the community. It is also an ethical issue,

The other type of duty dilemma is much more straightforward: the officer knew there was a duty to perform a certain act. A frequent situation

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is the temptation (and evidently the widespread practice) of either driving past an accident scene or avoiding it because it occurred near the end of a shift. Other dilemmas involve repeated 911 calls and the temptation to avoid them or run them halfheartedly.

Dilemma:

It is 10 minutes to Off Duty time. You on-view an accident. Do you work the accident, even though you want to go home, or do you avoid the accident by sneaking around it?

Dilemma:

It is 10:30 p.m. and you are a late shift unit heading into the station when you notice a large traffic jam. As you near the scene you observe that it is an accident involving two cars and a fixed object. Do you stop and make it, or take the back way to the station?

Dilemma:

You get a disturbance call from the dispatcher at a certain location. You can see the location from inside a building you are in, and see that there is no disturbance at that location. Is it necessary to leave the building to run the call?

Another duty issue arises from the risk of contracting AIDS.

Dile'mma:

Yon are involved in a situation where someone is injured and is in need of CPR, You know the injured person to be a drug addict and a criminal. Do you perform CPR or not?

Finally, the officers cite miscellaneous duty issues, all under the general heading of using on-duty time to conduct personal business.

Dilemma:

To get in service after clearing a call or staying out of service to handle some personal business or affairs.

Dilgmma:

An officer works a plainclothes assignment in a division where each squad is small and reports to one supervisor . . . . The officer's supervisor is off this day, and the likelihood of being noticed leaving early is practically nil. So why not cut out an hour and a half early when it won't be noticed? Your work will not be undone.

Participants in discussions about duty issues learn first that not all police officers view duty in the same way. To move beyond a simple exchange of opinion, one must apply an ethical framework analysis which helps the

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students see that although their stand may be justified and legal, it may have less ethical support than other definitions of duty.

Honesty

Under the general heading of honesty, officers submit dilemmas involving self-protection or enrichment (bribery), issues involving honesty versus the need to make an arrest. Many officers relate dilemmas in which officers were confronted with temptations of money or other goods, typically "found" at burglary scenes.

Dilemma:

Officer received a call to a robbery and on the way to the call he dis- covered a brown bag full of money, This officer was alone and no one saw him pick up the bag. The question is what to do with the bag, turn it in or keep it?

Dilemma:

Officers A and B are on the scene of a homicide involving a supposed drug dealer who is lying on the ground dead. No one is present except the officers, who then find $20,000 cash in suspect's pockets. Officer B insists that they should keep and half the money with each other.

Dilgmma:

An officer is patrolling through an abandoned apartment complex when he observes a stack of lumber in the back of the complex to be used for remodeling. The officer is working on a project at home and could use . . . . a few pieces of lumber. Nobody else is around. What should he do?

One useful device is to start the discussion with a dilemma involving $20 and to ask what the proper procedure is, and then to continue to ask using larger amounts of money. Many students believe it is a minor breach (if any at all) to keep the $20, but at some point the amount of "found" money that is kept by the individual comes to be perceived as unethical. The issue then is whether the amount or the action should determine the ethical nature of the response.

In another type of dilemma, officers try to cover up their own wrongdoing by lying or not coming forward when they commit minor misdeeds. From the number of dilemmas concerning "fender-benders" with police cars, we may surmise that the police parking lot is an insurer's nightmare.

Dilemma:

Officer had accident where there were no witnesses. Since it was auto-fixed object, officer was at fault but he didn't want disciplinary action.

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Officer was deciding whether or not to say that another car cut him off to explain how the accident occurred.

In another type of situation, officers must either tell the truth and lose (or risk losing) an arrest, or misrepresent facts to save the arrest. Although this is a popular topic in the literature, it is not submitted frequently by officers.

Dilemma:

You stop somebody and check his pockets and find some dope. You had no probable cause to search him but you did anyhow because you thought he might be holding. Do you find a reason to arrest him and then put in the report that you found the dope after the arrest so it won't get thrown out in court?

Dilemma:

Officer A sees known crack dealer on coruer and searches him. He finds drugs, makes arrest and then lies about or makes up probable cause for the search in his report and in his courtroom testimony. Nobody knows but the officer and the suspect. The suspect did have the drug and he is a dealer in that neighborhood.

Bribery is a form of dishonesty, and so can be discussed under this category of dilemma. It can be defined as a reward for doing something illegal or as not doing something that is required. Officers submit very few dilemmas dealing with bribery. It may be that they do not view it as a dilemma because they seldom receive oppo~unities, or else because the occupational subculture is such that bribe taking is clearly: a serious violation; therefore there is no question about the proper response when faced with an opportunity.

Dilemma:

I was offered money for taking care of a ticket. Also offered money for giving information about a driver's license or license plate.

Loyalty

In these situations involving loyalty versus whistle-blowing, officers must decide what to do when faced with wrongdoing by others. The literature accurately reflects the importance of this issue for law enforcement officers, in view of the frequency of submissions on this topic. Officers' dilemmas run the gamut from seeing relatively minor wrongdoing, (e.g., misuses of overtime) to the very serious, (e.g., physical abuse of a suspect or the commission of another crime).

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Dilemma:

On a winter afternoon Officers A and B are riding patrol in a rough area of town. Officer A spots a possible burglar and stops. After a brief chase the suspect is arrested. Officer B uses a little more extra force than necessary. Officer A does not agree. What does he do?

Dilemma:

You are on patrol. Your partner uses more force than you think needed when arresting a suspect, and you are asked by the partner to lie, ff asked, about how much force was used.

Dilemm~z:

Whether or not to tell a supervisor of another officer whom you see verbally or physically abuse a citizen on a regular basis when it's not called for.

In fact, the only time officers mention abuse of force is in this situation: whether or not to report a fellow officer who used what was considered to be too much force. This last dilemma illustrates an interesting point, however: the use of appropriate force may be in the eye of the be- holder. Did the officer identify the partner's action as problematic because of its nature, because it was too frequent or because it was uncalled-for? When is it called for?

Another set of loyalty issues involves observing another officer com- mitting a crime or believing that he or she has done so.

Dilemma:

You are on patrol as you roll up on a possible narcotics transaction involving a known dope dealer. You make the block to set up on the buyer who is in a vehicle. By the time you make the block the buyer is rolling. You go to chase down the buyer and it takes you several blocks to catch up to him. In your mind he is trying to lose you. You manage to catch up to him about a mile away. It turns out the driver is an off-duty sheriff's dep- uty. What do you do?

Dilemma:

An officer is dispatched as a backup unit where an alarm is going off at a large jewelry store. He insists on doing the report, listing items that were taken. A couple of days later you see him wearing items or showing off items he claims to have got a good deal on. These are items you saw in the store burglarized. What should you do?

Finally, some dilemmas involve actions that technically may be crimes and often pose risks to other officers, but are not viewed as seriously as buying drugs or stealing from the scene of a burglary. Again, several of

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these dilemmas involve minor traffic accidents. Because officers are disciplined for driving errors, it is always a temptation to avoid the responsibility of reporting them.

Dilemma:

You are standing in a parking lot when you notice Officer A backing his ear out of his parking space. He hits the car behind him, then drives off. A few seconds later the owner of the car comes out and asks you ff you saw what happened. What should you do?

Dilemma:

One day while leaving the parking lot, my partner was driving and accidentally damaged a new patrol car which was parked next to us. We both got out of our patrol vehicle and observed the minor damage to the new vehicle. We both looked around but did not notice anyone else near. My partner told me he would report it to the Sgt. at the end of the shift. However, the next day at roll call, the roll call Sgt. asked if anyone knew how the new patrol car received the damage.

Dilemma:

Officer A sleeps on duty and doesn't run his calls. What should I (his partner) do?

Dilemma:

Officer A was an alcoholic and consumed alcohol very heavily on a day to day basis. Even while on duty, A was highly intoxicated. Joe Blow, a concerned citizen who owned a liquor store in the beat knew of A's situation and decided to call Officer B and advised him to talk to A about the problem before it got out of hand. What should B do?

Because covering up for another officer is riskier now with the possi- bility of individual civil liability, fewer officers may be willing to cover for each other. This justification, however, is different from an ethical argu- ment for coming forward in the name of integrity. The belief that reporting a fellow officer because he or she did something wrong or that telling the truth is your duty is not the same as coming forward and telling the truth in an official investigation in order to avoid being disciplined. The first rationale may be supported by utilitarian or duty-based ethics; the sec- ond justification is pure egoism.

Gratuities

The subject of taking gratuities is hard to ignore in any class on criminal justice ethics. It is represented in the law enforcement literature and is

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identified by civilians as a perennial problem among police. Officers themselves often believe there is nothing wrong with gratuities.

One distinction that can be made in these dilemmas is between true gratuities (something given to any officer as a matter of policy) and gifts (something given to an individual in return for a specific action),

Dilemma:

Officer A is new to his beat. Where he worked before, he would stop by at local convenience store and get something to drink and pay for it. He has learned from past experiences that people always expect something in return. In this new beat he stops by the store. The clerk refuses to accept payment. Officer A explains that he would prefer to pay. The clerk, now upset, accuses officer of trying to be better than the others, and will tell his supervisor, who also stops by. What does he do?

Dilemma:

Officer A stopped in a store in his beat and is offered anything he wants in the store within reason - - food, cigarettes, Skoal - - and the worker offered him lottery tickets, which he may or may not have taken. After several days of going to the store, the worker tells the officer he sometimes has problems, and could he give the worker his beeper number to call him? . . . . Question . . . . should the officer give his beeper number and feel obligated to call this person because he has gotten free articles?

Dilemma:

A guy was broken dow~a in his car on the freeway. As an officer on duty, I stopped. I took him home since he only lived a short distance away in my beat. It was early in the morning and the man was very appreciative. He wanted to buy me breakfast to show his appreciation so he offered me five dollars.

D//emrtta:

Office A is called to a burglar alarm at a Vietnamese business. Officer checks the building and finds that the Vietnamese family lives inside. Of- ricer then checks the inside of the business and finds no sign of forced entry. Officer reassures the Vietnamese family that everything is alright. Vietnamese family then offers officer an envelope filled with unknown amount of cash. What should he do?

Discussion on the ethics of gratuities can be hampered by staunch de- fensiveness on the part of officers. It is helpful to explore regional differences and to clearly discuss definitions--for example, the difference

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between gratuities and gifts--and the reason why gratuities to public ser- vants are a problematic issue. At this point it may prove illustrative to discuss gratuities in the same fashion used in discussing honesty, beginning with a cup of coffee and gradually increasing the value and size of the gratuity until the gratuity in question becomes perceived as unethical. The discussion can be enhanced by polling the class periodically as the size and value of the gratuity increase. The ambiguity involved in determining an acceptable maximum level may explain why not accepting gratuities at all reduces the likelihood of ethical compromise.

FURTHER STEPS

Now That We Have the Dilemmas, What Do We Do With Them?

Descriptions of dilemmas submitted by officers indicate that they may view many relatively mundane issues as problematic. Decisions regarding whether to enforce a warrant or ticket, what to do in a domestic disturbance, and whether to leave an assignment early, are not the same stuff as police brutality or use of deception, but it seems clear now that if an ethics course for officers is to be relevant, it should cover these issues as well. The approach to be taken in analyzing these dilemmas is up to the individual instructor. Here we discuss one way to employ these dilemmas in a classroom.

As stated previously, any class on law enforcement ethics must have a philosophical basis in order to move beyond a mere bull session of opinions. One may decide to simplify matters by presenting only one ethical framework, such as utilitarianism, and then use it to analyze ethical dilemmas. Another approach may be to compare several ethical frameworks, such as utilitarianism, ethical formalism, and religion. Much depends on the length of the course.

After dilemmas are submitted or selected, they must be grouped in some way so that similar dilemmas are discussed together. This exercise is similar to the one we described above. It would be an unusual class if none of the above categories were represented; in more than two years of teaching many courses, both authors have found that the dilemmas submitted tend to address similar concerns, One benefit of this grouping exercise is that officers recognize there is a common ground in their ethical concerns. Also, the anonymity of the method ensures that some of the most vocal participants cannot conclude that a particular issue is "not a problem" because at least one of their members feels strongly enough about the issue to offer a dilemma regarding that issue.

The first step in the analysis is to determine the level at which disa- greement occurs. One might ask the following questions: What does the law require? What does departmental policy require? What do personal

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ethics require? Classes often have heated discussions about legal definitions and policy mandates. As a result, some ethics classes become training courses in areas such as domestic violence taws and victim's rights legisla- tion. The class members may agree on whether there is an applicable law, but may disagree on departmental policy. They may agree on law and policy until the discussion tunas to ethical analysis. If an applicable law or policy exists and if the class members nonetheless express an ethical concern about whether to follow such law or policy, the issue of cM1 disobedi- ence and duty becomes relevant. Can an officer be considered ethical if he or she follows a personal code of ethics which is contrary to a departmental directive? What if the departmental directive is not supported by any ethical system? These are sensitive and important issues.

If there is no applicable law, and if departmental policy is silent, then the discussion can be directed quickly to an ethical analysis of possible solutions. One can direct discussions in at least two ways. One way is to assign participants to groups, assign them an ethical framework, and ask them to determine a solution that is justified by the ethical framework (e.g., utilitarianism, ethical formalism, ethics of care). Another approach is to ask the class to suggest the best solution to the dilemma and then analyze that solution using the ethical framework. One class analyzed the following dilemma as described above:

Dilemma:

Officer received a call regarding business holding a shoplifter. A 75 year old ~bmale was being held for shoplifting and needed medications. However, store insisted on filing charges on her.

The first set of questions reveals the following points: Is there an applicable law? Yes, and the woman obviously broke it. Is there an applicable departmental policy'? Obviously the departmental policy would be to enforce the law, especially if a complainant wants to press charges. Does this resolve the dilemma? For some students it does. Some individuals believe that the duty of the police is to enforce the law, not to mediate it. Others, however, would respond by saying that an ethical issue exists in defining duty. These students identify this situation as a dilemma. Their solution may be to try to convince the store owner to drop charges, perhaps even going so far as to pay for the items themselves. Is this their duty? Obviously no professional duty dictates such action, but some believe that personal ethics require a more complete response to the situation than merely acting as an agent of the law.

Next, the ethical frameworks are applied to the possible solutions. Utilitarianism would be concerned with the relative costs and benefits of arrest versus some type of intervention. Ethical formalism would relate to duties. Ethics of care would deal with need (for a more complete discussion of some of these applications, see Pollock 1994).

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Another dilemma as described here illustrates how a class discussion may occur.

Dilemma:

Officer A was an alcoholic and consumed alcohol very" heavily on a day" to day basis. ' Even while on duty A was highly intoxicated. Joe Blow, a concerned citizen, who owned a liquor store in the beat, knew of A's situation and decided to call Officer B and advised him to talk to A about the problem before it got out of hand. What should B do?

Again, the first question is whether there is an applicable law. Public intoxication laws may be applicable. Certainly an applicable departmental policy exists and a violation is present. Is the ethical issue obvious? Inci- dents of this kind are sensitive issues for discussion. The appropriate solution for any individual officer may be discussed in terms of his or her own value system. Some individuals place a higher value on loyalty than on any other quality, including integrity. Most balance loyalty against the severity of the wrongdoing. Alcohol, for example, is considered less serious than drug use: more officers would take action against an offieer using drugs than alcohol, even though the intoxication may be similar. A discussion of this dilemma often involves the perceived unfairness of an administrative response. That is, other professionals merely may be censured for alcohol problems, but police officers lose their jobs and their career. This point can be tied to an application of utilitarianism: What are the relative costs and benefits associated with turning the officer in, talking to the officer, or doing nothing? An application of ethical formalism would be concerned with the duty of the officer who has knowledge of the problem. (For a more complete discussion of similar issues, see Cohen and Feldberg 1991.)

Applications

At this point, various ethical systems are discussed briefly. Each par- ticipant should be able to discuss a resolution of the submitted dilemmas by applying various ethical systems. We stress that ethical systems are not moral decisions but rather guidelines or a framework to which one can re- fer to in the effort to make a moral decision. A discussion of ethical systems provides this procedural framework, but it also demonstrates that often there is more than one "correct" resolution to a dilemma and more than one way to arrive at the same resolution. In addition, one may use various ethical systems in resolving moral dilemmas or even a single dilemma. The following material discusses briefly how some ethical systems might be applied.

Religious Ethics (what is good conforms to a deity's will). These discussions generally begin by borrowing moral concepts from religious teach- ings, and drawing on the participants' various religious beliefs. The more diverse the religious beliefs, the broader the discussion. The objective,

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however, is to bring students to the point where they recognize that religious philosophies are ethical systems based on absolute concepts of good, evil, right, and wrong. A religious ethical system may not provide much practical assistance in resolving the dilemmas described by the class. Dif- ferences in biblical interpretation may be used to illustrate how Christians may reach conflicting resolutions to the same dilemma even though they are applying the same religious ethical system. Yet some of the most basic precepts of religion, such as the Golden Rule, appear consistently at the core of many ethical systems and can be applied to dilemmas from any area of human interaction.

Natural law (what is good is what conforms to nature). A discussion of religious ethical systems obviously leads to concepts of natural (universal) law separate and apart from a supernatural lawgiver. The instructor can begin the discussion by asking students to define what the drafters of the United States Constitution had in mind when speaking of natural rights. If what is natural is good, students can appreciate the constraints of a natural law ethical system in the unnatural human environment and can learn that the natural law theory offers only limited assistance when they list what is consistent and congruent with the natural inclinations of humankind and what is consistent and congruent with humans' natural inclination in resolving dilemmas (Pollock 1994).

Ethical Formalism (what is good is what is pure in motive). For police and criminal justice students, intent is a familiar concept. It is a short step from legal intent to ethical formalism. Students should be asked to resolve a specific dilemma submitted by selecting a resolution that is pure in motive regardless of the consequences. This purity of motive can be balanced with Kant's (1949) notion of universal duty. Although judging the resolution on the basis of purity of motive may be central to the formalist theme, the consequences cannot and should not be ignored. This discussion fo- cuses on duty and typically presents fairly absolute answers to ethical dilemmas. Application of the categorical imperative shows that some actions have little or no ethical support: that is, preferential treatment for officers violates a principle of universalism and gratuities violate the precept of not treating others as a means to an end.

Utilitarianism (what is good is what results in the greatest good for the greatest number). Those students who find the consequences of resolving a dilemma more ethically significant than the resolver's motive can be asked to resolve a dilemma with what they perceive as an acceptable conse- quence. The consequences sought will lead students into a discussion of those consequences. Reflecting on the motive and on the consequences of the various resolutions proffered by students will allow the teacher to point out those resolutions based on purity of motive (ethical formalism), major- ity welfare (utilitarianism), or self-preservation (egoism). Although possibly the most easily applied of ethical systems, utilitarianism poses a difficulty in

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predicting outcome. To evaluate the utility of a particular course of action, one must know what consequences will occur. This, of course, is impossi- ble in most instances. Such discussions then become arguments about the most likely effects of choices (Gold, Braswell, and McCarthy, 1991).

Ethics of Care (what is good is that which meets the needs of those involved and doesn't hurt relationships). Although this is not a popular theme today, many dilemmas posed by participants express concern for the welfare of the individuals who have come into conflict with the law. Often police agency codes reflect a philosophy based on the ethics of care, such as "To protect and serve." The inclination to favor the underdog reflects the American tendency to help those who cannot help themselves. The ethics of care is founded in the natural human response to provide for the needs of children, the sick, and the hurt. Many police officers operate under the ethics of care when they attempt to "solve problems" rather than merely "enforce the law."

Discussions employing the above ethical systems (or others), we hope, show that some decisions have little or no ethical rationale. Also, some rationales for actions can be described only as egoistic, because they serve only the individual's needs. Students and police officers are seldom forced to present ethical rationales for their decisions. Some do not like the experience. Yet others have expressed views suggesting that all police officers could benefit from such experiences.

Thus far we have described an approach to teaching ethics to an in- service class of police officers. These individuals have had enough experience on the street to identify and contribute their own ethical dilemmas to the discussion. This approach could also be adapted to a recruit class or a college class; students should receive some opportunity to apply the analysis to their own personal dilemmas. These dilemmas can lay the foundation for specific discussions about issues of integrity, honesty, loyalty, duty, and discretion that confront police in their day-to-day conduct. Drawing on the dilemmas we have discussed here will give students a realistic view of the workaday situations they may confront, and may help to supply them with the tools to resolve dilemmas.

C O N C L U S I O N

In this article we have presented the premise that the best ethics course for criminal justice students and practitioners is one that is relevant to them. One way to achieve this purpose is to use their own dilemmas in guiding the discussion. Although it is necessary to provide the ethical framework for analyzing these dilemmas, there is little need to introduce hypotheticals because every person in the course probably has faced an ethical dilemma at' some time. Most of these law enforcement dilemmas fall into clear-cut categories. The frequency of some of the more mundane situations indicates that the literature on law enforcement ethics may have

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missed some very important, albeit less "juicy," issues. Topics such as what to do with an elderly shoplifter, whether to enforce an outstanding warrant for a poor mother, or whether to report a minor fenderbender during a shift may not be the stuff of Dirty Ha~'ry movies, but many" police officers experience them nonetheless. The same structured analysis can be used for all types of ethical dilemmas; the benefit of such an analysis is that it gives students and police officers the tools for identifying and resolving their own dilemmas.

Taking this approach to ethics education strongly suggests to students that the shaping of an ethical philosophy does not depend on recognizing and avoiding those dilemmas which are most often sensationalized by the media and the public. An ethical philosophy As shaped by the way an of- ricer deals with the confusion, ambiguity, and compromise that occurs in the course of duty. The recognition of these common dilemmas, the ac- knowledgment of various ethical systems, and the resolution of these dilemmas by using a personal ethical philosophical framework should provide a working foundation to meditate all dilemmas, large and small.

REFERENCES

Baker, T. and D. Carter (1978) Police Deviance. Cincinnati: Anderson. - - (1991) "Peer Group Support for Police Occupational Deviance." In T. Barker and D.

Carter (eds.), Police Deviance, pp. 45-58. Cincinnati: Anderson. Cannons c)f Police Ethics (1992) Arlington. International Association of Chiefs of Police. Carter, D, (1991) "Theoretical Dimensions in the Abuse of Authority by Police Oftlcers." In T.

Barker and D, Carter (eds.), Police, Deviance, pp. 197-218. Cincinnati: Anderson. Cohen, H. and M. Feldberg (t991) Power and Restraint: The Moral Dimension of Police

Work. New York: Praeger. Detattre, E. (1989) Character ar~l Cops: Ethics in Policing. Washington, DC: American En-

terprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Gold, J., W. Braswell and B.J. McCarthy (1991) "Criminal Justice Ethics: A Survey of Philo-

sophical Theories." In M. Bras-eeell, B.R. McCarthy and B.J. McCarthy (eds.), Justice, Crime and Ethics, pp. 12. Cincinnati: Anderson.

Kant, L (1949) Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Kleinig, J, (1990) "Teaching and Learning Police Ethics: Competing and Complementary Ap- proaches," Journal of Criminal Justice 18:1-18.

Pollock, J. (1993) "Ethics aM the Criminal Justice Curriculum." Journal of Criminal Justice Education 4:377-91.

- - (1994) Ethics in Crime and Justice: Dilemmas and Decisions. 2nd. ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Schmalleger, F. (1990) Ethics in Criminal Justice: A Justice Professional Reader. Bristol, IN: Wyndham Hall.

Schmalleger, F. and R. McKenrick (1991) Criminal Justice Ethics: An Annotated Bibliogra- phy. Westport, CT: Greenwood,

Sflvester, D. (1990) "Ethics and Privatization in Criminal Justice: Does Education Have a Role to Ptay7' Journal of Criminal Justice 18:65-70.

Souryal, s. (1992) Ethics in Criminal Justice: In Search of the Trnth. Cincinnati: Anderson. Swift, A,, J, Houston and R. Anderson (1993) "Cops, Hacks and the Greater Good." Presented

at the Annual Meetings of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Kansas City, MO.

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law enforcement ethics: using officers' dilemmas as a teaching tool

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