Police Ethics Capstone Project

Police Ethics

Description

Ethics is a delicate topic in the context of policing, as police officers are often coming across situations when they need to act on account of their instinct rather than on ethical thinking. Individuals are subjected to a continuous amount of stress during their jobs as police officers and they thus have to be able to put across the best performance possible on a constant basis. Even with this, one needs to understand that police officers are only human and that in spite of their struggle to put across exemplary behavior they are sometimes likely to act in disagreement with generally accepted legislations. It is only safe to say that law enforcement is seeing a crisis as it is becoming increasingly difficult for officers to focus on ethics in the diverse environment in the present. While the fact that cameras are very common today means that police officers feel less inclined to act unethically, by installing miniature cameras on each and every police officer things are likely to improve in the future.

Background and rationale

The fact that police officer misconduct has become more common during recent years can be largely owed to cheap digital video flooding the market. Secrecy was previously the key to preventing police officers from behaving unethically. However, as more and more individuals came to have access to cheap digital video recording devices incidents started to happen with a larger prevalence. "Every week, it seems, video taken by citizens using a handheld camera, smartphone, or some other device goes "viral" online, flooding the internet with examples of police brutality or some other form of misbehavior." (Gaines, 151)

It seems perfectly normal for policemen today to assume that almost every action they perform is being recorded.Even with this, some seem to be unwilling to act in accordance with ethical values as long as they are not certain that someone is recording them. "One of the traditional explanations for police unethical behavior has been that police-citizen confrontational encounters occur alone and unobserved -- under a cloud of secrecy." (Barker, 2011, p. 3) Videos have demonstrated that police officers have lied and have arrested individuals on false accusations in a series of cases.

A Rialto police department has conducted an experiment involving police officers using miniature cameras in order to document their experiences. "The experiment was designed to find out if police wearing video cameras would reduce use of force in police encounters and also reduce citizen complaints"(Steinberg, 2013) The experiment generated results showing that individuals without cameras were twice more likely to go through episodes involving use-of-force in comparison to individuals who wore cameras.

Taking into account the Rialto experiment, one can observe a direct relationship between ethical behavior and the thought that someone is watching each and every more one makes. In order for police officers to be able to constrain their emotions when they are under a lot of stress, they need to know that they have to be calculated about what they do. The fact that they know that the slightest display of unethical behavior can cause a lot of trouble is essential in making them hesitant about using force.

The fact that police officers today come across trouble with a significant prevalence means that it would be essential for a monitoring system to save both them….....