Police and Gratuities: The Slippery Slope Essay

Police officers are often confronted with the ethical dilemma of whether or not to accept gratuities. This dilemma is an aspect of police discretion and an example of the choices that officers are forced to make. Police officers have discretion when confronted with choices such as whether or not to charge an individual, how to handle certain situations, or whether to accept a gratuity. This purpose of this article is to inform readers that police discretion not only encompasses use of force, police profiling, or domestic violence responses, but that police officers also have discretionary choices when gratuities are offered to them. Should police officers accept a gratuity,

Police salaries are something that is not a topic today’s society would care too much about. Police are held to the highest expectation, deal with the worst people, and everything they do is criticized by the public. The public loves to watch police videos and determine if the police were justified all without every understanding what a police officer goes through each every day. From being in law enforcement and having friends in many different departments, they all seem to have different pay systems and salaries. I think an officer’s initial salary should be comparable to area’s cost of living. Once they complete the initial year as an officer, they should receive a raise of 10 percent. Each year after that they should receive a three to

Police officers may or may not actively support noble-cause corruption. Sometimes when officers become aware of corrupt or illegal forms of misconduct, they are inclined to “turn a blind eye or look the other way.” It puts their fellow officers in a very difficult position, most officers tend to think that if they turn away and ignore it and do not acknowledge what is going on that they are not part of the misconduct or illegal activity. Most

Discretion is defined as the authority to make a decision between two or more choices (Pollock, 2010). More specifically, it is defined as “the capacity to identify and to document criminal and noncriminal events” (Boivin & Cordeau, 2011). Every police officer has a great deal of discretion concerning when to use their authority, power, persuasion, or force. Depending on how an officer sees their duty to society will determine an officer’s discretion. Discretion leads to selective enforcement practices and may result in discrimination against certain groups of people or select individuals (Young, 2011). Most police officer discretion is exercised in situations with individuals (Sherman, 1984).

After the civil war, local politicians rewarded their supporters with jobs as police officers. The officer were not trained and there was not a standard to become an officer. The are were event when entire departments were involved in misconduct and corruption. There was not much hope in this era because there was a lack of supervision that allowed officers to behave the way that they pleased. (Walker, Samuel, and Richards, M. 1996)

Police legitimacy is composed of two elements: trust and acceptance of authority. The public needs to know they can trust the police officers. We have to know if they are honest and are really concerned with our well-being, which would lead to respect and accepting their directives knowing it is for our own well-being or the neighborhood’s. I personally experience both sides of this concept, due to my residential situation, as I live both in El Paso and Juarez. In El Paso I truly trust the police officers that I have encountered, but I cannot say the same about the Juarez police officers. In Juarez many police officers are corrupt and do not care about our well-being. I’m not saying that in El Paso they all do, but their authority is more accepted by its community.

Growing up our parent always told us that police officers were the good guys, and the people that committed crimes were the bad guys. There was a time in our lives that we believed that this was true, police are good, and criminals are bad, simple as that. Police officers played a prominent role in our lives growing up, some were looked at as role models, guidance counselors, but most of all they were our friends. However, at what point did that connection dissipate between police officers and the community? This disconnection was most prominently exemplified in the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), where officer corruption, murder, and lawlessness was ramped within the department. Corruption had become a culture, a way of life for some officers in New Orleans, where supervisors dismissed allegations. Could the use of Rotten Apple mechanism help reduce the corruption in the NOPD? Comparatively, could the application of the Rotten Barrel models provide protection from police misconduct during an investigation?

Many factors contributed to the huge scope of police corruption in the Miami River Cops case. Those factors included; corrupt leadership, personal greed, and crimes that made it easy to look the other way. In a candid talk with his arresting officer, corrupt police officer Osvaldo Coello admitted that he became corrupt largely in part because he became disillusioned with corrupt leadership (Perdomo, 2012). In my opinion, corrupt leadership is the root cause, and most significant catalyst in the Miami River Cops case. New, impressionable police officers are much more likely to succumb to police corruption if they see their leaders doing the same thing. In any organization, leadership sets the example, and once

An important part of the United States workforce is made up of police officers. The number of police officers employed has grown drastically over the past few years. However, although the number of police officers employed has increased, public scrutiny has as well. The police employment practices have affected the publics’ perception of the police because of the factors involved as well as the desire to seek employment in law enforcement. The paper below will describe some of the factors involved with race and ethnicity when seeking police careers.

It at times has been taken advantage of, when the officer's started using this for after work hours and taking home food for their families. These actions were clearly unethical behavior. While establishments are attempting to show respect and generosity to officer's, some may become offended when the offer is not accepted. It would be a "catch 22", due to the fact they are offering this as generosity, and in the event of needing a favor, would not mind calling this to the officer's attention and hold the free items against

“Ethical issues regarding corruption and off-duty behavior have become an increasing challenge in criminal justice” (Writing, 1999-2013). Within the criminal justice system, ethics can be complicated by the moral implications of actions. Differences in cultures and different circumstances can affect the individual moral compass. However, all departments of criminal justice operate by a certain code of ethics and by certain standards. But those standards and ethics often become challenged due to issues relating to police brutality, off duty conduct and corruption that we hear about all of the time through the media.

It is no surprise that recently there has been controversy on the issue of police force. So many people have been taken from their families over something that could have been prevented without taking it as far as killing. From Michael Brown to Walter Scott it just doesn’t stop. Thankfully, for some of these incidents a witness has caught Officers using excessive force. But others, you just get to hear the Officers side of the story since the other person isn’t alive to tell their side to what happened. Which is definitely not enough. There needs to be a legitimate system where we can see everything that happens start to finish when excessive force is the case. Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are demanding for

Corruption within the New York Police Department is a quickly growing phenomenon; to an extent, this is largely due to the cop culture that encourages silence and draws the line at honesty. The good, honest officers are afraid to speak up against co-workers and in the process become corrupt themselves. When police departments were first established in the mid-nineteenth century, corruption quickly followed suit. It began with minor acts of misconduct and today deals with serious criminal activities. Scholars have noted that there is a strong correlation between the officers taking part in corrupt acts and officers wanting to fit in with the culture. In this paper, I argue that the deeper an officer in the New York police department gets into the police culture, the more likely it is that they become involved in narcotic corruption

It has been said that power inevitably leads to corruption, and it is yet to be recognized that , while there is no reason to suppose that policemen as individuals are any less fallible than other members of society, people are often shocked and outraged when policemen are exposed to violating the law.

There are many different professional and ethical standards that should be considered when discounting uniformed police officers. For example, when Ari the deli owner told the officer his payment is not necessary when the officer ordered a sandwich, the police officer would need to report this information to his superior officer. “Officers shall report any unsolicited gifts, gratuities or other items of value that they receive and shall provide a full report of the circumstances of their receipt if directed.” (Statter,