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The Importance Of Police Integrity In The Police

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The world is full of crime and hate. When you think of criminal, an image pops in your head of someone wearing bland clothing with a mask or a thug with gang tattoos. Some criminals are harder to spot, like those who commit white collar crime. What happens when the police officers who are supposed to enforce the law, are the actual criminals? During the 1990’s in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was full of police who were criminals. The Rampart incident is a textbook example of how criminal activity can be found even in the law enforcement branch of our society. To get a better understanding what police corruption is, one must understand the importance of the police having integrity. Integrity means that a person is honest and has strong moral and will do the right thing. For the police department in a community to have integrity, it means that there is little or no misconduct by police officers and the office follow the Police Code of Ethics. The level of integrity within each police department depends on how the department is managed, which then dictates how officers act toward the community, and how the officers acts determines how the public views the integrity of the police. (Police Integrity)
When police departments do not have integrity it is called police corruption. For corruption, three distinct elements must be present, 1) miss use of authority, 2) miss use of official capacity, and 3) miss use of personal attainment (Dantzker, 1995).

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