Final Exam - Crim 251 Flashcards
What is the police code of ethics?
A policy that establishes standards of behaviours for police officers. There is a rigorous admission standard into policing, but this does not prevent police officers from engaging in misconduct while on the job.
Why is R. v. McNeil significant?
Increased the visibility of the need for police ethics and professionalism, where the constable investigating an individual for drug-related charges had in fact been criminally charged with drug stuff
What is police culture?
A set of values and rules that have evolved through the experiences of officers and which are affected by the environment in which they work which leads to traits such as pessimism, dismissive behaviour, and other negative traits that form the ‘blue wall of silence’.
What is the blue wall of silence?
“It’s a jungle out there” mentality; where police officers who demand loyalty and solidarity will protect one another when reporting misconduct. This varies, as major misconducts can and will be reported, but minor misconducts will go unreported and swept aside. Civilian police staff are less likely to report misconduct then police officers do.
What are ‘rotten barrels’?
Rotten barrels are considered incidents of police misconduct on the group level, where officers will form cliques or other social forms and create a subculture of deviance within the peer environment.
What are ‘rotten apples’?
Rotten apples are incidents of police misconduct on the individual scale, where the responsibility or honus of the misconduct is caused by any number of factors on the individual level pertaining to the police officer in question.
What are ‘rotten orchards’?
Rotten orchards are considered a widespread misconduct by a police service.
What is the sliding scale of police deviance?
The sliding scale of police deviance is a scale which presents a continuum of deviance from low to high, depicting the individual, group and systematic deviance.
What four categories is police misconduct typically grounded into?
1) Violations of departmental regulations and standards of professional conduct 2) Abuse of discretionary power and authorities 3) Actions, often criminal, that undermine the administration of justice 4) The commission of a criminal offence.
In relation to police misconduct, what does violations of departmental regulations and standards of professional conduct entail?
Violations encompass a wide category of different misconducts, including discreditable conduct, neglect of duty, insubordination, and harassment of fellow officers. Various sanctions can be used to respond to these violations, including suspension without pay, probation, and dismissal.
In relation to police misconduct, what does the category of ‘abuse of discretionary powers and authorities’ mean?
Abuse of discretionary power is commonly referred to as “corrupt practice”. This includes incurring an obligation o debt that may interfere with duties, failing to account for money that wasn’t received, and improperly using money for his/her advantage.
What are actions, often criminal, that undermine the administration of justice?
This category of misconduct involves the fabrication of evidence, backfiling police notes, committing perjury while under oath, and obstructing justice in order to gain convictions. Many of these actions are considered “noble cause actions”.
How does a commission of a criminal offence relate to police misconduct
Police officers may become involved in the commission of criminal offences in conjunction their policing duties or while off duty.
How does the New Orleans Police Department intersect with police misconduct?
The NOPD has a multi-layered history with police misconduct, characterizing the rare instances where an entire systematic entity is corrupted with criminal activity and misconduct. A final report which followed the police force’s role in Hurricane Katrina stated that corruption and misconduct was on the structural level.
What is considered ‘the grey area of police work’?
Individuals are required to exercise good judgement in insuring that their behaviour is proper and meeting the moral standard which police officers are expected to meet. This creates a blurry line between what is considered legal and moral and that which is illegal and immoral.
How does the off-duty activities of police officers intersect with the moral accountability expected of police officers?
Canadian courts have ruled that police officers are to be held to a higher moral standard then Canadian citizens, but must be allowed a measure of freedom as to what they can do while off-duty. An emphasis has been placed on officers not compromising the integrity of their police service with their off-duty actions or behaviours.
What is ‘noble cause corruption’?
Noble cause corruption is an approach used by police offices which suggests that the end justifies the means. This includes the planting or tampering of evidence in order to secure a conviction, and can be viewed as justice that is served ‘on the street’ and not in the courts.
What role does police leadership have in police ethics and professionalism?
Correlations have been found in police departments exhibiting corruption that suggest misconduct is a byproduct of poor leadership at the administrative level that results in no clear lines of accountability and ineffective supervision. Police leaders capable of imprinting a strong sense of ethics and professionalism in their employees, but requires an effort beyond the conventional line of duty.
What is considered the professional model of police work?
The professional model of police work emerged during the mid-twentieth century that was based on the three R’s; random patrol, rapid response, and reactive investigation.
What is the purpose, or premise of random patrol?
Random patrol is used to increase the presence and visibility of police officers in hopes to deter crime form happening within neighbourhoods, while also aiming to help make citizens feel safer.
What is the overall approach of the professional model of police work?
It is incident-oriented, in which the focus is on responding to specific incidents, calls, cases or events. It is response oriented, where police leaders and operations are mobilized and oriented to respond to events as they arise; response capacity and capability are emphasized; little time and few resources are devoted to proactive intervention or prevention activities. Lastly, it is lacking in analysis; rapid respond with available resources becomes the priority, as a result, information gathering is limited to specific situations and analyses do not focus on the problems that precipitate the events.
What are drawbacks of the professional model of police work?
There is little consideration of community needs. Also, patrol officers are not assigned to specific areas for defined periods of time, which makes it hard for them to become familiar with the issues in the territory. This results in a hinderance of community-policing partnerships. As it is based primarily in a reactive approach, this model of patrol can contribute to low officer morale and decreased job satisfaction.
What is the ‘clearance rate’ in professional policing?
The clearance rate is the percentage of cases in which an offence has been committed and a suspect identified, regardless of whether the suspect is ultimately convicted of a crime. This is used as a measure of police performance persisently in professional policing.
Why is assessing police performance by clearance and crime rates bad practice?
Police officers do not spend most of their time chasing criminals. Moreover, not all police officers work in the same types of communities. Not all police officers engage in the same type of police work. The use of clearance rates precludes any assessment of the attitudes and expectations of community residents or any determination of community involvement in the prevention of or response to a crime. With crime rates, results and numeric values can be ambiguous, with rising crime rates suggesting that
