Police Ethics-Chapter 15, Being a Good Officer Flashcards
“Police work is just common sense. Any good person can become a good police officer.”
Skip Stevens, retired police officer
1960, numerous riot commissions at that time reflected upon
how the police handles—or mishandled–both inner city riots and college campus antiwar demonstrations
Driven by ______the police of the 60’s were not only disorganized and unprofessional. They were driven by racially focused hatred and an unsophisticated anger focused against middle-class college students who they misunderstood
lower-middle-class white rage
who studied how people learn morality
Lawrence Kohlberg
Education: the importance of the liberal arts
involves experiencing a curriculum that avails college students of general knowledgte in the fields of literature, language, philosophy, government, history, mathematics and science.
two reasons why college experience is important for the competent professional
- process-oriented
2. substance-oriented
sociology
learn about the creation of norms and values, about the dynamics of subcultures, about diverse cultural experiences and expectations and about deviance.
political science
learn about American institutions, how change occurs in the law, and the place of the courts, legislatures, and the police in our complicated system of governance.
general education
breadth requirements. they expand their general knowledge of people, the world, their own society, other societies and the place of people in both the world and society.
Liberal arts
is about obtaining the most broad-based academic experience a person can get
Questioning
what the word Liberal refers to
reasons for offices to go to college
- experience interactions with different types of people, points of view, ideas and ideal, and practice questioning ones own perspective
- learn specific subject matter related directly to police work and related in general to the development of an understanding of culture and American institutions
- expose officers to perspectives on life other than those found in police subculture
Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg following criteria as being necessary for moral growth.
- Being in situations where seeing things from other points of view is encouraged
- engaging in logical thinking
- having responsibility to make moral decisions and to influence one own moral mind
- being exposed to moral controversy and thus to ambiguity
- being exposed to the reasoning of an individual whose moral thinking is more sophisticated than one onw
- particpating in creating and maintaining a just community
Muir’s three ways in which professionalism could be nurtured
- language
- learning
- leadership
understanding language is most critical
Muir’s other two points deal with a type of learning about competence on the job that is related to the teaching of cops by their sergeants and leadership of the chief
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