¶ … Police Accept Gratuities?
In the United States, some lower-paid professions such as waitresses or pizza delivery drivers rely on gratuities from their customers in return for good service as an important part of their overall earnings, while other professions such as doctors and lawyers, rarely or never receive gratuities since they are deemed adequately compensated for their services from the outset no matter how well they perform. When it comes to law enforcement, though, the issue of gratuities becomes murkier, with the iconic image of the police officer on the beat accepting an apple from a smiling vendor being contrasted more recently by high-profile cases of police officers who have accepted much larger cash "gratuities" in return for looking the other way or providing advance notice of police raids. Because these cases adversely affect the entire law enforcement community, it is therefore important to determine the propriety of police officers accepting gratuities.
Whether police officers should accept gratuities may depend in large part on the context in which the exchange is made. According to the various definitions...
Police Codes of Ethics Virtually all police departments have some kind of formal "Code of Ethics," or guidelines that tell the members of the police force what is and is not acceptable behavior. The people these officers are sworn to serve and protect expect ethical behavior from those officers, and in fact there are times when public or individual safety depends on the officers' determination to act in ethical and honest
To the extent the totality of circumstances suggest that possibility, even acceptance of the most nominal gratuities (i.e. A cup of coffee) is ethically inappropriate. Similarly, even where the gratuity involved is of nominal value and there is no potential misunderstanding on the part of the individual proffering an otherwise appropriate gratuity, there is the issue of creating the appearance or inference of an improper relationship from the perspective of
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