The Importance of a Code of Ethics for Police Officers

Police Officers and the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics

Many professions, including law enforcement, maintain a code of ethics to provide general guidelines for practitioners who are routinely confronted with ethical dilemmas that defy easy resolution. This paper reviews the literature to determine what a Law Enforcement Code of Ethics (the "Code") has to say about the acts of a police officer and the extent to which these guidelines are open to interpretation due to vagaries in content or guidance. In addition, recommendations for improving the Code are followed by a summary of the research and important findings concerning these issues in the conclusion.

Like the legal and healthcare professions, law enforcement officers have an ethical responsibility to their fellow officers, their organization as well as the general public they are committed to protect and serve. These obligations make a code of ethics an integral part of the law enforcement profession. For instance, according to Grant (2009), "Because law enforcement is a profession, ethics and ethical conduct play an important role" (p. 11). Given the importance of the mission of police officers, it is also important to ensure that they understand what is expected from them in terms of ethical conduct. As Stephens (2006) emphasizes, "The mission of policing can safely be entrusted only to those who grasp what is morally important and who respect integrity" (p. 23).

Codes of ethics invariably caution practitioners that it is impossible to anticipate every type of ethical dilemma that will be encountered in the exercise of day-to-day responsibilities. Moreover, every law enforcement jurisdiction has its unique characteristics that require specialized interventions but determining, for instance, when lethal force is required versus a nonlethal approach requires split-second decisions on the part of police officers that preclude consulting written guidelines. Nevertheless, it is vitally important to provide police officers with the ethical guidelines they will need to perform their responsibilities appropriately. In this regard, depending on the jurisdiction, law enforcement officers are required to read and learn their code of ethics prior upon graduation from a police academy and prior to entering active duty (Green, 2009).

While the specifics of law enforcement codes of ethics vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, most contain the following guidance concerning police officer responsibilities which include: to serve the community; safeguard lives and property; protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and respect the constitutional rights of all to liberty, equality, and justice (Green, 2009, p. 12). Taken together, these guidelines are largely common sense and are understood from the outset as being inherently part of the profession by most law enforcement authorities, but they are in fact nebulous to the point of being useful in some complex situations.

Despite the challenges that are involved in anticipating the infinite different types of situations in which police officers will become engaged during their careers, it would be useful to provide some real-world examples and representative vignettes concerning how other police officers successfully resolved commonly encountered ethical dilemmas of their own. Police officers could readily relate to these types of examples since they have likely encountered similar or identical situations of their own.