Police: Building Trust Between Police and Communities Building Trust between Police and Communities: Police

Police Trust, Integrity and Ethics in Bridging the Gap in Community Relations

The death of Eric Garner in the hands of New York police, and the shootings of 12-year-old Rice Tamir and Michael Brown in Ohio and Missouri respectively, have and continue to brew a wave of public mistrust in the police service. Such incidences often spur massive public protests that eventually destroy relations between police and the communities they serve. A study conducted by Reuters on 3,600 citizens between December 2014 and January 2015 found that a significant 27.6% of adult Americans do not trust the police to be fair and just (Reuters, 2015). In December, 2015, President Barrack Obama signed an executive order creating the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, whose primary aim is to build confidence and trust in the local police. This text explores the specific strategies that the task force, and individual police departments could use to achieve this objective.

Creating a Culture of Ethics and Integrity

Community trust is an honored relationship between an agency and the community that it is meant to serve. It is crucial for effective policing. As such, it is prudent that police executives take steps to ensure competence, integrity, honesty, and integrity in their departments. They need to foster an environment in which ethical behavior is expected, and individual officers are responsible for meeting those expectations. They need to be transparent and open about the internal affairs processes of their departments (IACP, 2010). They ought to develop a culture of acknowledging misconduct, dealing with it appropriately when it occurs, and involving...

When local communities know the procedures and policies that the police use, and are involved in ensuring that officers follow those procedures, they are deemed to again begin trusting the force.
Additionally, police executives need to ensure that the agency's principles and core values are communicated and reinforced throughout the various aspects of the department's administration. This they could do by adopting clear and precise mission statements to direct the activities of their departments (Raines, 2011). These mission statements need to clearly articulate the department's core values and principles, including the commitment to service and integrity. Moreover, the principles and ethical standards guiding the department ought to be set forth in a code of conduct or manual for all personnel (Raines, 2011). These manuals should identify conduct that is considered unacceptable, and should also define acceptable standards of conduct. All personnel within the department should be made to understand that they represent the agency, and must, therefore, embrace the values and principles governing ethical behavior. Culture-changing policies such as these will go a long way towards fostering integrity and ethical decision-making, and also obtaining the confidence and respect of citizens.

Ethics and integrity training/education is also crucial in making police departments more ethical in their motivations. Such training and education equip officers with knowledge of the ethical thing to do in specific situations (IACP, 2010). Examples of courses that departments could adopt include: the cultural competency 101 training package, which brings awareness to class, race and cultural issues within a community, teaches…