Noble cause corruption in law enforcement: positives, negatives, and organizational control

¶ … noble cause" and how it relates to law enforcement daily? What positives and negatives can you identify? How can organizations control the "noble cause"?

The 'noble cause' of law enforcement is to uphold public safety. The idea that the highest good of law enforcement is to protect the public can be useful and important in the manner in which it motivates police officers to realize that they have a higher duty. When there is violence or crime, officers must run into danger, versus away from it like ordinary people. However, with this idea there are many profound, problematic implications. The idea that the cause is so noble that nothing can get in its way can act as psychological self-justification for officers to violate the law. When this occurs, no one benefits because evidence can then be thrown out of court, if it was obtained in violation of the suspect's civil rights. Or, police officers may be unnecessarily violent, endangering the public and damaging the public's trust of officers.

It is important that law enforcement agencies educate law enforcement personnel about their responsibilities to uphold the law and not merely act out of raw emotion. They must demonstrate to officers that there are consequences of violating constitutional liberties both before and after such infringements take place. Respect for the law must be codified within all efforts to educate police personnel, and internal investigations must be conducted when there are suspected violations of criminal procedure, not simply when there are highly-publicized incidents when officers 'get caught.'

Q2. Give examples of some circumstances in which you feel police are justified in violating laws or citizens' civil rights. Explain why you feel that the police would, or would not, be justified by engaging in these violations.

In general, I do not believe that it is ever justified or correct to violate citizen's rights. The law contains provisions for the most extreme instances when there might be a conflict between public safety and constitutional rights. For example, when a police officer believes that there is immanent harm posed, he or she does not have to read the suspect his or her Miranda Rights. "Miranda was never intended to enable a criminal defendant to thwart official attempts to protect the general public against an imminent, immediate and grave risk of serious physical harm reasonably perceived" (Benoit 2011). The existing law allows for officers to make use of their judgment in extreme situations: similarly, during the recent manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing terrorists, the citizens of Boston were instructed to remain inside and there were several warrantless searches of homes. Warrantless searches have also been allowed even in less extreme instances. For example, "The Supreme Court ruled…against a Kentucky man who was arrested after police burst into his apartment without a search warrant because they smelled marijuana and suspected he was trying to get rid of incriminating evidence" (High court allows warrantless search, 2011, Boston.com). This is also true with DWI stops, which are legal forms of searches that can be conducted without probable cause.