Interview analysis methods and applications

Law Enforcement Interview Synthesis

Introduction to Interview Subjects:

The two interview subjects who participated in this project are both assigned to the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) operating out of 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan in New York City. They agreed to participate on condition of anonymity and therefore, will be referred to as the "FBI agent" (or "agent") and the "police detective" (or "detective"), respectively. The FBI agent has been assigned to the JTTF since 2004 and previously worked in the area of major financial crimes enforcement for the Bureau; the police detective joined the JTTF in 2005 and previously worked as a Homicide Investigation Unit (HIU) homicide detective in the South Bronx in New York City. The two law enforcement agents are acquainted with one another but do not work in the same JTTF unit.

Ethics and Character in Policing:

Both subjects believe strongly that ethical awareness and personal character are important in law enforcement. The federal agent expressed concern with the lack of uniformity in ethical supervision and training in the thousands of local American law enforcement agencies. It was his opinion that ethical policing begins with the officer candidate selection process; in his experience, many agencies screen potential officer candidates very thoroughly but that many other agencies do not. He cited the absence of any substantial uniformity even in fundamental disqualification criteria among dozens of federal law enforcement agencies, let alone the thousands of state and local agencies.

The police detective echoed similar concerns about the absence of uniform qualification standards in American law enforcement but also suggested that the manner in which state and local police agencies compensate and support their officers plays an important role in attracting better qualified officer candidates and also in making it easy for them to practice ethical policing once hired. The detective suggested that where local agencies pay their officers poorly or fail to support their interests in the field, even officers who were highly ethical or idealistic at the start of their careers develop a degree of resentment that can sometime contribute to the breakdown of personal and professional ethics.

Police Ethics -- Today vs. Previous Eras of American Policing:

The federal agent believes that American policing evolved tremendously during the second half of the 20th century in particular, during which time the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice (DOJ) eliminated various series of civil rights violations that had previously characterized local and even state law enforcement in many parts of the nation.

In that regard, the agent made specific references to several civil rights crimes of violence against civil rights workers such as those that occurred in 1964 in Mississippi where four individuals from New York were murdered by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members as a result of their efforts to assist black Mississippi residents exercises their fundamental right to vote. The agent characterized those types of crimes as being the highest priority for the Bureau primarily (but not only) because state and local police authorities in the area actually participated in the crime, first arresting the victims without legal justification and then purposely releasing them from police custody directly into the hands of their murderers. This subject expressed the belief that in the modern era of American law enforcement, large-scale complicity in serious criminal activity by sworn law enforcement personnel is virtually unheard of.

Prevention of Police Corruption through Ethics Training:

The detective also acknowledged the profound evolution of American law enforcement although he referenced the entire 20th century rather than just the second half with respect to the most important phase of American law enforcement development. He recounted the more than a century and a half of the NYPD, the first and still the largest American municipal law enforcement agency and described the "co-evolution" of society and its police forces. According to him, the fact that New York experienced a tremendous degree of police corruption during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was mainly reflective of the larger society in which the most powerful local politicians of the era operated a corrupt city government.

The detective suggested that improving police ethics was impossible during the Tammany Hall era of Boss Tweed in New York or during the massive Prohibition-era between 1920 and 1933. Both subjects agreed that modern American policing is among the most professional and ethical examples in the world. While he agrees that ethics training plays an important role in maintaining the integrity of the profession and insulating it from corruption, the detective believes that societal dynamics are more important in that sense than any kind of formal training.

Theories of Police Misconduct:

The special agent expressed the belief that criminality has many different causes and that they operate both individually and in myriad combinations in different people. He acknowledges that there is often a biological or hereditary component to many of the behaviors that expose one to increased risk of criminal misconduct as well as the importance of the external environment. In that regard, he suggested that one of the most significant factors in criminal police misconduct is an ethical commitment throughout the agency hierarchy. According to the agent, training is relatively ineffective to whatever extent agency supervisors do not implement and exemplify ethical ideals in their supervisory capacity. The police detective reiterated his belief that stricter criteria in officer candidate selection and adequate compensation after hire are more important to preventing police misconduct than anything else.

Ethics Training in Modern Police Academies and in-Service Ethics Training:

Both subjects credited modern American policing with high-quality training in general and both acknowledged that some police agencies fulfil that essential obligation less well than others. The police detective believes that ethics in policing can only be taught to a certain degree in the academy (or any classroom) setting; he indicated (again) that selecting quality officer candidates (such as those without any criminal or negative credit history) is much more important than subsequent training. He regards in-service training as only useful in connection with tactical training and suggests that naturally ethical officers do not need continual ethics training while naturally unethical officers do not change their approach to life or their profession by virtue of in-service training.

The federal agent expressed a very different view of continual ethical training and considers perpetual in-service training in ethics as part of a more comprehensive commitment on the part of agencies to ethics in law enforcement. While he does not necessarily believe that experienced federal agents and local police officers need ethical continual ethical training for "informational" purposes, he believes that the climate of ethical policing is established and maintained partly through in-service training mainly because of the "message" that effort sends about the fundamental importance of ethics in policing.

Synthesis of Issues and Approaches to Address Ethics in Modern Policing:

In principle, both the federal agent and the police detective agreed that American policing has come a very long way in the last century although the agent emphasized the last fifty years in particular. Both officers also agreed as to the fundamental importance of ethics in policing although the federal agent emphasized the role of institutional culture in that regard while the police officer considered candidate selection the most crucial component of maintaining ethical standards in policing.