Tulsa Oklahoma Sheriff's Office Failures

Ethics, Values, and Self-Awareness: What Was Lacking in Tulsa

The deplorable shooting of an unarmed man named Eric Courtney Harris was precipitated by unethical and ineffective leadership practices and policies used in the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office. One of the key issues in this case is that the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office relies on public elections of their sheriffs, inviting potential corruption and preventing law enforcement from being independent from politics. Another issue in this case reflects poorly on almost every other police department in the nation: ineffective training. Finally, the Tulsa case reveals the problems with entrenched organizational cultures that condone violent responses to conflicts rather than inculcating nonviolent conflict resolution strategies. All of the problems in the Tulsa case can be traced to leadership failures, ethical violations, a lack of self-awareness, and a lack of strong values.

Former Tulsa deputy Robert Bates was an insurance salesman who was 74 years of age when he shot Harris. O’Connor (2015) claims that his training was “murky” at best, as during Bates’ trial, even the defense had no tangible proof as to what kind of training the civilian actually had before being let onto the sheriff’s force. In fact, there seems to have been flagrant conflicts of interest, as Bates “led the most recent re-election campaign” of the sheriff (Stanley Glanz) who stepped down after being indicted for misconduct (O’Connor, 2015, p. 1). Bates was not a trained officer of the law, but instead a personal “friend” of the sheriff who had also “donated thousands of dollars to the department in the form of cash, cars, and equipment,” (O’Connor, 2015, p. 1). After the circumstances of the Harris murder were brought to light, there was an independent review of the sheriff’s office, which found, among other things, “the office suffered from a system-wide failure of leadership and supervision’ and that it had been in a "perceptible decline’ for more than a decade,” (“Report,” 2017, p. 1). Therefore, the problems that emerged in the Bates case were systemic and reflective of a lack of values guiding the organizational culture of the Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s department exhibited poor leadership throughout the Bates conflagration, with the only exception being Sheriff Stanley Glanz’s ultimately stepping down from his post—after he had been indicted for several counts of misconduct. Given that Glanz had initially invited his friend’s campaign contributions, allowing corruption to infiltrate the Sheriff’s office, and then permitted his same friend to receive full badge and weapon without having proper training shows that Glanz had almost zero self-awareness in terms of how his behaviors and self-interested actions would impact the people he had been elected to serve and protect. Leadership ethics were problematic at best, guided not by an ethical code built on solid values but on egotism.
The Leadership Practices Inventory includes modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart. None of these LPI concepts were exhibited by the Sheriff’s office. Choosing any two would yield gross violations of the main principles of effective leadership. For example, the Sheriff’s Office never “challenged the process” of how the Sheriff is elected and how officers had been trained. There was no “encouraging the heart,” because the officers had been taught they could get away with abuses of power. Getting caught was the problem; and the deputy continued to protest his indictment and conviction instead of showing remorse. On the other hand, the Sheriff did “enable others to act” according to what he believed were the underlying principles of being a Sheriff: instilling fear in the general public and using force to settle minor conflicts with citizens.
A strong leader sets an example for others. Sheriff Glanz was a poor role model by allowing his friend to buy his way into policing. Huberts, Kaptein & Lasthuizen (2007) surveyed more than 1000 law enforcement officers in the Netherlands and found “role modeling is especially significant in limiting unethical conduct in the context of interpersonal relationships. Employees appear to copy the leader's integrity standards in their daily interaction with one another,” (p. 587). Integrity is also a core component of character building in a public service setting like the Sheriff’s Office. The six pillars of character include “trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship,” none of which were exhibited by any member of the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office (Spears, 2010). Good leadership using any one or more of the six pillars of character would have entailed cultivating a strong ethical character in officers, with strict and rigorous training standards that respected the lives of citizens of the community. The “trustworthiness” pillar was systematically violated as members of the community are unable to trust that officers will not randomly shoot them. Sheriff’s deputies do not “respect” citizens like Harris, whether or not race was a motivating factor in the case. The Sheriff’s office did not take responsibility for the correct training of deputies, relying on amateurs eager to use guns. Most certainly, there is a lack of caring for the integrity of the broader community. There was even an “institutionalized practice of disregarding organizational policies and procedures,” (Jones, 2016). The principle of citizenship was blatantly violated, as deputies are citizens. If one of the six pillars must be selected to characterize the sheriff, it would be fairness for having stepped down. However, the deputy exhibited none of the six well.
Self-awareness was entirely lacking in both the sheriff and the deputy, leading to disastrous and deadly consequences. Without self-awareness, a leader is unable to make necessary changes to the organization and its culture. Likewise, without self-awareness, the deputy was unable to recognize that he lacked the necessary training to be responsible for wielding a weapon. He also lacked the ability to distinguish between a Taser and a gun, which is why he was ultimately convicted.

References

Huberts, L., Kaptein, M. & Lasthuizen, K. (2007). A study of the impact of three leadership styles on integrity violations committed by police officers. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 30(4): 587-607.
Jones, C. (2016). External review of Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office cites ‘system-wide failure of leadership. Tulsa World. Retrieved online: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/crimewatch/external-review-of-tulsa-county-sheriff-s-office-cites-system/article_dab8b68c-09d3-50d1-86b3-cc94b41cdd0e.html
O’Connor, B. (2015). Tulsa sheriff to resign over shooting by deputy who bought his way into police. Gawker. Retrieved online: http://gawker.com/tulsa-sheriff-to-resign-over-shooting-by-deputy-who-bou-1733946773
“Report: Tulsa County to Pay Ex-Deputy $138k to Settle Suit,” (2017). U.S. News and World Report. June 24, 2017. Retrieved online: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oklahoma/articles/2017-06-24/county-tallies-550k-in-costs-related-to-2015-shooting
Spears, L.C. (2010). Character and servant leadership. The Journal of Virtues and Leadership 1(1): 25-30.





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