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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe good cop conundrum.
There has been an argument going on for a while not just here, but all over. One side says that there are plenty of good cops you just don't hear about. The other side argues that they can't be that good if they lie, and assist others in lying. So in another thread I asked a what if. I wanted to start another thread with this.
Scenario, and let me make absolutely clear that this is a scenario, not a real event in my life.
In this scenario, I'm a Deacon in my church, a well respected member of the congregation, and of the community. My neighbor is also a member of the church, and attends every Sunday. He's generous with his time, helping people who need things fixed, an accomplished handy man sort of guy. He helped Mrs. Smith when her heater broke last winter. We'll call my notional neighbor Bob. Bob has a wife and kids, and I know them.
Bob was out on Thursday night. Bob was out and I know it because I saw him drive off in his truck. Friday morning Bob asks me to do him a little favor. If anyone asks, he was with me last night, and we watched the ball game. I agree. Later, I find that Bob is accused of raping a girl. She's in intensive care. I know Bob, and know that just isn't like him. I tell the police Bob was with me, and they put the case on hold. Because the word of a man like me is enough to stop the prosecution. Nobody is going to say that I, a man active in all those things is a liar on the record in court. The jury just wouldn't believe it.
I'm a deacon in the church. Active in charities. I help the homeless, and I donate to the animal shelter. Am I a bad guy in this scenario? I justify the lie this way. I know Bob, he's a great guy. Dependable, and if he's convicted, his wife will never be able to make it without him. His kids will grow up without a Daddy. It's just one lie. I'm a good guy, an eagle scout back in the day. One lie doesn't change all of that does it? Not one little lie and I don't know that woman, and she's nobody to me. Bob is a friend, and a neighbor, and this woman isn't in my church, and doesn't live here. She's a stranger and thus one of them. Bob is one of us. He stayed with me when my Dad died, and helped me through it. He was a pallbearer when old Pastor Hayes passed away. Who is this woman compared to that?
Does the lie change it? I have long argued that yes, the lie changes it. All your good works, all your good deeds have just gone up in smoke in my opinion. But I am anxious to hear your opinions. Does the lie make you a bad guy? Or is it understandable that you would lie, expected really in that situation.
If your word isn't good all the time, not just a vast majority of the time, then it isn't good ever in my experience or opinion.
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niyad
(113,302 posts)Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)I state that without reservation.
valerief
(53,235 posts)Like maybe you never raped anyone but maybe you see prostitutes and your wife doesn't know but Bob does.
These good cops that don't murder innocent people may not be totally clean. Maybe they steal and keep drugs/money. Get Mafia-style protection money. Whatever.
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)There are some lies I would tell for a friend and some lies I wouldn't. Lying to give him an alibi to get away with rape is not a lie I would make.
DrDan
(20,411 posts)the OP's scenario is a lie that I, also, would never make - to include a lie that "alibi's" (taking some liberty with the use of that word) any criminal activity.
MineralMan
(146,296 posts)If the person I know has raped that girl, or is charged with doing so, I would never lie to protect that person. In fact, I wouldn't like about something like that under any circumstances.
My integrity is internal. If I violate it, I will know that I violated it and will become less. To lie for an acquaintance in such a circumstance is to harm the girl. She is equally important to me, whether I know her or not. But my own integrity is more important than either.
Ino
(3,366 posts)but this lie was not one of them. Any person of conscience would be haunted by this the rest of his/her life... especially by the thought that an innocent girl has been victimized yet again by your lie, to protect a man who may well rape someone else.
But a "good cop who keeps silent or lies to protect a bad cop" scenario contains yet another layer of betrayal. A cop's very job is to uphold the law! How lawful is it to watch a thug cop beat up an innocent person, to lie about it later? It's not only a betrayal of one's integrity, but a betrayal of one's job, the public trust, and a crime in itself. Such a cop is not only a miserable failure as an honorable person, but also as a cop. Period. Everything he says in connection with his job is now suspect.
Sometimes I wonder about these cops who do something extraordinary like buying groceries, etc. Sometimes it strikes me as a tad over the top, like maybe they are trying to assuage guilt about that innocent person they let get tazed & arrested just because their partner was having a bad day.
http://www.civil-rights-law.com/how-to-complain-about-police-m/
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)Let us say we are both police. Let us say we are investigating the rape in question. We don't know who did it, but we find someone, and massage the evidence to suit the conviction. We lie in other words. The jury trusting us, finds the defendant guilty. Far too many of our fellow citizens assume that the accused must have been doing something to be caught by the police.
Have we not done an even greater wrong? Not only have we denied the victim the justice that our society demands. But we have confined an innocent man to prison by our simple little lie. To lie to protect one is a bad thing, I think we are agreed. But to lie, and send an innocent man or woman to prison while leaving the guilty free, is an even worse sin in my opinion.
Now, let's say that I haven't helped you with the case, I'm only aware that you hid some evidence, so it would not be presented to the Jury. Then that lie of omission is equally bad, as the outcome is equally deplorable.
Look how many are involved. They all see the abuse. They do nothing. They all see the officer plant the drugs, and they say nothing. Each of them should lose their pension, in payment of damages to the abused man. Each of them should walk away with his retirement wiped out from this misdeed. All of their supposed good deeds were wiped out with that one action.
Here are two of those great cops from New York we hear about.
They are so calm, so audacious in doing so. Right in front of their own dashboard camera. They don't care, because nobody is going to punish them for lying to get a good arrest like drugs.
Today's question. If we see the cop planting the drugs. Then the cop was in possession of a distribution amount of drugs. That means, by law, he was guilty of possession with intent to distribute. Will he be charged, or tried, or even get a slap on the wrist? Worse case he has to go and work at another department, and do the same thing again.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)Most law enforcement professionals are, at their core, good, ethical, and caring people. Despite the overuse of a popular cliché, many officers do in fact enter law enforcement because they want to make a positive difference in their communities. Officers frequently espouse strong, positive moral values while working diligently—in many cases, at great personal risk—to bring dangerous criminals to justice. Doing so provides officers with a strong sense of personal satisfaction and self-worth. As a result, most officers do not—and in many cases cannot—engage in unethical conduct unless they can somehow justify to themselves the morality of their actions.3
Decades of empirical research have supported the idea that whenever a person’s behaviors are inconsistent with their attitudes or beliefs, the individual will experience a state of psychological tension—a phenomenon referred to as cognitive dissonance. 4 Because this tension is uncomfortable, people will modify any contradictory beliefs or behaviors in ways intended to reduce or eliminate discomfort. Officers can reduce psychological tension by changing one or more of their cognitions—that is, by modifying how they think about their actions and the consequences of those behaviors—or by adjusting their activities, attitudes, or beliefs in ways that are consistent with their values and self-image. Generally speaking, an officer will modify the cognition that is least resistant to change, which, in most cases, tends to be the officer’s attitudes, not behaviors.
One of the simplest ways that officers can reduce the psychological discomfort that accompanies misconduct is to cognitively restructure unethical behaviors in ways that make them seem personally and socially acceptable, thereby allowing officers to behave immorally while preserving their self-image as ethically good people. The following is a partial list of common rationalizations that officers can use to neutralize or excuse unethical conduct:5
<snip>
Victim of circumstance. Officers who utilize this method convince themselves that they behaved improperly only because they had no other choice. Officers may claim that they were the victims of peer pressure, an unethical supervisor, or an environment where “everyone else is doing it,” so what else could they possibly have done? Regardless of the context, these officers excuse their conduct by alleging that they had no alternative but to act unethically.
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&article_id=2290&issue_id=12011
Unconstitutional Policing: The Ethical Challenges in Dealing with Noble Cause Corruption
What Is Noble Cause Corruption?
Noble cause corruption in policing is defined as "corruption committed in the name of good ends, corruption that happens when police officers care too much about their work. It is corruption committed in order to get the bad guys off the streets…the corruption of police power, when officers do bad things because they believe that the outcomes will be good."2 Examples of noble cause corruption are, planting or fabricating evidence, lying on reports or in court, and generally abusing police authority to make a charge stick.
<snip>
Officers do not normally define "a bending of the rules for a greater good" as misconduct or as corruption; rather, they rationalize that such behavior is part of the job description, in a utilitarian sense, to get the criminals off the streets, regardless of the means.8
When this passion for a safer society goes unchecked, it often leads to police crime and civil rights violation. This passion-laudable in itself-can cause good officers to overzealously execute their duties, ignore the basic constitutional guidelines their profession legally demands, and expose their agency to legal liability.
Officers rationalize this misconduct because cynicism has built up, the department lacks morale and leadership, and the individual lacks faith in the criminal justice system. In their attempts to make charges stick, officers may resort to "massaging" facts in order to get a felony warrant. For example, a department's sub cultural values may dictate always arresting "the driver" in a possession of stolen motor vehicle case, with anything less considered poor police work.
This example shows how overzealous officers rationalize: Several teens are driving around in a stolen motor vehicle, and the officers stop them. The young men jump out and run away, the officers chase them, and arrest only two passengers. Unfortunately, for the officers, neither of them was driving the vehicle. The officers file a report identifying one of the teens as driving and the other as possessing contraband found on the floorboard. The officers chalk up felony arrests and call it a productive night.
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&article_id=1025&issue_id=102006
Noble Cause Corruption, Discretion, and Privacy Expectations
Noble cause corruption in policing occurs when good officers substitute in their personal values for the values of the profession and the law. It is an ends-justifies-the-means rationalization associated with public service wherein officers break the law to enforce the law. It is unconstitutional policing; an illegal use of authority and power, but not for personal gain. Rather, the objective is to rid society of its predators, no matter what the means, as an ultimate goal.11 This is when officers cut corners to circumvent the constitutional guidelines promulgated for them in their profession and rationalize such illegality as a means to an ordered end. Granted, the end is a noble cause (cleaning up the streets they police), but the means used is the less-discussed side of noble cause corruption.
Such street-level rationalizations cloud the police mission and, when discovered, undermine the efforts of those in the profession who are committed to just ends. Whether citizens arrested are murderers, rapists, pedophiles, drug dealers, or terrorists, they are society’s predators and it is law enforcement’s job to put them away. Yet bending (or breaking) of the law under a police rationalization that such ends (incarcerating society’s predators) justifies the use of illegal means (violation of predators’ constitutionally protected rights) is a critical issue that must be addressed in training curricula. The planting of evidence, falsified testimony, privacy violations in information gathering, and the arbitrary detention of citizens without legal justification are examples of noble cause corruption.12 Illegal fishing expeditions by law enforcement can result in exclusion of evidence, as so-called “fruits of the poisonous tree,” and dismissal of all criminal charges. The American Exclusionary Rule was specifically carved out in U.S. Supreme Court case law to prevent constitutional noncompliance by the police.
For years, academicians have been researching and writing about noble cause corruption, and yet it still is not a common topic in academy training. Some would argue that low-ranking subordinates should never have the option to engage in such occupational rationalizations,13 while others have suggested that street-level decisions are made without regard to “the formal administrative and legal protocols.”14 Others have suggested that poor administrative attention to this problem and the occupational stressors it produces have fueled its existence through a looking-the-other-way supervisory mentality: “[F]ormal organizational values impose pressures that may lead to noble cause corruption. Aspirations for promotion, ‘implicit quotas for arrests, directives from administrators, self-esteem, [and personal] moral ideological commitments all put pressure on the individual officer to lie or otherwise subvert the formal values of law enforcement and lead to violation of suspects’ rights or other unethical behaviors” (emphasis added).15
Police discretion involves legal, educated decision-making processes. Whether to enforce the full letter of the law, to simply advise a citizen, or to choose a middle ground, street-level officers must incorporate all of the tools of their trade and select the plan of action most appropriate or reasonable on a case-by-case evaluation. Though there are many factors to consider regarding officer discretion, personal biases, prejudices, and values are not to be employed in this decision-making process. Nor can police rationalizations be used to breach the constitutional line regarding citizen privacy expectations. Cutting corners regarding policy and procedure implementation has proven to be costly. Ethics training must incorporate the critical importance of comporting to the specific dictates of the legal process, the philosophy of the profession, the ethical expectations of the organization, and the need to keep personal values in check while wearing the badge.
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&article_id=2339&issue_id=32011
When it comes to outright corruption such as Rampart or New Orleans Police Department I think this article explains a lot and the world in general but the world isn't made up these 3 groups, a lot of notable fights involve these groups.
The apath. We call those who collude in the sport of the sociopath apathetic, or apaths. In this situation, it means a lack of concern or being indifferent to the targeted person.
We have highlighted the importance of seeing the problem for what it is via the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes, which represents the collective denial and double standards which are often a feature of social life. The apath in this context is someone who is willing to be blind: ie, not to see that the emperor/empress is naked.
Apaths are an integral part of the sociopath’s arsenal and contribute to sociopathic abuse. Sociopaths have an uncanny knack of knowing who will assist them in bringing down the person they are targeting. It is not necessarily easy to identify an apath; in other circumstances, an apath can show ample empathy and concern for others – just not in this case. The one attribute an apath must have is a link to the target.
<snip>
Readers might know of Yale University professor Stanley Milgram’s experiments to test the human propensity to obey orders, as participants gave increasingly large electric shocks to subjects. Afterwards, he wrote an article, The Perils of Obedience: “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process”.
Apaths are often fearful people. They are the ones most likely to go with the flow, to agree that the emperor/empress is wearing new clothes. They might also fail to perceive the threat: a danger is of no importance if you deny its existence. An apath’s response to a sociopath’s call to arms can then result from a state of ‘learned helplessness’. Apaths behave defencelessly because they want to avoid unpleasant or harmful circumstances [including the sociopath turning on them]. Apathy is an avoidance strategy.
<snip>
THE GASLIGHTING EFFECT
GaslightIn the story above, the actions of Ben and Steve have a ‘gaslighting’ effect on Robin. Gaslighting is a systematic attempt by one person to erode another’s reality. The syndrome gets its name from the play and films of the same name in which a murderer strives to make his wife doubt her sanity and get others to disbelieve her.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented in such a way as to make the target doubt his/her memory and perception. Psychologists call this “the sociopath’s dance”. It could involve denial or staging of strange events.
http://www.addictiontoday.org/addictiontoday/2013/10/empathy-trap-sociopath-triangle.html
Of course there are things that wouldn't apply to widespread corruption but you can see similar struggles. Another example is whistleblowers.
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)Justifying the wrong actions. My Father taught me a simple lesson about this. He said that if you have to lie about it, you did the wrong thing. An example he literally used to explain the difference to me.
I see a car, and the windows are rolled up. Inside I see a baby in the backseat. The day is a scorcher, it's terribly hot just standing outside. I shout for the owner, and see no one. I pick up a rock, smash the front window so the baby is not showered in glass, and open the car. I remove the baby, and seek assistance. This was before the days of cell phones by the way.
I tell the police what I did, truthfully. I saw the baby, I was afraid for it's safety, and I took action. Technically I've broken and entered into a car, and kidnapped a child. But I can stand there and tell the truth and be forgiven because I did the wrong thing, for the right reasons. I did the wrong thing in breaking into a car and taking a child that was not mine, in an effort to save the child from harm.
If I have to lie, because I know that society will not understand and forgive my actions, I have not done the right thing. I have done the wrong thing.
This simple lesson is one that is turned on it's head by the Police. They have to do what would appear to be the wrong thing, and they have to lie because society wouldn't understand. They start out doing it for what they see as noble reasons, and in time, the reasons become more and more petty.
Well I lied about this because I knew that we couldn't convict the guy for a robbery without that lie. I knew he'd done it. I think this guy has done it, and perhaps that guy has done it. Why not, this guy might have done it. It's just easier, I mean, everyone is guilty of something right?
I still use that same moral check today. Decades after that lesson was taught to me. If I have to lie, I did the wrong thing. It is as simple as that. Of course, my Father also taught me that he would forgive an honest mistake. I thought I was doing the right thing, or doing something right, and it turned out badly. Then if i told the truth, I would be forgiven because I was trying to do something good, even if it ended up badly.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)I think the articles do a good job of explaining how it happens. One of the words I remember from the Mollen commission was "testilying".
If people see it as bad cops / good cops, there are known examples of when police say break the laws in their favor. Then how do their co-worker buddies react? It is far easier to go with the crowd then stand up and oppose which is why I included that article at the bottom.
