Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in

Criminal Justice 10th Edition Pollock

Solutions Manual
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://testbankdeal.com/dow
nload/ethical-dilemmas-and-decisions-in-criminal-justice-10th-edition-pollock-solution
s-manual/
 CHAPTER 7 – Police Corruption and Responses

CHAPTER 7 CONTENTS

Economic Corruption
Abuse of Authority
Criminal Cops
Costs of Corruption
Explanations of Deviance
Reducing Police Corruption
Conclusion
Chapter Review
Study Questions
Writing/Discussion Exercises
Key Terms
Ethical Dilemmas

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

2 1. Provide examples of two types of police misconduct: economic corruption and

abuse of authority.
2. Describe individual explanations of corruption and potential solutions.
3. Explain organizational explanations of corruption and potential solutions.
4. Describe societal explanations of corruption and potential solutions.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter describes some of the unethical behaviors of police officers. It is important,
of course, to emphasize that the vast majority of police officers are honest and
hardworking. However, the important question is, why do good officers protect bad
officers? The chapter also briefly describes international examples of corruption and
presents the standard explanations for police corruption.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

▪ There are two broad categories of misconduct:

o Economic corruption
o Abuse of authority
▪ A long list of commissions and task forces have investigated police corruption.
▪ Fyfe and Kane identified a long list of types of misconduct:
o Profit-motivated crimes
o Off-duty crimes against persons
o Off-duty public-order crimes
o Drugs
o On-duty abuse
o Obstruction of justice

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 o Administrative/failure to perform
o Conduct-related probationary failures

I. Economic Corruption
3-4 LO 1: Provide examples of two types of police misconduct: economic corruption and
abuse of authority.
▪ Corruption has been described as “acting on opportunities, created by one’s authority,
for personal gain at the expense of the public one is authorized to serve.”
▪ Baksheesh, a euphemism for graft, is endemic in many developing countries where
officials, including law enforcement officers, expect it before doing the job they are
supposed to do.
▪ In 1973, the Knapp Commission used the terms grass eaters and meat eaters.
Economic corruption includes gratuities, kickbacks, overtime schemes,
misuse/appropriation of departmental property, payoffs, ticket “fixing,”
bribery/extortion, and theft from burglary scenes or from drug raids.

A. Gratuities
5 ▪ Gratuities are items of value received by an individual because of his or her role
or position rather than because of a personal relationship with the giver.
▪ Opposing arguments include the following:
• Police are professionals, and professionals don’t take gratuities.
• Gratuities are incipient corruptors because people expect different
treatment in return.
• Gratuities are an abuse of authority and create a sense of entitlement.
• Gratuities add up to substantial amounts of money and can constitute as
high as 30 percent of an officer’s income.
• Gratuities can be the beginning of more serious forms of corruption.
• Gratuities are contrary to democratic ideals because they are a type of fee-
for-service for public functions that are already paid for through taxes.
• Gratuities create a public perception that police are corrupt.
▪ Kania argues that only when either or both the giver and taker have impure intent
are gratuities wrong.
▪ The “blue discount suit” was a term that indicated how officers felt about
gratuities, explaining how officers expected merchants to extend free
merchandise.

B. Graft
6
▪ Graft refers to any exploitation of one’s role, such as accepting bribes or
protection money. Graft also occurs when officers receive kickbacks from tow
truck drivers, defense attorneys, or bail bond companies for recommending them.
▪ Examples range in seriousness from “cheating a little” on overtime to
sophisticated schemes that utilize police powers for private gain.

Class Discussion/Activity
What gratuities would you consider acceptable? Have the class do the Acceptable Gratuities
exercise below.

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 What If Scenario
What if you were a cop and a grateful business offered you free dry cleaning? Would you take it?

Media Tool
Watch the video about civil forfeiture at this website.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mevVt5sHDNA
What is civil forfeiture? How does it work? What are the good and the abusive aspects of this
program? If the police were indeed abusing forfeiture, what type of economic corruption would
this represent?

See Assignment 1

7
II. Abuse of Authority
▪ Barker and Carter and Fyfe and Kane discuss police abuse of authority that can be
summarized as follows:
o Physical abuse—excessive force, physical harassment, and retaliatory
brutality
o Psychological abuse—disrespect, harassment, ridicule, excessive stops,
intimidation, and deception in interrogation
o Legal abuse—unlawful searches or seizures, manufacturing evidence,
perjury, planting evidence, and hiding exculpatory evidence

A. Professional Courtesy and Ticket Fixing

8 ▪ Professional courtesy is the practice of not ticketing an officer who is stopped for
speeding or for other driving violations.
▪ Justifications for not ticketing other officers are diverse and creative. One
troubling aspect of professional courtesy for traffic offenses is that the practice
has a tendency to bleed over into other forms of misconduct.
▪ The idea that officers are above the law is insidious.
▪ One step more serious than not ticketing an officer solely for preferential reasons
is “fixing” a ticket that has already been written.

9 B. On-Duty Use of Drugs and Alcohol

▪ Elements of police work (especially undercover work) that lead to drug use
include
• exposure to a criminal element,
• relative freedom from supervision, and
• uncontrolled availability of contraband.
▪ Police officers, as is true for many other types of employees, have been subject to
drug testing.
▪ Officers have some due process rights, however, and they must be notified of the
policies and procedures involved in the agency’s drug testing, have access to the
findings, and have available some sort of appeal process before sanctions are
taken.
▪ Alcohol use is more socially acceptable than drug use, and it has also been cited

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 as a problem.

10-11 C. Sexual Misconduct

▪ A few police officers use their position of authority to extort sex from female
citizens.
▪ The National Police Misconduct Reporting Project reported that 9.3 percent of all
civilian complaints on police involved sexual misconduct, the second most
common form of misconduct after excessive use of force.
▪ Kraska and Kappeler’s continuum of sexual invasion (from least to most serious)
is as follows:
• Viewing a victim’s photos or videos for prurient purposes
• Field or custodial strip searches
• Illegal detentions
• Services for sex
• Sexual assault
▪ Sapp’s inventory of sexual misconduct includes the following:
• Nonsexual contacts that are sexually motivated (nonvalid traffic stops)
• Voyeurism
• Inappropriate contact with crime victims
• Sexual demands of suspects or offenders
▪ Prostitutes, homeless, and minority women are extremely vulnerable to sexual
extortion by police officers. The power differential makes consent extremely
problematic.

Class Discussion/Activity
Which category of deviant behavior would the class think is higher for cops than for the general
population? Which might be lower? Have the class provide rationales for their answers.

What If Scenario
What if you were a female cop and you experienced sexual harassment? Would you report it?
Where would you draw the line between not reporting a behavior and reporting it to your
supervisor? If you were a male cop, how would you answer the questions?

Media Tool
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter deals with the mistreatment of women and girls
throughout the world in this TED Talk. Do you agree with his reasoning? How does
this impact policing?
https://www.ted.com/talks/jimmy_carter_why_i_believe_the_mistreatment_of_women
_is_the_number_one_human_rights_abuse?language=en

12 III. Criminal Cops

▪ In the 1980s, the “Miami River Rats” committed armed robberies of drug deals,
and at least one homicide.
▪ In the 1980s, the “Buddy Boys” in New York operated almost openly in a
precinct rife with lesser forms of corruption.

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 ▪ In the 1990s, Michael Dowd testified that he and other officers accepted money
for protecting illegal drug operations, used drugs and alcohol while on duty,
robbed crime victims and drug dealers of money and drugs, and even robbed
corpses of their valuables.
▪ In the 1990s, the Rampart scandal involved a rogue anti-gang task force.
▪ Additional scandals occurred in Indianapolis, New Orleans, Boston, and
Philadelphia.
13
IV. Costs of Corruption
▪ The costs to communities are considerable. First, there is the cost of lost prosecutions.
▪ Many cities and police departments have also faced large judgments or agreed to
large settlements.
▪ There are two ways that cities become responsible:
• If the plaintiff can show a pattern and practice that led to the actions of the
officer; or
• Cities routinely indemnify an officer against lawsuit judgments.
▪ Chicago paid nearly $5.4 million just to settle three cases of misconduct in 2012–
2013; more than a half-billion dollars was spent to resolve police brutality cases
between 2004 and 2014.
▪ Boston spent more than $36 million to resolve 2,000 legal claims and lawsuits against
the police department between 2005 and 2015.
▪ New York City, in the fiscal year 2014, paid out nearly $217 million.
▪ There is no evidence to indicate lawsuits are a deterrent to errant police officers.
• The lawsuit doesn’t appear in the officers’ personnel records.
• Officers believe that city lawyers are too quick to settle “nuisance” claims.
• Lawsuits seem to be independent from the department’s own discipline
system.

V. Explanations of Deviance
LO 2: Describe individual explanations of corruption and potential solutions.
LO 3: Explain organizational explanations of corruption and potential solutions.
LO 4: Describe societal explanations of corruption and potential solutions.

14-16 A. Individual Explanations

▪ The rotten-apple argument—the officer alone is deviant and it was simply a
mistake to hire him or her.
▪ Deviant officers go through what Sherman called a “moral career.”
▪ Following are some rationales that police might easily use to justify unethical
behavior:
• The public thinks every cop is a crook, so why try to be honest?
• The money is out there; if I don’t take it, someone else will.
• I’m only taking what’s rightfully mine; if the city paid me a decent wage, I
wouldn’t have to get it on my own.
• I can use it because it’s for a good cause.

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 ▪ Greene, Piquero, Hickman, and Lawton found 15 characteristics were
significantly related to receiving departmental disciple in the Philadelphia Police
Department including the following:
• Being younger
• Being previously rejected for hire
• Experiencing military discipline
• Scoring low on some sections of academy training
• Receiving academy discipline
▪ Fyfe and Kane identified correlates related to termination:
• College-educated officers were less likely to be terminated.
• Women were more likely than male officers to be terminated during their
probation, although male officers were more likely to be terminated for
brutality and bribery.
• Black officers were also more likely to be terminated.
• People under 22 were more likely to be terminated as well as those who
had prior negative employment histories, dishonorable discharges, and/or
did poorly in the academy.
• Also at high risk were those with prior citizen complaints, prior criminal
history, and a history of public-order offense.
▪ Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an explanation for some types of police
misconduct. Factors involved in developing PTSD symptoms include the
following:
• Witnessing the death of a law enforcement officer or viewing the body at
the scene, especially when the victim was a friend or partner
• Accidentally killing or wounding a bystander, especially if the victim is a
child
• Failing to stop a perpetrator from injuring or killing someone
• Killing or wounding a child or teenager, even if the life of the officer was
threatened by the person injured or killed
• Viewing the body of a child victim, particularly if the officer has children
(especially if the officer’s child is the same age and sex as the victim)
• Interacting with grieving family members or friends of homicide victims
• Feeling caught in a violent riot, especially if the officer cannot use deadly
force to defend himself or herself for fear of hurting children in the mob
• Viewing particularly bloody or gruesome scenes
• Observing an event involving violence or murder, but not being able to
intervene
• Being undercover and constantly “on guard” because of the likelihood of
being hurt, killed, or discovered
• Being threatened by suspects who have been indicted, are being tried, or
are incarcerated (Hamidi and Koga, 2014)

17 B. Organizational Explanations
1. Small Work Groups
• Small work groups are exemplified by special units and narcotics task
forces.

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 2. Perverse Incentives
• As noted in an earlier chapter, organizational incentives may
encourage unethical behavior. When there is pressure to achieve a goal
without a corresponding message that ethical means are just as
important, organizational actors are tempted to take shortcuts.
3. Organizational Culture
• “Noble-cause” explanation of some types of deviance is an
organizational explanation of corruption.
• Continuum of compromise is the term used to illustrate what happens
to the officer. The first element is a “perceived sense of victimization,”
which refers to what happens when officers enter the profession with
naïve ideas about what the job will be like. Cynicism leads to distrust
of the administration and the citizenry. At that point, the officer is
alienated and more prone to corruption.
• The officers’ sense of entitlement can lead to corruption.
• There is a pervasive sense among rank-and-file police that
administrators are not to be trusted.
• Research reveals that close supervision, especially by midlevel
managers such as sergeants, reduces the use of force and incidents of
misconduct by officers.
• A component of leadership was openness and referred to leaders
encouraging subordinates to talk to them about ethical dilemmas.
• All research indicates that to ensure ethical employees, the
organization must treat workers ethically.

18 C. Societal Explanations
▪ Lax community standards over certain types of behavior (gambling, prostitution)
and lack of support from prosecutors and the courts (or corruption at that stage of
the system) lead to police corruption.
▪ We also ask the police to take care of social problems, such as the homeless, even
if they have to step outside the law to do so.
▪ The police role as enforcer in a pluralistic society is problematic. If the police do
not represent all groups, their authority is seen as oppressive.

Class Discussion/Activity
Have the students rate the explanations offered for deviance from those that explain the most to
the least. Students should be prepared to explain their rating system.

What If Scenario
What if you were a supervisor, shift commander, or precinct captain? How would you try to be a
“good” leader? Do you think you possess the personal characteristics to be a good leader?

Media Tool
What is PTSD? How prevalent is it in police work? What are the main points of the
video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j00XI0I8eUA

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 See Assignments 2 and 4

VI. Reducing Police Corruption

19-20
▪ There are several authors who have proposed comprehensive lists of tactics to
reduce police misconduct and corruption.
▪ Metz suggested several ways in which police administrators can encourage
ethical conduct among officers including the following:
• Eliminate unenforceable laws
• Set realistic goals and objectives for the department
• Provide ethical leadership
• Provide a written code of ethics
• Provide a whistleblowing procedure that ensures fair treatment
• Improve training in ethics
• Use covert high technology surveillance

A. “Rotten Apple” Responses

• “Rotten apple” approaches to reducing misconduct focus on the individual
officer.
21 1. Improving Screening
• Background checks, interviews, credit checks, polygraphs, drug tests,
and other screening tools are used to eliminate inappropriate
individuals from the pool of potential hires.
• The most common pre-employment screening tool that is used by law
enforcement agencies is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI).
• The so-called Big Five (extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness,
conscientiousness, and openness) are reliable measures of personality
and, of those, conscientiousness seems to be the most relevant to job
performance.
22
2. Education and Training
• Education has been promoted as a necessary element to improve the
ethics of policing; however, education itself is certainly not a panacea.
• Various models of ethics training exist, but there is not enough data to
understand the most effective approaches.
3. Integrity Testing
23
• Integrity testing occurs when a police officer is placed in a position
where he or she might be tempted to break a rule or a law and
monitored to see what he or she will do.
24 4. Early Warning or Audit Systems
• Early warning systems look at number of complaints, use-of-force
reports, use-of-weapon reports, reprimands, or other indicators to
identify officers.

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 • Intervention may include more supervision, additional training,
counseling, reassignment, transfer, referral to an employee assistance
program, fitness for duty evaluation, and/or dismissal.
• Walker reports that early warning systems vary in the elements they
count and where they set the threshold of concern.
• These programs are only as effective as the elements that go into the
triggering system and the interventions that occur after the
identification of a problem.
5. Body Cameras
25
• Video has been an incredibly powerful tool to support allegations of
brutality and abuse of authority.
• Critics argue that misbehaving police officers could simply turn off the
camera when they wanted to, although procedures in place create
disincentives for officers to do so.
• The cost of the cameras and storing the unimaginable amount of video
that would be collected make widespread use unfeasible.
• Invasion of privacy with such cameras is a major issue.
• Rules regarding whether and when police officers should turn off the
cameras is being worked out in those jurisdictions that have purchased
or are making plans to purchase them.
26 6. Public Databases of “Bad” Cops and the National Decertification
Index
• As a result of many people not trusting police departments to root out
individuals who should not have the power and authority inherent in
the position, individuals and groups have constructed databases of
wrongful actions.
• Developers of such lists or databases argue that the position of police
departments has always been that instances of serious wrongdoing are
rare and problem officers who have a pattern of wrongdoing are rarer
still.
• Such efforts to create these databases are designed to bring light to the
subject of police misconduct.
• One of the problems of no national decertification consistency is that
officers who have engaged in misconduct or even criminal behavior
may simply move on and get another law enforcement job.

B. “Rotten Barrel” Responses

27 1. Internal Affairs Model, Civil Service, and Arbitration
• The internal affairs model provides the mechanism whereby the
department investigates and punishes the miscreant officer.
• Part of the problem with the internal discipline model is that citizens
may be discouraged from reporting misconduct of police to other
police; especially if the process is complicated or intimidating.
• Policy officers don’t seem to trust the internal discipline mechanisms
any more than citizens do.

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 • Even when internal affairs and police department administrators
decide to punish an officer with a suspension or termination,
arbitrators often reverse the punishment.
2. Civilian Review/Complaint Boards
• A civilian review/complaint board is an outside agency or board that
includes citizens and monitors and/or investigates misconduct
complaints against police.
• Police still investigate and conduct disciplinary proceedings.
3. Changing the Culture
• In successful change efforts, the department has reconceptualized its
mission, developed measurements of what matters most, improved
recruiting, changed training to emphasize human right as least as much
as crime fighting, and changed the incentive and reward structure to
encourage service-oriented policing as much as crime control.
• Changing the culture in a police department requires addressing
elements of the subculture, for example, the blue curtain of secrecy, as
well as examining whether organizational justice is perceived by
officers.
4. Ethical Leadership
• Attempts to cover up scandals are usually unsuccessful and, arguably,
only make the situation worse when the corruption is inevitably
exposed.

C. Societal Responses
• It is difficult to conceive of how society can affect police corruption;
however, it is possible that this is the most important part.

D. Consent Decrees
28-29 1. Civil rights cases against police officers are rare. Prosecutors must be
able to show that police officers had a clear intent to violate
constitutional rights.
2. Consent decrees are mandated reforms, approved by a federal judge,
with a court-appointed monitor to oversee progress.
3. The most common targets for change involve policies concerning use
of force, citizen complaint procedures, in-car video use, racial
profiling, data collection, early warning systems, and expanded
training.
4. The major complaint that police and city officials have against DOJ
investigations that end in consent decrees is that they are extremely
expensive.
5. Police chiefs argue that monitoring has become a “cottage industry”
with monitors’ pay sometimes running into millions of dollars with no
incentive to end the supervision.
6. More recently, this adversarial and expensive process has been
supplanted by collaborative reform, which is utilized when a city or

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 police departments asks the DOJ to investigate and is willing to
undergo reform.

E. Other Societal Responses

1. The Task Force on Policing was created in response to the Black Lives
Matter movement and other protests.
2. A task force in Maryland issued 22 separate recommendations for
legislation or policy changes.
3. The Vera Institute of Justice evaluated law changes involving policing.
4. The concern we have over the few who abuse their position should
never eclipse the honor and heroism of the majority.

Class Discussion/Activity
Angie’s List rates contractors, Rotten Tomatoes rates movies, Rate My Professor rates, well, you
can probably guess whom. Is there something inherently wrong with rating police officers?
Where you work now, would you like to have your job performance available for all to see?

What If Scenario
What if you were a supervisor responsible for reducing deviant behavior and could choose only
one remedy? Which approach do you think would be the most effective way of reducing
deviance? Explain.

VII. Conclusion
30
▪ In this chapter, the author reviewed the range of deviant behaviors in law
enforcement.
▪ Reasons for law enforcement deviance can be categorized into individual
explanations, organizational explanations, and societal explanations.
▪ A wide range of suggestions for combating police corruption were also
examined.

Class Discussion/Activity
Assume there is a strict policy against accepting gratuities. With that in mind, complete the
Ethical Dilemmas exercise with the class.

KEY TERMS

gratuities: Items of value received by an individual because of his or her role or position
rather than because of a personal relationship with the giver.
graft: The exploitation of one’s role, such as accepting bribes, protection money, or
kickbacks.
rotten-apple argument: The proposition that the officer alone is deviant and that it was
simply a mistake to hire him or her.

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
integrity testing: “Sting” operations to test whether police officers will make honest
choices.
internal affairs model: A review procedure in which police investigators receive and
investigate complaints and resolve the investigations internally.
civilian review/complaint board: An outside agency or board that includes citizens and
monitors and/or investigates misconduct complaints against police.

ETHICAL DILEMMAS

Situation 1
You are a rookie police officer on your first patrol. The older, experienced officer tells
you that the restaurant on the corner likes to have you guys around, so it gives free meals.
Your partner orders steak, potatoes, and all the trimmings. What are you going to do?
What if it were just coffee at a convenience store? What if the owner refused to take your
money at the cash register?

Example of Analysis:
Moral Judgment: Depends on the department’s rule book (often rule books specifically
exclude coffee from prohibition).

The analysis will assume there is a policy prohibiting gratuities.

Moral Rules: Follow the law (and rules of one’s organization).

Don’t use people or one’s profession for inappropriate personal
gain.
Don’t take something for nothing.

Ethical system: Ethical formalism would base the decision on duty. One’s duty is to
follow the rules. Also, the second part of the categorical imperative states, treat each
person as a means and not as an end. The moral rules are consistent with ethical
formalism.

Utilitarianism would also condemn the practice of ignoring organizational rules. Even
though it might result in a net utility for the officers and for the business owners, the
department suffers from the hypocrisy and the community suffers from (perhaps) unequal
patrol coverage and a lowered perception of police.

The situation is complex because it seems so innocuous and the officer who refuses to
take gratuities looks like a jerk. Officers might deal with the situation in various ways—
some leave a tip equal to the price of the meal; some send the money to the restaurant
after the fact. Dealing with the partner is a different problem: some officers take their
lunch with them to avoid the situation; some make it clear before the situation that they
don’t accept free lunches and deal with the partner’s reaction. Classroom discussions are
most interesting when there are police officers and restaurant workers in the same class.
In this situation, each is able to hear the other’s perspective in the neutral setting.

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
Situation 2
There is an officer in your division known as a “rat” because he testified against his
partner in a criminal trial and a civil suit. The partner evidently hit a handcuffed
suspect in the head several times in anger, and the man sustained brain injuries and
is now a paraplegic. Although none of the officers you know supports the excessive
use of force, they are also appalled that this officer did not back up his partner’s
testimony that the suspect continued to struggle, to justify his use of force. After
all, punishing the officer wasn’t going to make the victim any better. Now no one
will ride with this guy, and no one responds to his calls for backup. There have been
incidents such as a dead rat being placed in his locker, and the extra uniform in his
locker was set on fire.

One day you are parking your car and see your buddies in the employee parking
lot moving away from his car; they admit they just slashed his tires. Each officer is
being called into the captain’s office to state whether he or she knows anything about
this latest incident. Your turn is coming. What are you going to do?

Situation 3
Officers in your squad are a great bunch but there are a couple who have a habit of
telling racist jokes. You have ignored them up to this point because you don’t want
to stand out and no one else seems to care, but they joke in front of citizens and you
are afraid someone is going to file a complaint. One night you and your partner are
eating dinner with these two and they start joking about the African American waitress,
using derogatory language. They are loud and you are afraid that she or others
in the diner are going to hear them. What should you do? What do you think will
happen if you speak up?

Situation 4
You are a police officer testifying in a drug case. You have already testified that you
engaged in a buy-bust operation, and the defendant was identified by an undercover
officer as the one who sold him a small quantity of drugs. You testified that
you chased the suspect down an alley and apprehended him. Immediately before
you caught up with him, he threw down several glassine envelopes filled with what
turned out to be cocaine. The prosecutor finished his direct examination, and now
the defense attorney has begun cross-examining you. He asked if you had the suspect
in your sight the entire time between when you identified him as the one who
sold to the undercover officer and when you put the handcuffs on him. Your arrest
report didn’t mention it, but for a couple of seconds you slipped as you went around
the corner of the alley and fell. During that short time, the suspect had proceeded a
considerable distance down the alley.

You do not think there was anyone else around, and you are as sure as you possibly
can be that it was your suspect who dropped the bags, but you know that if
you testify to this incident truthfully, the defense attorney might be able to argue
successfully that the bags were not dropped by the suspect and get him acquitted of
the much more serious charge of possession with intent to distribute. What should

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
you do?

Situation 5
You (a female police officer) have been working in a small-town police department
for about six months. A fellow police officer persists in making comments about
how pretty you are, how you don’t look like a police officer, how you shouldn’t be
dealing with the “garbage” out on the streets, and so on. He has asked you out more
than a dozen times even though you have told him every time that you are not interested
and that you want him to stop asking you out and to stop making comments.
Although he hasn’t made any derogatory or offensive comments, his constant attention
is beginning to make you not want to go to work. You have a romantic partner,
and you are not interested in your fellow officer. You have mentioned it to your FTO,
who is a sort of father figure, but he likes the guy and tells you to ignore him. You
want to file a sexual harassment charge against him but hesitate because, although
you do feel harassed, you don’t feel especially threatened; further, you know that you
would encounter negative reactions from the other officers in the department. What
should you do?

CLASSROOM ASSIGNMENTS

1. Have students do a little informal research on local policies regarding gratuities. (LO
1)
2. Have students describe in a one-minute paper the individual explanations of
corruption and then discuss potential solutions. (LO 2)
3. Have students describe in a one-minute paper the organizational explanations of
corruption and discuss potential solutions. (LO 3)
4. Watch the movie Serpico and discuss the causes of corruption displayed in the movie
and consider how such a situation can be prevented. (LO 1–4)

EXERCISE

Acceptable Gratuities?
Indicate which of the following—if offered freely with no apparent exchange expected—
are ethically acceptable. Then compare your answers with others.
free coffee only on duty on or off duty
free gum or candy only on duty on or off duty
half-price meal only on duty on or off duty
free meal only on duty on or off duty
free dry cleaning only for uniform unrestricted
free admission to clubs n/a off duty
free lottery tickets only on duty on or off duty
expensive merchandise only on duty on or off duty
any of the above to department

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
 as a whole
If you decided that free coffee, meals, and other items are acceptable because they
don’t cost much, how do you explain the fact that, over time, the cost of the coffee or
meals consumed by police officers would equal that of the more expensive items?

© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.