Police Code of Silence in Times of Change


Book Description

This book explores the contours of the code of silence and provides policy recommendations geared toward creating an environment less conducive for police misconduct. It responds to the recent calls for police reform, in the wake of the perceived illegitimacy of police actions and the protection that the code of silence seems to provide to the police officers who violate the official rules.Using a case study of a medium-sized U.S. police agency, this book employs the lens of police integrity theory to provide empirically grounded explanations of the code of silence. It examines the potential effects of organizational factors and the attitudes of individual police officers on their willingness to adhere to the code of silence in cases of police corruption, the use of excessive force, interpersonal deviance, and organizational deviance. The book focuses on the following factors that could influence the police code of silence in the times of change: The impact of organizational rule dissemination, discipline, and disciplinary fairness on the scope of the code of silence The role organizational justice plays in shaping police officer willingness to report misconduct The effect that police officers’ self-legitimacy has on their decisions to adhere to the code The influence of peer culture on individual police officer amenability to maintain the code The relationship between officers’ views of themselves, the organization, and the community on their willingness to report misconduct .




Brotherhood of Corruption


Book Description

A former Chicago cop exposes shocking truths about the abuses of power within the city's police department in this memoir of violence, drugs, and men with badges. Juarez becomes a police officer because he wants to make a difference in gang-infested neighborhoods; but, as this book reveals, he ends up a corrupt member of the most powerful gang of all—the Chicago police force. Juarez shares the horrific indiscretions he witnessed during his seven years of service, from the sexually predatory officer, X, who routinely stops beautiful women for made-up traffic offenses and flirts with domestic violence victims, to sadistic Locallo, known on the streets as Locoman, who routinely stops gang members and beats them senseless. Working as a narcotics officer, Juarez begins to join his fellow officers in crossing the line between cop and criminal, as he takes advantage of his position and also becomes a participant in a system of racial profiling legitimized by the war on drugs. Ultimately, as Juarez discusses, his conscience gets the better of him and he tries to reform, only to be brought down by his own excesses. From the perspective of an insider, he tells of widespread abuses of power, random acts of brutality, and the code of silence that keeps law enforcers untouchable.




Police Discipline


Book Description




Tangled Up in Blue


Book Description

Named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by The Washington Post “Tangled Up in Blue is a wonderfully insightful book that provides a lens to critically analyze urban policing and a road map for how our most dispossessed citizens may better relate to those sworn to protect and serve.” —The Washington Post “Remarkable . . . Brooks has produced an engaging page-turner that also outlines many broadly applicable lessons and sensible policy reforms.” —Foreign Affairs Journalist and law professor Rosa Brooks goes beyond the "blue wall of silence" in this radical inside examination of American policing In her forties, with two children, a spouse, a dog, a mortgage, and a full-time job as a tenured law professor at Georgetown University, Rosa Brooks decided to become a cop. A liberal academic and journalist with an enduring interest in law's troubled relationship with violence, Brooks wanted the kind of insider experience that would help her understand how police officers make sense of their world—and whether that world can be changed. In 2015, against the advice of everyone she knew, she applied to become a sworn, armed reserve police officer with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department. Then as now, police violence was constantly in the news. The Black Lives Matter movement was gaining momentum, protests wracked America's cities, and each day brought more stories of cruel, corrupt cops, police violence, and the racial disparities that mar our criminal justice system. Lines were being drawn, and people were taking sides. But as Brooks made her way through the police academy and began work as a patrol officer in the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods of the nation's capital, she found a reality far more complex than the headlines suggested. In Tangled Up in Blue, Brooks recounts her experiences inside the usually closed world of policing. From street shootings and domestic violence calls to the behind-the-scenes police work during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential inauguration, Brooks presents a revelatory account of what it's like inside the "blue wall of silence." She issues an urgent call for new laws and institutions, and argues that in a nation increasingly divided by race, class, ethnicity, geography, and ideology, a truly transformative approach to policing requires us to move beyond sound bites, slogans, and stereotypes. An explosive and groundbreaking investigation, Tangled Up in Blue complicates matters rather than simplifies them, and gives pause both to those who think police can do no wrong—and those who think they can do no right.




The Police in America


Book Description

"The Police in America" provides a comprehensive introduction to the foundations of policing in the United States today. Descriptive and analytical, the text is designed to offer undergraduate students a balanced and up-to-date overview of who the police are and what they do, the problems they face, and the many reforms and innovations that have taken place in policing. Using timely articles and excerpts, the authors take readers beyond the headlines and statistics to present a comprehensive and contemporary overview of what it means to be a police officer.




Model Rules of Professional Conduct


Book Description

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.







Police Integrity


Book Description

Presents the proceedings of the Nat. Symposium on Police Integrity with participants including police chiefs, sheriffs, police researchers, police officers, members of other professional disciplines, community leaders, and members of other Federal agencies. Plenary sessions and working groups address integrity and ethics; challenges facing the law enforcement executive profession; the impact of police culture, leadership, and organization on integrity; how to effectively cope with influences in the police organization and culture and community; and the impact of internal systems and external forces on police integrity. Bibliography.




Criminology as a Moral Science


Book Description

This book proposes an explicit recognition of criminology as a moral science: a philosophically textured appreciation of the presence and role of values in people's reasoning and motivation, set within an empirically rigorous social-scientific account. This endeavour requires input from both criminologists and philosophers, and careful dialogue between them. Criminology as a Moral Science provides such a dialogue, not least about the so-called 'fact-value distinction', but also about substantive topics such as guilt and shame. The book also provides philosophically-informed accounts of morality in practice in several criminological contexts: these include whistleblowing practices within a police service; the dilemmas of mothers about who and what to tell about a partner's imprisonment; and how persistent offenders begin to try to 'turn their lives around' to desist from crime. The issues raised go to the heart of some currently pressing topics within criminology, notably the development of 'evidence-based practice', which requires some kind of stable bridge to be built between research evidence ('facts') and proposals for policy ('evaluative recommendations').




Managing Policy and Reform in an Era of American Police Conflict


Book Description

The Greek philosopher, Socrates, posed a guardian model that would protect his Athenian world, the custodes (watchmen), yet mused who would guard them but themselves. In The Republic, Plato spoke favorably about the guardians of the republic; they should be trusted to behave and perform their duties appropriately without oversight. Half a millennium later, the Roman satirist, Juvenal, proposed that men who feared their wives’ infidelity could neither trust them nor the guardians who guarded them. Similarly, James Madison opposed oppression through blind trust and, thus, conceptualized Madisonian Democracy. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Who will guard the guardians? In an era of conflict with America’s police and the communities they serve, today’s publicly expressed attitudes toward law enforcement often reflect Socrates’ dilemma and the concerns of Juvenal more than that of Plato’s tributes. Contemporary debates concerning the increase in violent crime and the need for fundamental changes to American policing reached a new intensity and stalemate with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. Police officers shot and killed 999 people in 2019 and 1021 people in 2020 in the United States. 2020 was also one of the deadliest years for law enforcement, with 264 officers killed, the highest since 1974. In the first six months of 2021, 523 civilians were shot and killed by officers. Numerous active and former police officers face criminal charges for the January 6 United States Capitol Attack in Washington, DC, in 2021. Many current and former employees of the U.S. Border Patrol were discovered to be members of a Facebook group that posted racist and anti-immigration content. Sixty current members were found to have committed misconduct by posting “explicit and violent messages” mocking migrants and threatening lawmakers on the site. Communities are now hiring civilians to high positions in the police department’s command staff, justifying the need to improve deteriorating community relations. For the first time in its 27 years of measuring confidence in the police in the United States, Gallup found that most American adults do not trust law enforcement. This book investigates and exposes the complex challenges facing law enforcement leaders and government officials with police reform, policies and standards, police accreditation, and police legitimacy in the eyes of the community. Through informative and educational discussions with law enforcement leaders from various agencies, professional police organizations, and academic researchers, the book qualitatively evaluates individual autonomy, organizational culture, and political environments, which influence strategic decisions made on policy and reform efforts by law enforcement officials in the United States within the milieu of national police accreditation.