Each question
1. Week 2D Why Ethics is Law Enforcement’s Greatest Need (Part II)
Demonstrate the importance of the Field Training Officer (FTO) in the relationship of the new recruit with the agency, and how this may influence the officer throughout the next 20 years of their career. Include the importance of modeling positive behavior by both formal and informal leaders within the agency. You may also touch on different types of power if you so decide.
2. Week 2A: View the film LA Confidential
Question #1:
TENSION BETWEEN THE MEANS AND THE ENDS:
Officers will at some point in their careers encounter situations where the good ends cannot be achieved by legal ends. If they break the law to pursue good ends, they will have corrupted themselves by breaking the law they were sworn to uphold. Passionate officers are those so committed to good ends that they ignore just means. The three protagonists are LAPD officers. Edmund Exley is a “straight arrow” who informs on other officers in a police brutality scandal. He’s a politician and a ladder-climber first-and-foremost. This earns the antagonism of Wendell Bud” White, an intimidating enforcer with a personal fixation on men who abuse women. Between the two of them is Jack Vincennes, who acts as more of a celebrity than a cop who is a technical advisor on a police television show called Badge of Honor (similar to the real life show Dragnet) and provides tips to a scandal magazine. What moral dilemmas do you see develop in the film? Identify each characters passions and how should they be tempered with a real perspective?
3. Week 2B
Question #2:
THE BLUE CODE OF SILENCE:
The Blue Code of Silence or Wall of Silence is an unwritten rule among police officers in the United States not to report on a colleague’s errors, misconducts, or crimes. If questioned about an incident of misconduct involving another officer (e.g. during the course of an official inquiry), while following the code, the officer being questioned would claim ignorance of another officer’s wrongdoing. It represents an effort to control ends, the outcome of events; ends cannot be controlled. The code is considered to be police corruption and misconduct. Officers who follow the code are unable to report fellow officers who participate in corruption due to the unwritten laws of their “police family;” this is depicted throughout the move. When officers are hired, they are already on the crime-control side of the continuum. Important referents in their environment encourage behavior that is crime-control oriented and reinforce temptations for noble cause corruption. From an organizational point of view, something has to go wrong for line officers to move back towards a balanced perspective. In your opinion, which scene(s) depicts this concept most strongly and why? Please provide two examples.
4. Week 2C
Question #3:
ETHICAL DILEMMAS:
The purpose of this course is to provide a way of thinking about police ethical dilemmas, and for police officers to think ethically about their work. Accurate information about the prevalence of police corruption is hard to come by, since the corrupt activities tend to happen in secret and police organizations have little incentive to publish information about corruption. One study of corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department (focusing particularly on the Rampart Scandal) proposed that certain forms of police corruption may be the norm, rather than the exception in American policing. Understanding that this film was made for entertainment, in what areas of the film do you feel substantiate this concept? Please provide one example.
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