Ethical Dilemmas for Police Officers

by Kim Thompson·0 views·Updated Apr 18, 2022

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Hi,
my name is Kimberly Thompson.
Today we're gonna be discussing ethical dilemmas
that occurred to the modern day police officer,
I don't know an officer out there that hasn't once in their career been placed in
a situation where a fellow officer or fellow
colleague has maybe violated a general order,
may be violated a citizen's constitutional rights or even just
the mirror
treatment
on how they speak to a citizen
when answering to a call
um
maybe wouldn't handle it, you maybe would have handled it a little bit differently.
But um
then again you're there for their protection and for their backup.
So today we're going to actually talk about a case out of Anaheim California.
Um and we'll pose that question to the backup officer that was there.
And I want you to think when we're going through uh
our presentation
is
is there some sort of legal duty for a backup officer or officers
that witnessed this kind of activity to report it?
Something to think about as we move forward.
But first let's just discuss
what are the responsibilities of a police officer?
Well, according to the standard conduct of police officers
by the International Chiefs Association,
the fundamental duties of a police officer include
serving the community,
safeguarding lives and property,
protecting the innocent,
keeping the peace,
ensuring the rights of all liberty, equality and justice
for all,
but as well,
your agency
has in their general orders book. And if not they have something that's
something similar to this,
it's the oath that we take when a person, police officers getting sworn in
in this oath,
which is called the law enforcement Code of Ethics.
We promise not only
to
keep our lives honest
in the report while while serving the public,
but we also keep ourselves honest in our personal life.
And we make a promise that we will not have president present personal feelings,
no cases that we deal will have personal
feelings involved or prejudice or animosities towards somebody
and
above all
the same thing.
We will not
employ unnecessary force or violence or never accept gratuities.
So every day you go to Dunkin donuts and you get that free cup of coffee.
Are you violating general orders?
Yes.
Is this misconduct?
Yes.
Even accepted a cup of coffee.
But as you know,
we have bigger issues. Today's society,
use of force.
We have
the lack of trust from the community.
So how are we going to fix that?
What's some of the things we can do?
We're going to discuss that later.
First to the case
Anaheim California, April 2018
Police officer,
the police officer
Avila
and his partner
conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle.
Officer Ophelia
asked if he could search the car
and
the driver said no
that he did not and he refused any kind of search of his car.
However,
the officers went ahead and did an illegal search on the car.
Once in there, they located drugs and evidence of drug sales in the car.
And the driver was charged with one felony count of
a controlled substance with the intent to
sell and transport of a controlled substance
At a preliminary hearing
in February five in 2019. I'm sorry,
I really testified that the driver consented to the search, but the body cam
contradicted that claim.
The attorney
for the driver said his client could be seen on the body camera
at least five or 6 times
telling them that they did not have permission
to search the car.
Ultimately, the case got dropped,
but
why wasn't the conduct reported by the other officer before it reached the courts?
This is an incident that happened in 2018 and then 2019 a year later.
There was no knowledge by
the Anaheim California Police department that there was any wrongdoing.
Was it the
responsibility of the officer to speak up and why didn't he speak up?
Well, there might be a couple of reasons why he didn't speak up.
Number one,
Sorry,
Wrong Slide.
There's a blue code of silence that police officers have, not,
a lot of people know about it.
But
the blue wall of silence is an informal unwritten code amongst police officers
to not report on their colleagues here
errors or general misconduct or police brutality
and even goes as far as not reporting their areas,
even
in an internal affairs investigation.
So usually when they backup officer or fellow witness officer,
let's call them that um
is questioning the inquiry.
Most of them will misrepresent what happened or say,
I don't remember or they'll plead ignorance that they didn't know that
this was said or that was done.
Another reason is,
it could be
because most police officers
after a few years,
I think the
studies show that it's usually within the third year,
a police officer starts to change a little
bit about his mentality about serving the public
after dealing with, say, the corruption and
other,
you know,
let's call them bad guys.
Okay, after dealing with them, they take on kind of a different mentality.
It's more of a league leaders type, you know,
like elite mint type attitude that officers feel
like they're better than most other people and that
really they're at war with the community.
It's us against them mentality and they slowly
separate themselves from the rest of society.
Their friends become
police officers, They talked police,
yes
cops, you know, they talk police work. Excuse me. Um,
so
it then becomes a stronger bond of that blue code of silence.
And
it could just be simple that the police officer didn't report it because
he was afraid not only of blake breaking the blue code of silence,
but
what about if the administrators didn't believe them
and
he ended up losing his job for not reporting it.
So, and he has to think about his fellow workers as well.
Nobody loves a snitch.
There is such a case where an officer did report
mishandling and use excessive use of force
In 2006
in Buffalo New York.
Um
Buffalo police officer carol Horne
was fired
for intervening when a white officer was
attempting to choke a black handcuffed suspect,
she reported it to her supervisors
and
they did an Internal affairs investigation
and turned around
what,
what the facts of the case were to her saying that she
ended up interfering with the arrest and violated the general order.
Instead of focusing on the white male officer,
she,
they pointed to her as the troublemaker
and that
she was simply interfering with an arrest and could
have jeopardized the safety of the arresting officer.
And of course
testimony
later was found that
the white
male officer
lied
under oath.
Um
and so
officer Horn was
fired
one Month to retirement.
So not only did she lose her job, but she lost her retirement. So
since that time 2006, she's been fighting to get her pension back.
And I'm glad to say that
in 2021,
the
town of Buffalo
under the
judge ward of the city of Buffalo has recognized the error and
has acknowledged the need to undo the justice from the past.
So she was granted
with interest her pension back.
And
not only that
she has the commission,
the Common commission of Buffalo has decided to pass what they call the carol law,
which
it's a law
in the state of new york that will protect officers who
step in to prevent other officers from using excessive force.
This is the catalyst
two
uh
taking away that fear of reporting or turning in a fellow officer.
But how do we break the silence?
How do what are some of the things that we need to instill
too?
Ah
better
relations with the community,
better relations with the thing and and to hold officers responsible.
And should that backup officer have been held responsible?
Well some of the things we can do is we can do
internal and external audits,
um
a review of Internal affairs investigation cases, making sure that um
that people are being justifiably held for their violations, that
um
certain things are being ignored like in the case with carol horne. Um
And then
implementing policies within the department
and reviewing,
I'm sorry reviewing policies within the department on police conduct
nearly evaluations and so forth and making sure that the officers are
conducting
themselves accordingly according to general orders.
Also
there should be some resources for an officer to report
that that blue line, that blue silent blue wall is very,
very thick and it's going to take a while for it to break.
But I think
that if a department can implement
or have a departmental policy where
officers can confidentially report misconduct of other officers,
we will take a step forward in taking the bad apples out of the agencies and um
getting rid of that
reputation that all police officers are liars or all police officers
use use of force
in 19
98, I believe in
the Whistleblower Protection Act
was incorporated for federal
employees.
Um Today
it has trickled down
and
the Department of Labor
has employed
a policy
called the whistleblower Protection Act,
which shows
that any employer cannot retaliate against you for exercising your right.
Under the Department of Labor's whistleblower protection laws,
retaliation includes such actions as firing or laying off or demoting
or denying overtime or promotion or reducing pay or hours.
So this is making it look just a little bit
easier for officers to step forward and report wrongdoing so that
the
it doesn't turn into something like
the George form of
George Floyd case
or the Ferguson case.
So that is all I have for you today.
Um I had a couple of videos that I wanted to
show you regards to the Anaheim case and also carol horns.
I'm gonna put those links at the bottom of this presentation uh
regretfully, they don't show up
when
recording the video, so
thank you for your time
and be safe out there