ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 8 g Ethics and Law Enforcement Practices Noble-Cause Corruption Investigation The Use of Undercover Officers The Use of Informants Justifications for Undercover Operations Interrogation Management Issues Change Efforts Ethical Leadership noble-cause corruption informants principle of double effect Dirty Harry problem Different Question/Different Answers? Conclusion Review Questions Ethical Dilemmas Suggested Readings Key Terms integrity testing internal affairs model civilian review model rights-based model 196 ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES Chapter Objectives ¦ Understand the ethical issues involved in investigation practices, such as the use of undercover officers, informants, and other types of deception. ¦ Understand the ethical issues involved in interrogation. Distinguish between physical and mental coercion and understand the arguments for and against these methods of interrogation. ¦ Understand the methods employed to reduce or minimize corruption among police officers, and the importance of ethical leadership. ¦ Be aware of the current challenges to law enforcement and be able to articulate any new answers to old questions about the use of deception or other means of investigation. T T he last chapter discussed a range of corrupt practices by some law enforcement officers. It is important to note that only a small percentage of officers in most police departments ever engage in any of the practices we discussed, except, perhaps the acceptance of gratuities. In this chapter, we discuss more common practices of law enforcement, specifically, those activities engaged in during investigation and interrogation of crimes. The central question of this chapter is, “How far should law enforcement officers go to catch a criminal?” The answer will depend on whether you subscribe to a crime control or a public servant model of law enforcement, and whether you subscribe to a utilitarian or an ethical formalism ethical system. NOBLE-CAUSE CORRUPTION In 1983, Klockars presented us with the question of whether one could still be a good person if bad means were used to arrive at a good end. In the Dirty Harry problem, he asked whether it was ethically acceptable for a police officer to inflict pain on a suspect in order to acquire information that would save an innocent victim (with due credit to Clint Eastwood).We will explore that question more carefully in the interrogation section later, but use it now to begin our discussion of what has been termed noble-cause corruption. The argument of those who discuss noble-cause corruption is that officers sometimes (maybe even frequently) employ unethical means to catch criminals because they believe it is right to do so.This is an example of the utilitarian viewpoint— “the ends justify the means.” Crank and Caldero (2000), for instance, argue that such practices as testilying and coercion are not caused by selfishness but by ends-oriented thinking. The noble cause of police officers is “a profound moral commitment to make the world a safer place to live” (2000: 9). Officers will do what it takes to get an offender off the street, even if it is a “magic pencil” (2000: 71)— meaning making up facts on affidavits to justify illegal searches or to ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 198 CHAPTER EIGHT establish probable cause for arrests. They behave this way because we hire those who have values that support such actions and train and socialize them to internalize these values even more deeply, and then put them in situations where their values dictate doing whatever it takes to “make the world safe” (2000: 88). Further, police are not the only actors who subscribe to noble-cause values. Crime lab investigators and prosecutors also engage in short cuts and magic pencils in order to convict the perceived guilty. Prosecutors have been known to suppress evidence and allow perjured testimony, so it is not only police officers who feel compelled to break the law in order to further the noble cause of crime control (Crank and Caldero, 2000: 134). How pervasive is this tendency? Studies show that about 60 percent of rookies support mild lies to achieve a conviction (Crank and Caldero, 2000: 157). Recall that Barker and Carter (1996) reported that officers surveyed reported that about a quarter of officers perjured themselves. Dropsy testimony occurs when officers report that a drug suspect dropped the drugs and ran.This is convenient because it puts the drugs in plain sight and justifies the subsequent arrest.The trouble is that dropsy testimony rose exponentially after the Supreme Court ruled that street pat-downs for evidence required probable cause. In reality, we simply do not know the extent of the type and pervasiveness of noble-cause actions. Other authors argue vehemently that noble-cause corruption is a dangerous concept because it gives credence to illegal behavior on the part of officers. Alderson (1998: 68), for instance, protests that: noble-cause corruption . . . is a euphemism for perjury, which is a serious crime.... In ethical police terms justice is not divisible in this way into means and ends, and the peddlers of this perversion of justice are guilty of the immorality of the totalitarian police state, and their views stand to be roundly condemned. However, it may be that he misunderstands those who present the noble-cause concepts. Crank and Caldero (2000), for instance, seem to be saying that noble cause is the underlying rationale of much of officers’ unethical behaviors, and, therefore, efforts to control corruption must take cognizance of this reason in order to be effective. If selfishness and personal gain are not the motives for misdeeds, then monitoring and punishments may not work. The culture of police is not supportive of egoistic criminality, but it is supportive of “catching the criminal—whatever it takes.” If we want to change this attitude, then we need to address it directly. Further, they seem to argue that such an attitude must change because we are increasingly living in a world where pluralism is the reality and the values of the police organization may not be reflective of the citizenry they police. We will return to this concept in the final section of this chapter, but first, the following sections explore some of the law enforcement practices utilized to investigate and prosecute criminals. ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES INVESTIGATION The goal of investigative law enforcement is to collect evidence in order to identify and successfully prosecute the criminal. There are different issues involved in reactive investigations versus proactive investigations. In reactive investigations, a crime has already occurred and the police sift through clues to determine the perpetrator. When police and other investigators develop an early prejudice concerning who they believe is the guilty party, evidence is looked at less objectively, and there is a temptation to engage in noble-cause corruption in order to convict. One example of this was the scandal concerning the FBI crime lab. Several news reports reported charges that FBI lab examiners had compromised cases by completing shoddy work and misrepresenting their findings.The description of the motivation of examiners was that they were not objective scientists, but rather co-conspirators with police, who were motivated and even pressured to find support for police theories regarding the guilty party.This led to overstating their findings on the witness stand and covering up tests that were done improperly.A whistleblower exposed these practices and was suspended for his efforts (Sniffen, 1997). Ultimately, thirteen examiners were implicated, although only two were even formally censured (Serrano and Ostrow, 2000). See the accompanying box. Recently criticism has been leveled at the Justice Department which responded to the scandal by directing prosecutors to go through their cases to examine whether any were jeopardized by examiner wrongdoing. Prosecutors, it is argued, are not the most objective actors to make this determination since it is not in their best interest to find such cases. The result has been that even though prosecutors are supposed to share exculpatory evidence with defense attorneys, in many cases, the defense was not told of the potential problems with the FBI lab findings. Several defendants have sued to overturn their convictions (Serrano and Ostrow, 2000). Recently the Houston crime lab has been the target of investigation. Shoddy lab practices and possible perjury by examiners has forced the District Attorney’s office to reexamine over one hundred cases. Similar charges have been leveled at the FortWorth crime lab (Axtman,2003).See the accompanying box,“FBI Suspends Agent Whose Charges Led to Critical Report.” In proactive police investigations, there is a more active role on the part of police. Drug distribution networks, pornography rings, and fences of stolen property all tend to be investigated through methods that involve undercover work and informants.This is because such crimes often do not result in victims coming forward or crimes being reported. It may be that deception is a necessary element in this type of investigation. According to one author, “Deception is considered by police—and courts as well—to be as natural to detecting as pouncing is to a cat” (Skolnick, 1982: 40). Offenses involving drugs, vice, and stolen property are covert activities that are not easily detected. Klockars (1984) discusses “blue lies and police placebos.” In his description of the types of lies police routinely use he differentiates ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 200 CHAPTER EIGHT FBI Suspends Agent Whose Charges Led to Critical Report A newpaper article covered the story of the FBI suspending a scientist agent whose charges led to a still-secret Justice Department report critical of some FBI crime lab workers. A Republican senator was quoted as saying, “[the suspension] appears to be a reprisal.” Several others were transferred out of the FBI also took action regarding other employees criticized in the secret report, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Three or four employees were transferred out of the FBI lab, but not suspended. Evidently, the inspector general hired a panel of outside scientists to evaluate the work the lab after Whitehurst alleged in late 1995 that the lab mishandled evidence and testified with “a pro-prosecution bias.” He alleged that misconduct may have trained crime lab work or testimony on several high profile federal cases. SOURCE: M.Sniffen, Austin American-Statesman (Jan. 28, 1997): A5. “placebos” as being in the best interest of those being lied to—for example, lying to the mentally ill that police will take care of laser beams from Mars, lying to people that police will keep an eye out for them, or not telling a person how a loved one was killed.The motive is benign, the effect relatively harmless. Blue lies are those used to control the person or make the job easier in situations where force could be used—for example, to make an arrest easier, an officer will lie about where the suspect is being taken, or to get someone out of a bar, the officer will say that she only wants to talk. Barker and Carter (1994) also propose a typology of lies, including accepted lies, tolerated lies, and deviant lies. Accepted lies are those used during undercover investigations, sting operations, and so on.These lies must meet the following standards: ¦ They must be in furtherance of a legitimate organizational purpose. ¦ There must be a clear relationship between the need to deceive and the accomplishment of an organizational purpose. ¦ The nature of the deception must be one wherein officers and the management structure acknowledge that deception will better serve the public interest than the truth. ¦ The ethical standing of the deception and the issues of law appear to be collateral concerns. Tolerated lies, according to Barker and Carter, are those that are “necessary evils,” such as lying about selective enforcement. Police may routinely profess to enforce certain laws (such as prostitution) while, in reality, use a selective manner of enforcement. Lies during interrogation or threats to troublemakers that they will be arrested if they don’t cease their troublemaking are also tolerated lies. Deviant lies are those used in the courtroom to make a case or to cover up wrongdoing. One might argue with Barker and Carter, however, that there is some evidence to indicate that for some police organizations or certain isolated examples of rogue divisions, lies to make a case are so prevalent that they must be categorized as tolerated lies rather than deviant lies. ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES Investigations often involve the use of informants, decoys, and undercover officers. One possible result of these procedures is entrapment. In legal terms, entrapment occurs when an otherwise innocent person commits an illegal act because of police encouragement or enticement. Two approaches have been used to determine whether entrapment has occurred.The subjective approach looks at the defendant’s background, character, and predisposition toward crime. The objective approach examines the government’s participation and whether it has exceeded accepted legal standards. For instance, if the state provided an “essential element” that made the crime possible, or if there was extensive and coercive pressure on the defendant to engage in the actions, then a court might rule that entrapment had occurred (Kamisar, LeFave, and Israel, 1980: 510). See “A Case of Entrapment?” Stitt and James (1985) criticize the subjective test: it allows the police to entrap people with criminal records who might not otherwise have been tempted; it allows hearsay and rumor to establish predisposition; it forces the individual charged to admit factual guilt, which may stigmatize him or her; it provides a free rein for police discretion in choice of targets; and it degrades the criminal justice system by allowing the police to use misrepresentation and deceit. On the other hand, supporters say that the subjective test allows police to go after those most likely to harm society.The objective test would punish the police and let the criminal go free, forcing police to perjure themselves to save a case (Stitt and James, 1985: 133–136). Legal standards, as we have discussed earlier, are very often useful guidelines for determining ethical standards, but not always. For instance, one might disagree with legal standards as being too restrictive if one believed that police should be able to do anything necessary to trap criminals. Alternatively, legal guidelines may not be sufficient to eliminate what some consider unethical behavior. For example, do you agree that an undercover officer should pose as a client in a methadone clinic and pretend to befriend other clients, then ask A Case of Entrapment? When police raided an X-rated mail-order house, they found Keith Jacobsen’s name and address, as well as the information that he had ordered two magazines: Bare Boys I and Bare Boys II, neither of which had been determined to be obscene material by any court. They created a fictitious company called “The American Hedonist Society” and sent Jacobson a membership application and questionnaire. He joined and indicated an interest in preteen sexual material. In other mailings over the course of three years, the government represented itself as “Midlands Data Research,” “Hartland Institute for a New Tomorrow,” and Carl Long, an individual interested in erotic material. Finally, a mailing from the government posing as the “Far Eastern Trading Company, Ltd.” resulted in an order from Jacobson for Boys Who Love. He was arrested by federal agents after he accepted receipt. SOURCE: Adapted from G. Dix, “When Government Deception Goes Too Far,” Texas Lawyer 7(31) (1991): 12–13. ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 202 CHAPTER EIGHT them to “hook him up” with a drug dealer? If they do it, they will be guilty of a crime.What if the undercover officer targeted someone for eleven months, continually begging and pleading with the target to sell him drugs, until finally, simply to get rid of him, the target did so and was promptly arrested? Does this violate the subjective test of entrapment? (Remember that a methadone client would be considered predisposed to drug crimes.) Is it ethical? One might look at the methods police use for selecting an individual target. Earlier we discussed discretion in police work. Selection of targets on any other basis than reasonable suspicion is a questionable use of discretion. Members of Congress convicted of bribery in the Abscam operation in 1980 alleged improper conduct in the FBI’s selection of targets; and, Marian Barry, the ex- Mayor of the District of Columbia, alleged he was “set up” because of his race after he was videotaped using drugs with a girlfriend in a hotel room in 1990. How targets are selected is a serious question; arguably, the selection should be based on reasonable suspicion. However, Sherman (1985b) reports that “tips” are notoriously inaccurate as a reason to focus on a certain person. Police operations that provide opportunities for crime change the police role from discovering who has committed a crime to one of discovering who might commit a crime if given a chance (Elliston and Feldberg, 1985: 137). For instance, a fake deer placed by the side of the road is used to entice overeager hunters, who are then arrested for violating hunting laws. Police officer decoys are dressed as drunks and pretend to pass out on sidewalks with money sticking out of their pocket. Undercover officers, posing as criminals, entice doctors to prescribe unneeded medications that are controlled substances, such as Per- coset and Oxycontin. Are only bad people tempted? This role expansion is arguably dangerous, undesirable, and inconsistent with the social contract basis of policing. Police also undertake various stings in which they set up fencing operations to buy stolen goods.This action has been criticized as contributing to burglary. The opposing argument is that burglaries would occur regardless and that the good of catching criminals outweighs the negative possibility that burglars steal because they know the fence (police) will take their goods. Both of these arguments exist under a utilitarian framework. So even when using the same ethical system, a particular action may be supported as ethical or unethical. Other stings are even more creative, such as sending party invitations to those with outstanding warrants, or staging a murder and then arresting those (with outstanding warrants) who come out to see what is happening.The utility of such stings is undeniable.The only argument against them is that the government deception appears unseemly; it is also possible that such actions may undermine public confidence in the police when they are telling the truth. Journalists who unwittingly assist police by believing and publishing a false story also criticize this type of deception.There are a number of ethical issues in the relationship between the police and the media. Should the police intentionally lie to the media for a valuable end? An example might be lying about the stage of an investigation or about the travel path of a public figure for security reasons. In the 2002 Washington, D.C.,sniper case, the ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES media and the police had an extremely close relationship and the police were especially sensitive to media issues (i.e., how the media could be used to encourage tips), but also how it might create public panic.There were some who believed the media were fed “red herrings,” such as the importance of the white van, in order to divert the snipers’ suspicions regarding how the police investigation was going. Should the media have complete power to publish or report crime activities regardless of the negative effect on the level of public fear or the possibility of receiving an unbiased trial? Should the media become so involved in hostage situations that they become the news rather than just the reporters of it? The situation involving David Koresh and his cult of Branch Davidians in Waco,Texas, in the spring of 1993 raised a number of questions concerning the relationship between the police and the media. For instance, the media were banished to a distance far away from the cult compound. Is this an acceptable use of police power, or does it infringe on the public’s right to know? Could police have ethically used the media to deceive Koresh into giving up by feeding the media false information in response to his stated wish for a sign? Should the media have been better informed during the course of the final assault? These questions can all be analyzed using the ethical systems already described. Regarding the bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, should the FBI have disclosed to the public that Richard Jewell was its prime suspect and given the press background information that led to the massive publicity and exposure of his life? The FBI’s statements indicated a level of certainty regarding his guilt that turned out to be unsubstantiated. Jewell’s experience resulted in a public letter of apology from the FBI and a lawsuit against the FBI and the television networks and the newspapers that violated his privacy, illustrating one reason that law enforcement might not want to be so forthcoming on the progress of investigations (FBI, 1996). The Use of Undercover Officers Undercover officers may play drug dealers, prostitutes, johns, crime bosses, friends, and, perhaps, lovers in order to collect evidence of crime.They have to observe or even participate in illegal activities to protect their cover. Undercover work is said to be a difficult role for the individual officer, who may play the part so well that he or she loses his or her previous identity. If the cover involves illegal or immoral action, the individual may have to sacrifice personal integrity to get an arrest. Marx cites examples of officers who have become addicted to drugs or alcohol and destroyed their marriages or careers because of undercover assignments (1985a: 109). Kim Wozencraft (1990), an ex-undercover narcotics officer, has written a novel in which two undercover officers use drugs and become friends with some of the pushers they are collecting evidence against, and although officials in the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), as well as local law enforcement, know that undercover officers sometimes use and even become addicted to drugs during the course of an investigation, they ignore or cover up such ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 204 CHAPTER EIGHT behavior in order to get successful convictions. Although the work is fiction, one suspects that at least some of the experiences that Wozencraft portrays are taken from reality. Policemen routinely pretend they are johns, and policewomen dress up as prostitutes.Those community members who live in neighborhoods plagued with street prostitution may applaud any police efforts to clean up their streets. But do we want our police officers to engage in this type of activity? One important element of this debate is the type of relationship involved in the police deception. The two extremes of intimacy are, on one hand, a brief buy–bust incident where the officer pretends to be a drug pusher and buys from a street dealer, and moments later an arrest is effected.At the other extreme would be a situation in which an undercover officer pretends to be romantically involved with a target of an investigation to maintain his or her cover.The second situation violates our sense of privacy to a much greater degree, yet there have been instances of detectives engaging in such relationships to gain confessions or other information. In one particular case, a private detective (not a police detective) engaged in this type of relationship over a period of months and even agreed to an engagement of marriage with the suspect in order to get a confession on tape (Schoeman, 1986: 21). In another case, an officer acted as a friend to a target of an investigation, to the extent of looking after his child and living in his house for six months.The purpose of the investigation was to get any evidence on the man so that the topless bar he owned could be shut down. Eventually, the officer found some white powder on a desk in the home that tested positive for cocaine, and a conviction was secured. The Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari in this case (United States v. Baldwin, 621 F.2d 251 [1980]). Many people do not see anything wrong with deceiving the criminal who is ultimately convicted, but what about others involved? In the above case, what does one say to the child who found out a trusted friend had been living a lie? One of the reasons that some disagree with deceptive practices involving personal relationships is that they betray trust, an essential element of social life. As Schoeman (1985: 144) explains, intimate relationships are different from public exchanges and should be protected: Intimacy involves bringing another person within one’s soul or being, not for any independently personal or instrumental objective, but for the sake of the other person or for the sake of the bond and attachment between the persons. ... There is an expression of vulnerability and unenforceable trust within intimate relationships not present in business or social relationships. ... Exploitation of trust and intimacy is also degrading to all persons who have respect for intimate relationships. Intimate relationships involve potential transformations of moral duties. Morally, an intimate relationship may take precedence over a concern for social well-being generally. Note that he is probably arguing from an ethics of care position. In this ethical system, the relationship of two people is more important than rights, duties, or laws.There is no forfeiture of rights in the ethics of care positions; thus, one ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES can’t say the suspect deserves to be deceived.The harm to the relationship goes in both directions. In cases where a personal relationship has developed, if the target is hurt by the deception, so too is the deceiver. Schoeman goes on to suggest some guidelines to be used when police interact with others in a deceptive manner. First, he believes that no interaction should go on longer than twenty-four hours without a warrant with probable cause. During this twenty-four-hour period, the officer may not enter any private area, even if invited, unless it is specifically to undertake some illegal activity. Second, although an undercover officer may engage in business and social relationships deceptively during the course of an investigation, he or she may not engage in intimate relationships. Finally, any evidence obtained in violation of the first two principles should be excluded from criminal trials against the targets (1985: 140). Police would obviously criticize these suggestions. First, if there is probable cause, an arrest is possible, so why engage in a dangerous undercover operation? Second, almost all undercover operations last more than twenty-four hours. Finally, requiring a warrant is often unworkable, given how undercover operations develop.The question remains: How can police best minimize the harm yet still obtain some utility from the action? This balancing is characteristic of utilitarian ethics. Do police engage in investigative deception because it is the best way to investigate drug sales, prostitution, organized crime, or illegal alien smuggling; or is it simply the easiest way? Is it necessary in undercover work, especially in the area of vice, to employ deception and techniques that might be considered entrapment? If the goal of police is crime control, then there is a clear inclination to use utilitarian rationales to justify deception as a means to an end. If the goal of police is public service, such activities are arguably harder to justify. Marx (1985a: 106–107) proposes that before engaging in undercover operations, police investigators should ask the following questions: 1. How serious is the crime being investigated? 2. How clear is the definition of the crime—that is, would the target know that what he or she is doing is clearly illegal? 3. Are there any alternatives to deceptive practices? 4. Is the undercover operation consistent with the spirit as well as the letter of the law? 5. Is it public knowledge that the police may engage in such practices, and is the decision to do so, a result of democratic decision making? 6. Is the goal prosecution, as opposed to general intelligence gathering or harassment? 7. Is there a likelihood that the crime would occur regardless of the government’s involvement? 8. Are there reasonable grounds to suspect the target? 9. Will the practice prevent a serious crime from occurring? ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 206 CHAPTER EIGHT The Use of Informants Informants are individuals who are not police officers, but that assist police by providing information about criminal activity, acting as the part of buyer in drug sales, or otherwise “setting up” a criminal act so that police may gather evidence against the target. Informants perform such services for some reward—either money, or to get charges dropped or reduced, or in some documented case, for drugs supplied by an officer.They may do it for retaliatory purposes. Informants typically are not middle-class, upstanding-citizen types. They have or are probably engaged in criminal activities themselves. Police use informants who often continue to commit crime while helping police. The following describes an informant who had police protection withdrawn (Scheingold, 1984: 122): The problem is that by the time Detective Tumulty decided to bury Carranza, the informant had already committed, by his own count, two hundred crimes, and he had confessed over one hundred of them to the police. It is not surprising that business persons victimized by Carranza were not particularly pleased when they learned the police had failed to prosecute him. More recently, it has come to light that the F.B.I. has protected informers even after they have committed murders. John Connolly, an FBI agent, was convicted of obstruction of justice and is now serving a ten year prison sentence for protecting two organized crime figures, now implicated in eighteen murders, during the time they worked for the FBI. Other agents have admitted that they “bend the rules” in order to keep information sources. Critics argue that FBI agents should not make decisions regarding which crimes are more or less important:“Is a federal official entitled to make that decision-that one person’s life is more valuable than another’s?”(Donn, 2003:A16). The federal witness protection plan has provided new identities for some witnesses after they have accumulated bad debts or otherwise victimized an unwary public.The rationale for informant protection is that greater benefit is derived from using them to catch other criminals than their punishment would bring.This also extends to overlooking any minor crime that they engage in during the period of time they provide information, or afterward if that is part of the deal (Marx, 1985a: 109).However, the ethical soundness of this judgment may be seriously questioned. Police use informants partly to avoid problems that undercover police officers would encounter if they attempted to accomplish the task, but also because informants are under fewer restrictions.As Marx reports, Informers and, to an even greater extent, middlemen, are much less formally accountable than are sworn law officers and are not as constrained by legal or departmental restrictions.As an experienced undercover agent candidly put it,“unwitting informers are desirable precisely because they can do what we can’t—legally entrap.” ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES An incident in Houston where an informant was killed in a drug buy brought to light the many ethical issues raised by using informants.This individual came to the police to help them identify pushers. He was married and had small children. He engaged in drug deals, and after they occurred, the police would arrest the drug sellers. In one such incident, the informant was in a motel room with the pushers and was evidently identified as an informant and killed before police could enter the room.The informant was not wearing a wire, and he had no weapon or means of protecting himself. Unlike the families of undercover police officers killed in the line of duty, his family is without benefits of compensation for his death (Houston Post, Jan. 24, 1993: A20). Some observers question the use of civilians in such dangerous operations. One might, however, point out the fact that this informant freely volunteered his services, unlike some informants, who are threatened with prosecution if they do not cooperate. Another problem with informants is that sometimes their reliability is highly questionable. Their rewards, whatever those might be, are contingent upon delivering some evidence of crime to law enforcement. In some cases, this evidence may be purely manufactured. In Dallas, an informant was used to buy drugs from suspected drug dealers, who were then arrested and convicted using his testimony.When the supposed cocaine that he allegedly bought from those arrested was tested, it turned out to be powdered plasterboard. In fact, in several cases of the same informant, there were no drugs. Defendants, in the meantime, had spent months in jail protesting their innocence before charges were dropped. It was concluded by police and prosecutors that this informant had planted the cocaine substitute on innocent men with no relationship to drugs.Why? He had been paid $200,000 since 2000 for helping Dallas police make drug arrests (Curry, 2002). Sometimes officers are tempted to manufacture informants.When writing affidavits for search warrants, officers may utilize information supplied by a “confidential informant” without having to name the informant. All the officer need do is state that the informant has given good information in the past and that it would be dangerous to reveal his or her identity. This boilerplate language is routinely accepted and so information is used to establish probable cause that cannot be verified or challenged. Sutton (1991) argues that some officers are tempted to use imaginary confidential informants to allow the use of otherwise illegally obtained or simply manufactured evidence. Barker and Carter (1999) report on a tragic case of this occurring in which an officer made up evidence from a so-called informant in order to get a search warrant. In the search, an officer was killed and the lie was exposed. Some officers openly admit that they could not do their job without informants. There are other arguments, however, that the perceived value of informants is overstated. In a British study, the Home Office concluded that informants were cost effective. However, other analysts argued that the study did not factor in other issues, such as tolerating continued crime (by informants), and informants who create crime in order to report it (Dunningham and Norris, 1999). ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 208 CHAPTER EIGHT Some develop close working relationships with informants, while others maintain that you can’t trust them no matter how long you’ve known them. There are disturbing questions one might ask about using private citizens to engage in dangerous operations. It may be true that narcotics investigations are difficult, if not impossible, without the use of informants. If so, then guidelines and standards are needed to govern the use of informants. The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies [CALEA] has developed such standards. Justifications for Undercover Operations There are arguments both for and against the use of undercover operations and informants (see box on page 210). Marx (1985b; 1991) argues that they might actually create more crime.They also may lead to unintended crime and danger. For instance, he mentioned situations where decoys have been attacked, undercover officers have been robbed,undercover officers have been killed by other officers who mistook them for criminals, and policewomen acting as prostitutes have been attacked.The use of informants sometimes leads to retaliatory assaults against them.There have even been scenarios where agents from one law enforcement agency pretended to buy drugs from drug dealers who turned out to also be undercover police from another agency (Marx,1991).Although rare,one wonders how many resources have been expended for these futile charades. Undercover operations have been criticized for the following reasons (Marx, 1992: 117–118): 1. They may generate a market for the purchase or sale of illegal goods and services. 2. They may generate the idea for the crime. 3. They may generate the motive. 4. They may provide a missing resource. 5. They may entail coercion or intimidation of a person otherwise not predisposed to commit the offense. 6. They may generate a covert opportunity structure for illegal actions on the part of the undercover agent or informant. 7. They may lead to retaliatory violence against informers. 8. They may stimulate a variety of crimes on the part of those who are not targets of the undercover operation (for example, impersonation of a police officer, crimes committed against undercover officers). Ethical systems may or may not support undercover operations. The principle of double effect holds that when one does an action to achieve a good end and an inevitable but unintended effect is negative, then the action might be justified. We might justify police action in this way if the unethical consequence, such as the deception of an innocent, was not the intended consequence of the action and the goal was an ethical one. However, deceiving the suspect could not be justified under the principle of double effect because that is an intended effect, not an unintended effect. ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES QUOTE They were just looking at me. I couldn’t even look these guys in the eyes. Here’s guys I hung out with, guys I broke bread with. I really came to like some of them. And they liked me, trusted me. One guy comes up to me and says, “How could you do this, Ben? You’re my friend. How could you do this?” He was sixty some years old. He was like anybody’s grandfather, a nice guy, but he dealt in stolen securities. That’s what we locked him up for. He put a heavy guilt trip on me. I couldn’t look at him. I had to put my head down. . . . Undercover is a very strange way to do police work, because you identify with them, the bad guys. It’s a strange feeling to be trusted by someone and then betray them. Mark Baker, Cops (New York: Pocket Books, 1985): 139–140. Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster from Cops: Their Lives in Their Own Words by Mark Baker. Copyright © 1985 by Mark Baker. Religious ethics would probably condemn many kinds of police actions because of the deceptions involved. Ethical formalism would probably also condemn such actions because one could not justify them under the categorical imperative. Further, innocent family members being used as a means to a conviction of an offender would also violate the categorical imperative. Utilitarian ethics would justify police deception and deceptive techniques if one could make the argument that catching criminals provides greater benefit to society than allowing them to go free by refusing to engage in such practices.Act utilitarianism would probably support deceptive practices, but rule utilitarianism might not, because the actions, although beneficial under certain circumstances, might in the long run undermine and threaten our system of law. Finally, egoism might or might not justify such actions depending on the particular officer involved and what his or her maximum gain and loss was determined to be. Under act utilitarianism, one would measure the harm of the criminal activity against the methods used to control it. Deceptive practices, then, might be justified in the case of drug offenses but not for business misdeeds or for finding a murderer but not for trapping a prostitute, and so on.The difficulty of this line of reasoning, of course, is agreeing on a standard of seriousness. I might decide that drugs are serious enough to justify otherwise unethical practices, but you might not. Pornography and prostitution may be serious enough to some to justify unethical practices, but to others only murder or violent crime would justify the practices. Cohen (1991) proposes a test to determine the ethical justification for police practices. His focus is the use of coercive power to stop and search, but we might apply the same test to analyze undercover or other deceptive practices. First, the end must be justified as a good—for instance, conviction of a serious criminal rather than general intelligence gathering. Second, the means must be a plausible way to achieve the end—for example, choosing a target with no reasonable suspicion is not a plausible way to reduce any type of crime. Third, there must be no better alternative means to achieve the same end: no less-intrusive means or methods of collecting evidence exist. Finally, ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth Justifications for and Arguments Against Undercover Work For: Against: 1. Citizens grant to government the 1. Truth telling is moral; lying is right to use means which they immoral. individually forsake. 2. Undercover work is ethical when 2. The government should not its targets are persons who freely make deals with criminals. choose to commit crimes which they know may call forth deceptive police practices. 3. Undercover work is ethical when 3. The government should neither used for a good and important participate in, nor be a party to end. crime, nor break laws in order to enforce them. 4. Undercover work is ethical when 4. The government through its there are reasonably specific actions should reduce, not grounds to suspect that a serious increase crime. crime is planned or has been carried out 5. Undercover work is ethical when 5. The government should not it is directed against persons create an intention to commit a whom there are reasonable crime which is impossible to grounds to suspect. carry out. 6. When citizens use questionable 6. The government should means, government agents are neither tempt the weak, nor justified in using equivalent offer temptation means. indiscriminately, nor offer unrealistically attractive temptations. 7. Special risks justify special 7. Do no harm to the innocent. of precautions. 8. Undercover work is ethical when 8. Respect the sanctity of private it is the best means. places. 9. Enforce the law equally. 9. Respect the sanctity of intimate relations. 10. Convict the guilty. 10. Respect the right to freedom expression and action. 11. An investigation should be as 11. The government should not nonintrusive and noncoercive do by stealth what it is as possible. prohibited from doing openly. 12. Undercover work is ethical when it is undertaken with the intention of eventually being made public and literally judged in court. 13. Undercover work is ethical when it is carried out by persons of upright character in accountable organizations. SOURCE: G. Marx, “Police Undercover Work: Ethical Deception or Deceptive Ethics.” In Police Ethics: Hard Choices in Law Enforcement, ed. W. Heffernan and T. Stroup (New York: John Jay Press, 1985). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES the means must not undermine some other equal or greater end; that is, if the method results in loss of trust or faith in the legal system, it fails the test. Many people see nothing wrong—certainly nothing illegal—in using any methods necessary to catch criminals. But we are concerned with methods in use before individuals are found guilty. Can an innocent person, such as you, be entrapped into crime? Perhaps not, but are we comfortable in a society where the person who offers you drugs or sex or a cheap way to hook into cable turns out to be an undercover police officer? Are we content to assume that our telephone may be tapped or our best friend could be reporting our conversations to someone else? When we encounter police behavior in these areas, very often the practices have been used to catch a person whom we realize, after the fact, had engaged in wrongdoing, so we feel that police are justified in performing in slightly unethical ways.What protectors of due process and critics of police investigation practices help us to remember is that those practices, if not curbed, may just as easily be used on the innocent as well as on the guilty. It is clear that norms support police deception during the investigative phase. If their norms support deception during investigation, it is not surprising that some officers may protect themselves with deception when their methods are legally questioned. In fact, one of the problems with deceptive practices is that they may lead to more deception to cover up illegal methods. For instance, Skolnick (1982) argues that weak or nonexistent standards during the investigation phase of policing lead directly to lying on the witness stand because that is sometimes the only way an officer can save his or her case. It is unlikely that these investigative techniques will ever be eliminated; perhaps they should not be, since they are effective in catching a number of people who should be punished. Even if one has doubts about the ethics of these practices, it is entirely possible that there is no other way to accomplish the goal of crime control. However one decides these difficult questions, there are no easy answers.Also,it is important to realize that although for us these questions are academic, for thousands of police officers they are very real. INTERROGATION Deception often takes a different form in the interrogation phase of a case. Several court cases document the use of mental coercion, either through threat or promise.The use of the father confessor approach (a sympathetic paternal figure for the defendant to confide to) or Mutt and Jeff partners (a “nice guy” and a seemingly brutal, threatening officer) are other ways to induce confessions and/or obtain information (Kamisar, LeFave, and Israel, 1980: 54). Skolnick and Leo (1992) present a typology of deceptive interrogation techniques. The following is a brief summary of their descriptions of these practices: ¦ Calling the questioning an interview rather than an interrogation by questioning in a noncustodial setting and telling the suspect that he is free to leave, thus eliminating the need for Miranda warnings ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 212 CHAPTER EIGHT ¦ Presenting Miranda warnings in a way designed to negate their effect, by mumbling or by using a tone suggesting that the offender better not exercise the rights delineated or that they are unnecessary ¦ Misrepresenting the nature or seriousness of the offense by, for instance, not telling the suspect that the victim had died ¦ Using manipulative appeals to conscience through role playing or other means ¦ Misrepresenting the moral seriousness of the offense—for instance, by pretending that the rape victim “deserved” to be raped to get a confession ¦ Using promises of lesser sentences or nonprosecution beyond the power of the police to offer ¦ Misrepresenting identity by pretending to be lawyers or priests ¦ Using fabricated evidence such as polygraph results or fingerprint findings that don’t really exist Skolnick (1982) writes that because physical means of coercion are no longer used—the infamous third degree—mental deception is the only means left for police officers to gain information or confessions from suspects. How does one get a killer to admit to where she left the murder weapon? If police are imaginative, they may be able to get the defendant to confess by encouraging her to think about what would happen if children found the gun. Or police might discover the location of a body by convincing the killer after he had refused to talk to police that the victim deserves a Christian burial (see Brewer v.Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 [1977]). Courts have ruled that police who use these methods are unconstitutionally infringing on the defendant’s right to counsel because the conversations, even if not direct questioning, constitute an interrogation. However, other cases that involve attempts to obtain information before counsel has been appointed have been approved by the Court. Whether police have a legal right to deceive a suspect is not the same question as whether it is ethical, and, if so, what are the limits of such deception? Skolnick’s argument is that deception is used because physical coercion cannot be. It is true, of course, that the use of physical force to obtain a conviction is illegal. Most countries, in fact, have eliminated torture and formally condemn the practice. Unfortunately, some countries still endorse physical coercion as acceptable police practice. Amnesty International documents abuses in Chile, Argentina, and many other countries around the world. It is important to note that very often in these situations police are used as the means of control by the dominant political power.Therefore,they operate not under the law, as the code of ethics dictates, but above the law. Codes of ethics, adopted by many police departments that have recognized the danger of police power being misused, are very clear in directing police to abide by the law and not allow themselves to be used by people or political parties (Bossard, 1981). This discussion has been renewed, however, because of terrorism and the Afghanistan military engagement.There have been allegations that the U.S. military handed over Al Queda captives to countries where torture was legally pos ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES sible, and then participated in the interrogations in order to acquire information about Osama Bin Laden and future operations. If this is true, does the nature of the threat justify the return to physical coercion? U.S. officials admit to the use of techniques such as with holding medical attention, deprivation of food and water, sleep and light deprivation and other means short of physical torture against A1 Queda leaders (Van Natta, 2003).Are such methods morally justified? Many would argue that whatever information is gained from an individual who is physically coerced into confessing or giving information is not worth the sacrifice of moral standards.The original legal proscriptions against torture, however, come not from an ethical rationale, but from a legal rationale that torture makes a confession unreliable.Tortured victims might confess to stop their suffering; thus, the court would not get truthful information. Klockars (1983) describes the inevitability of certain unethical or immoral police behaviors as the Dirty Harry problem, after the movie character who did not let the law get in his way when pursuing criminals. In Klockars’s view, using immoral means to reach a desired moral end is an irresolvable problem because there are situations where one knows the “dirty act” will result in a good end, there are no other means to achieve the good end, and the “dirty act” will not be in vain. Klockars’s example of this type of problem, taken from a movie, is a situation where a captured criminal refuses to tell the location of a kidnapped victim. Because the victim is sure to die without help, the police officer (played by Clint Eastwood) tortures the criminal by stepping on his injured leg until he admits the location. Obviously, this is an immoral act, but Klockars’s point is that there is no solution to the situation. If the police officer behaved in a professional manner, the victim was sure to die; if he behaved in an immoral manner, there was a chance he could save a life.This is a dominant theme in detective and police fiction. Klockars’s conclusion is that by engaging in “dirty” means for good ends, the officer has tainted his innocence and must be punished, because there is always a danger that dirty means will be redefined by those who use them as neutral or even good. Police may lose their sense of moral proportion if the action is not punished, even though the individual police officer involved may have no other way out of the moral dilemma. Delattre (1989a) also discusses the use of coercive power. He disagrees with Klockars that the officer must inevitably be tainted in the Dirty Harry situation. Delattre points out that if one chooses physical coercion, regardless of temptation, this leads to perjury and lying about the activity and perhaps other tactics to ensure that the offender does not go free due to the illegal behavior of the police officer. However, he also excuses the actions of those who succumb to temptation in extreme situations and perform an illegal act (Delattre,1986a:211): Police officials are not tainted by refusing to step onto the slope of illegal action, neither are officials of demonstrated probity necessarily tainted by a last-ditch illegal step. Such an act may be unjustifiable by an unconditional principle, but it also may be excusable.... Still less does it follow that those who commit such acts are bad, that their character is besmirched, or that their honor is tainted. ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 214 CHAPTER EIGHT One might argue that if officers commit an illegal and unethical act, it is hard for their character not to be affected or their honor tainted.To understand an action (in this case an act that results from anger or frustration) is not to excuse it. Delattre presents a virtue-based ethical system and evidently believes that an officer can have all the virtues of a good officer and still commit a bad action—in this case, the illegal use of force. His point that one act of violence does not necessarily mean that the officer is unethical in other ways is well taken. In fact, we usually reserve the terms ethical and unethical for actions rather than persons.The reaction of the officer to his or her mistake is the true test of character. Does the officer cover up and/or ask his or her partner to cover up the action? Does the officer lie to protect himself or herself? Or does the officer admit wrongdoing and accept the consequences? Klockars’s underlying point is more subtle: We all are guilty in a sense by expecting certain ones among us to do the dirty work and then condemning them for their actions. In times of war, and when dealing with other threats, the populace often wants results without wanting to know tactics.What percentage of the population cared that the CIA attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro or that the attorney general’s office during the Kennedy years used questionable tactics and violated the due process rights of Cosa Nostra members targeted in the campaign against organized crime? How many of us truly want to know about the clandestine operations of Special Forces in Afghanistan or Iraq? Klockars points out the position of those who perform despicable acts that benefit the rest of us; we are comfortable in our ignorance and comfortable in our judgments, as long as we don’t have to look too closely at our own role in the events. Police (and other law enforcement), in effect, become our sin eaters of early folklore; they are the shady characters on the fringe of society who absorb evil so that the rest of us may remain pure—shunned and avoided, these persons and their value are taken for granted. It is certainly much easier to justify mental coercion than physical coercion and intimidation, but their justifications are the same—that is, it is an effective and perhaps necessary means to get needed information from a resisting subject. The criticism against them is also the same. Mental coercion may also result in untruths. Recently, several convictions have been overturned because new evidence proves that those convicted were innocent, yet they confessed. Why would someone confess to a crime he didn’t commit? A suspect might confess because he is a fourteen-year-old juvenile who was mentally overpowered by police using pressure and feeding him information from the crime. This is alleged to have happened in the Central Park jogger “wilding” case. In this case, the five Black and Hispanic youths who were convicted in 1990 of the beating and rape of a female stockbroker may be innocent after all, since Matias Reyes has confessed, stating that he acted alone in the crime. D.N.A. evidence supports his contention that he raped the victim (Tanner, 2002; Getlin, 2002). Suspects might confess because police use intimidation and fear tactics to extract a confession.This is allegedly what happened in an Austin case where ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES two men were found guilty and sentenced to death for a robbery-murder. One of them confessed and implicated the other. Now, twelve years later, it appears that the crime was actually committed by another man who wrote the District Attorney with his confession. D.N.A. evidence has also confirmed his guilt.The convicted man who confessed alleges that he did so because the police officer who interrogated him threatened that if he did not confess, Mexican police would arrest his mother and they could not guarantee her safety.They told him he would receive the death penalty if he didn’t confess (Hafetz, 2002). Although such events sound like something from television drama rather than reality, they evidently do happen. In Illinois, Governor Ryan eventually commuted the death sentences of everyone on death row. He did so because of disgust and suspicion arising from the method of finding those on death row guilty.Thirteen death penalty cases were overturned when evidence indicated the convicted might be innocent, or at the very least, did not receive due process. Five of those thirteen were from Chicago, and evidence indicated that the convictions were obtained through coerced confessions and manufactured evidence by the Chicago police investigators (Babwin, 2001). Muir discusses the necessity for the use of coercion: A good police officer, he writes,“has to resolve the contradiction of achieving just ends with coercive means” (Muir, 1977: 3). According to Muir, the successful police officer is able to balance willingness to use coercion with an understanding of humankind, which includes such traits as empathy and sympathy toward the weaknesses of human nature. If officers overemphasize coercion, they become cynical and brutal; if they overemphasize understanding, they become ineffectual: Under certain conditions, a youthful policeman was likely to come upon solutions to the paradoxes of coercive power which enabled him to accept the use of coercion as legitimate. However, if his solution to his moral problems required him to blind himself to the tragedy of the human condition, then he became an enforcer. Under other circumstances, a young policeman’s choice of responses to paradox left him in conflict about the morality of coercion.Then he would be transfixed by feelings of guilt, would tend to evade situations which aroused those feelings, and would develop a perspective to justify his evasions.This kind of officer became either a reciprocator or an avoider. Finally some young officers found ways to exercise coercion legitimately without having to deny their “common sense of the oneness of the human condition.”These men became professionals (Muir, 1977: 24). MANAGEMENT ISSUES Malloy (1982: 37–40) offers some possible solutions to police corruption: increase the salary of police, eliminate unenforceable laws, establish civilian review boards, and improve training. One might add this solution: improve leadership. Metz (1990) suggests several ways that police administrators can ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 216 CHAPTER EIGHT encourage ethical conduct among officers. He suggests setting realistic goals and objectives for the department and providing ethical leadership, a written code of ethics, a whistleblowing procedure that ensures fair treatment of all parties, and training in law enforcement ethics. In this last section, we will explore some of the approaches that have been taken to nurture and encourage ethical behavior among police officers. Change Efforts How does one minimize or eliminate existing corruption in a police department? Because so much of police work is unpredictable and encounters such a wide range of situations, it is impossible to fashion rules for all possible occurrences. What should take the place of extensive rules are strong ethical standards. However, the internalization of these standards by individual police officers is at best tenuous; the informal police subculture is the most obvious threat to the internalization of ethical standards. However, the particular organizational values do influence the individual officer. Klockars et al. (2000) used surveys to ask 3,235 officers in thirty U.S. police agencies to rank the corruptness of eleven hypotheticals. They ranked some as fairly nonserious: covering up a DUI accident and taking free meals. Others were ranked as more serious: excessive force, taking free drinks, and taking kickbacks.The most serious rankings were reserved for stealing from a found wallet, taking a money bribe, and stealing a watch from a crime scene. There was quite a degree of variability between agencies.Agencies where officers had belief systems that ranked all behaviors as more serious also reported that their agency would inflict harsher discipline on all conduct (Klockars, 2000: 8). One might conclude from this that law enforcement administrators can affect the value systems of officers through appropriate discipline. Crank and Caldero (2000: 159; also see Crank, 1998: 230) argue that even the formal organizational values impose pressures that may lead to noble cause corruption. Aspirations for promotion, “implicit quotas for arrests, directives from administrators, self-esteem, [and] 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. Education and Training Education has been promoted as necessary if police are to continue to be professional. However, education itself is certainly not a panacea, and, in fact, some of the officers with the worst examples of unethical behavior either had college degrees or scored above average on the academic tests to qualify for hiring. Nevertheless, study results often show that educated officers have positive qualities. Some of the differences may raise more questions; for instance, if educated officers are more likely to believe it is acceptable to ignore the law, does this mean that they are more likely than officers without college degrees to use arbitrary and discriminatory criteria in their enforcement? If educated officers believe that officers can depart from ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES standard operating procedures, are they harder to supervise and more likely to substitute individualistic definitions of justice rather than perform a service function and let the process control the outcome? Ethics training in the academy, as well as offering in-service courses, is common and recommended for all police departments today. However, what these courses might be able to accomplish is questionable. Reuss-Ianni (1983) describes how, after the Knapp Commission uncovered wide-ranging corruption in the N.Y.P.D., ethical awareness workshops were begun. Unfortunately, they have not stopped the periodic corruption scandals that have occurred since. Many ethics courses use a moral reasoning approach, much as this book does, where various scenarios are examined in light of ethical perspectives, such as utilitarianism, to determine the right course of behavior. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that once officers know what is right, they will make the right decision.This may or may not be true. A different perspective is offered by Delattre (1989a) and Delaney (1990) that emphasizes the importance of character. In Chapter 2 we discussed the ethics of virtue,which answers the question,“How does one live a good life?” with “Developing and forming good habits of character.”This is the approach that Delattre and Delaney apply to police ethics. If one has a bad character, ethical analysis is irrelevant because that individual will continue to behave in conformanceto hisorher traitsof avarice,deceptiveness,cowardice,and soon.An individual who has good character possesses those virtues that are necessary for moral and ethical decision making. Training may help one by reinforcing appropriate values, but one’s character is already formed.What are the virtues necessary for a good police officer? Delattre discusses justice, courage, temperance, and compassion. Delaney discusses sagacity, sincerity, and persistence. This approach would seem to negate the relevance of any attempts to improve the ethics of officers, since character is fairly well formed by the time one is an adult.Yet we might say that ethics training at this point serves to delineate those situations that might not be recognized as questions of ethics. Also, discussions of such dilemmas point out egoistic rationalizations for unethical behavior, making them harder to use by those who would try. Other training options may concentrate on only one ethical system, such as utilitarianism, or involve a more balanced treatment of other ethical systems.All must resolve the issues of relativism versus absolutism, duty versus personal needs, and minor transgressions versus major transgressions. Martinelli (2000) offers a different rationale for having an ethics training course. He proposes a course that is grounded in the actual discipline cases of each law enforcement agency. He argues that some of the law enforcement code provisions are ambiguous to officers and need explanations—such as keeping one’s private life “unsullied.” Officers may not realize that they can receive departmental sanctions for their behavior in their private life. Further, case law indicates that if some attempts are not made to instruct officers in appropriate behaviors, and if agencies and city councils continue to rubber stamp the violation of civil rights that some officers commit, then the agencies themselves will be held responsible. For instance, if there is a pattern of abuse ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 218 CHAPTER EIGHT in a discipline record and the officer then commits another violation, the city and police department will probably lose a wrongful death suit or civil suit. There have also been instances, where a “failure to train” argument has successfully established liability. “Police Watch” law firms in major cities have a proven track record in winning multimillion-dollar lawsuits against departments and cities.Thus, if for no other reason than to avoid financial liability, administrators should institute training in this area. Integrity Testing New York City has utilized integrity testing since the late 1970s, after the Knapp Commission exposed widespread corruption. Field associates were recruited straight from academies to investigate suspected officers (Reuss-Ianni, 1983: 80).This attempt to “police the police” involves setting up a situation where the officer might commit a wrongful act. For instance, an officer responds to a report of an open door to an apartment, and when he checks it out, he sees money in plain sight.The scene is being monitored, however, to see if he takes it.There are also tests whereby a wallet is turned in to see if officers would take money (Marx 1991). It is reported that almost thirty percent of officers have failed to turn in the wallet (Prenzler and Ronken,2001:322).After the Mollen Commission in the mid-1990s, the integrity testing program has been expanded. Prenzler and Ronken (2001a: 322) report that such “integrity tests”may be getting better results today.Of three hundred fifty-five tests involving seven hundred sixty-two officers, no criminal failures were reported, and only forty-five procedural failures were reported. Prenzler and Ronken (2001a) discuss integrity testing in police departments in Australia and around the world.They discuss how the London Metropolitan Police instituted random integrity testing in 1998. In their study of Australia, they discovered that only two reporting police agencies used targeted integrity testing and none used random integrity testing. In New South Wales, integrity testing resulted in 37 percent failing. Only 27 percent passed, and the rest were referred for further investigation or discontinued (2001a: 327). Needless to say, most police officers have very negative attitudes about integrity testing. Spokesmen argue that “testing raises serious issues regarding privacy, deception,entrapment,provocation and the legal rights of individuals”(Prenzler and Ronken,2001a:323–324).There is a widespread belief that it is unfair and overly intrusive and detrimental to morale. It is interesting to compare integrity testing with undercover operations.The planted wallet is similar to the buy–bust operation, and the use of field associates is similar to undercover operations. Officers hate the idea that an officer who pretends to be a friend may, instead, be someone who is trying to obtain evidence that they are doing wrong.The argument for undercover work is that if someone isn’t doing anything wrong, there is nothing to fear. However, field associates create a sense of betrayal and lack of trust, regardless of whether someone is involved in wrongdoing or not. It is the same argument, of course, that is used to criticize undercover operations. Specifically, critics argue that the use of undercover operations may undermine the fabric of social relations by reducing a level of trust. ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES Civilian Review or Complaint Boards There seems to be a growing belief that police departments have proven themselves to be incapable of policing themselves, and that what is needed is some outside oversight. Civilian Review Boards have been created in several cities to monitor and review the investigation and discipline of officers who have complaints filed against them.There are many models that exist for the idea of civilian review, and no one model has been reported to be more effective or better than any other. Prenzler and Ronken (2001b) argue that it is difficult to analyze the success of such bodies because a high level of complaints may mean that there is greater trust in the process rather than a spike in misconduct.The various models of misconduct review are described as follows: The internal affairs model is where the police investigate themselves and utilize an internal discipline system.This is widely seen as ineffective.Citizens are discouraged from reporting; police are seen as ineffective; and, the approach seems to be not to bring out corruption or misconduct but rather to hide it.For instance,in one Toronto study,70 percent of people who filed complaints were not confident with the process, and only 14 percent felt their complaint was handled fairly (Prenzler and Ronken, 2001b: 180). Perhaps they had reason for their suspicions; see “A Case of ‘Kill the Messenger’?” The civilian review model is an agency that may audit complaints and investigations. The board may also respond to appeals and act in an advisory role in investigations. Police still investigate and conduct the discipline proceeding. The Police Complaints Authority in the United Kingdom is one example of this model. Compromise models also exist that may have an external board, for instance, but without any powers of subpoena or oversight (Prenzler and Ronken, 2001b). Walker (2001) also reviews the range of civilian review models, but does not find that any one model seems to be better than any other. Prenzler and Ronken (2001b) report that external review models have about the same substantiation rate as do I.A.D. models—about 10 percent of all complaints filed. The major criticism of such models centers on the idea A Case of “Kill the Messenger”? It was reported in the news that a volunteer for the local television station pretended to be a citizen who wanted to file a complaint against an officer in the small town of Santa Fe (35 miles southwest of Houston). A hidden camera recorded the incident, which was then played on television stations. What viewers saw was a sergeant who refused to give him a complaint form, argued with him, then followed him outside. The sergeant then arrested the “complainant” on a charge of walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk! The sergeant was suspended, but the damage done to public trust will not be resolved so easily. SOURCE: Associated Press, “Police Sergeant Is Suspended after Arresting TV Volunteer” Austin American- Statesman, (May 10, 2000), B8. ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 220 CHAPTER EIGHT that they are not truly independent, police still conduct the investigations and sometimes even sit on the board. Prenzler (2000) argues the “capture” theory is operative in civilian review models. This occurs when the regulatory or investigative body is “co-opted” by investigated agency through informal relationships. Other Methods Hunter (1999) proposed several means to minimize or reduce misconduct among police, including decertification of officers who commit serious misconduct, community policing programs, college, enhanced discipline, civilian review, and better training. In his survey of police officers in Florida, he found that officers believed strict and fair discipline was the best response and deterrent to misconduct.They also identified clear policies,superior performance of supervisors, and peer review boards. It was clear that, according to officers, leadership had everything to do with an ethical police force—95 percent felt that supervisors should be moral examples and 70 percent felt that unethical supervisors contributed to problem. Less than half (42 percent), however, agreed with a citizen review board. Mores (2002) also discusses a range of methods to deter corruption, including proper recruitment, economic incentives, community-oriented policing, greater accountability, rotation of assignments, the use of informants, the use of surveillance techniques, and prosecution of offenders. Prenzler and Ransley (2002) present the most exhaustive list, also found in the 1997 Wood Report, written after an investigation of widespread corruption in The New South Wales police department.The list of “Methods to Reduce Police Corruption” is reproduced in the accompanying box on the next page. Ethical Leadership Crank (1998: 187) and others note that there is a pervasive sense among rankand- file police that administrators are not to be trusted:“Officers protect each other, not only against the public, but against police administrators frequently seen to be capricious and out of touch.” The classic work in this regard is Reuss-Ianni’s (1983) study of a New York City precinct in the late 1970s.She described the “two cultures” of policing—street cops and management cops. She observed that law enforcement managers were classic bureaucrats who made decisions based on modern management principles.This contrasted with the street cop subculture that still had remnants of quasi-familial relationships in which “loyalties and commitments took precedence over the rule book” (1983: 4).The result of this conflict between the two value systems was alienation of the street cop. Despite the gulf between management and line staff, most people agree that employee behavior is influenced more directly by the behavior of superiors rather than by the stated directives or ethics of the organization. Executives engaged in price fixing and overcharging should not be surprised that their employees steal company supplies or time. One cannot espouse ethical ideals, act unethically, and then expect employees to act ethically.Thus, regardless of formal ethical codes, police are influenced by the standards of behavior they ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES Methods to Reduce Police Corruption Internal affairs units Independent civilian oversight agencies Overt recording devices (videocameras in cars) Covert high technology surveillance Targeted integrity testing Randomized integrity testing Drug and alcohol testing Quality assurance test (customer service monitors) Internal informants Complaints profiling Supervisor accountability Integrity reviews Mandatory reporting Whistleblower protection Compulsory rotation in corruption-prone sections Asset and financial reviews Surveys of police Surveys of public Personnel diversification Comprehensive ethics training Inquisitorial methods (fact-finding rather than due-process emphasis) Complaint resolution Monitoring and regulation of police procedures (of informants) Decriminalizing vice Risk analysis (to see what areas are vulnerable to corruption) SOURCE: J. Wood, Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service: Final Report (Government Printer, 1997). observe in their superiors. One might note that most large-scale police corruption that has been exposed has implicated very high-level-officials. Alternatively, police departments that have remained relatively free of corruption have administrators who practice ethical behavior on a day-to-day basis. Administrators have their own unique ethical dilemmas to face. Budget allocations, the use of drug testing, affirmative action, sexual harassment, and decisions about corrupt officers all present ethical dilemmas for administrators and supervisors. For instance, some supervisors face problems when they are promoted from the ranks and have friends who now become their subordinates. Such friends may expect special consideration, leaving the supervisor to decide how to respond to such expectations. Supervisors also report ethical ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 222 CHAPTER EIGHT dilemmas over how they should allocate resources, such as a new patrol car or overtime. Should seniority take precedence over competence? Should friendship take precedence over seniority? Another issue is what should be done with officers who have drug or alcohol problems. If the administrator decides to counsel or suggest treatment without any change in duty status and the officer endangers the life of someone or actually harms a citizen or other officer due to the problem, is the administrator to blame? In many situations where police leaders must make decisions, lives, property, or liberty can be at stake. It is extremely important for supervisors and administrators to understand the impact their decisions and their behavior have on everyone in the organization. Even if leaders are not involved in corruption directly, encouraging or participating in the harassment and ostracism that is directed at those who expose wrongdoers supports an organizational culture where officers may be afraid to come forward when they know of wrongdoing. Another situation may be where there is a perception that favored cliques do not receive punishment for behaviors that others would receive punishment for; this climate destroys the trust in police leadership that is essential to ensure good communication from the rank and file. Reuss-Ianni (1983:51) describes a trial of a cop who killed a prisoner in custody and the code of silence that was eventually broken down when other cops testified that they had lied in their reports and to the grand jury.The officers felt victimized by the press and betrayed by a management culture who, they felt, “threw them to the wolves.” What is interesting about this event is that it occurred in 1976. Now, almost thirty years later, one suspects the same dynamics apply. For instance, in the Abner Louima case a couple of officers committed abrutal crime, other cops covered it up until outside pressure became too great, then the code of silence broke down and officers were forced to testify against each other. The general effect was perhaps similar to what Reuss-Ianni described—the rank and file perceived lack of support from management when they were forced to testify against each other.What is important is that even after thirty years, the police officer who violated the law is still protected, and those who expose him (or her) are still perceived as the enemy. It seems, however, that management is just as likely as peer officers to cover up wrongdoing of officers. Only when the scandal cannot be contained does management “throw officers to the wolves.” Unless there is a scandal, corruption is swept under the rug and individual officers may receive little or no discipline. For instance, Crank and Caldero (2000: 114) report that in hundred civil lawsuits in twenty-two states during the time period between 1986 and 1991,the awards paid out by cities and police departments totaled $92 million, but of the 185 officers involved, only eight were disciplined. In fact, seventeen were promoted. It may be that noble-cause corruption is ignored by management and self-interest corruption is identified and sanctioned, but that does not seem to be the case when exploring case studies like New York and Los Angeles.In fact,it seems that what starts out,perhaps,as noble cause corruption leads to a perception that one is above the law and self interest corruption soon follows. See “A Tale of Two Cities.” ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES A Tale of Two Cities New York The Investigator: Sgt. John Tromboli was stymied in his attempt to investigate and expose the actions of Michael Dowd, an obviously crooked cop whose lifestyle far exceeded a cop’s pay. For five years he had been trying to get enough evidence on Dowd to file charges, but was routinely turned down by his superiors for extra resources and for permission for wire taps and other means of investigation. He believed that his superiors were trying to shut down his investigation. Dowd was finally arrested by Suffolk County police when he was videotaped conducting narcotics transactions in uniform and in a police car. I.A.D. routinely did not share information with the prosecutor’s office on crooked cops. Instead, information on corrupt officers would be hidden in a “tickler file” that was never made public. The Scandal: The Mollen Commission in New York was formed in 1992 by Mayor David Dinkins to investigate the allegations of corruption. The practices of Dowd and a number of other officers were exposed. They included drug dealing, theft from corpses, robberies of drug dealers, setting up rival drug dealers for arrest and prosecution, protection rackets, and other misconduct. In the highly publicized hearings, officers were pressured to testify against others, and indictments and punishments were handed down. The hearings prompted Judge Mollen to comment that the Knapp Commission found that officers were in league with criminals, but that today, officers have become the criminals themselves. Los Angeles The Investigator: Detective Russell Poole, a Robbery-Homicide Division investigator, uncovered a pattern of complaints of violence by the anti-gang task force in the Ramparts Division when investigating an alleged beating of a gang member in a police squad room. He concluded that a number of the officers in the division were “vigilante cops” and requested that the investigation proceed further, but Chief Parks ordered him to limit his investigation solely to the Jimenez beating. His superiors replaced a forty-page report he had prepared for the prosecutor’s office with a two-page report that did not give any information about the possibility that there might be a pattern of corruption on the part of Ramparts officers. A year later, the Ramparts scandal exploded. Poole quit the force. The Scandal: The Ramparts Scandal refers to the pubic disclosure of a wide range of corrupt activities by an anti-gang unit task force in the Ramparts Division of the L.A.P.D (C.R.A.S.H.—Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums). Investigators from the prosecutor’s office discovered the pattern of corruption when they made a deal with Rafael Perez, a Ramparts officer who had stolen cocaine from the evidence room. The scandal eventually led to dozens of criminal cases being voided because the prosecutor’s office could not depend on the truthfulness of officers’ testimony. Evidence indicated that the officers lied, planted evidence, beat suspects, and shot unarmed suspects in a time period between 1995 and 1998. They also evidently held parties to celebrate shooting, continued ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 224 CHAPTER EIGHT A Tale of Two Cities (continued) gave out plaques when one killed a gang member, and spread ketchup at a crime scene to imitate blood. Hundreds of cases had to be reviewed by staff in the prosecutor’s office to evaluate whether there was a possibility of manufactured evidence. At least one gang member’s conviction was overturned when Rafael Perez, the officer who implicated all others, confessed under oath that they had shot the man and then planted a gun on him and testified that he had shot at them first. The suspect has been released from prison, but is paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Some evidence indicates at least ninety-nine people were framed by Ramparts officers. Prosecutors were also quoted in the paper as saying, “You can’t trust the L.A.P.D. anymore.” Mayor Richard Riordan reported to the press that the city would have to use $100 million of tobacco settlements to cover anticipated lawsuits. Eleven officers were fired and forty convictions were overturned. The L.A.P.D. responded with an internal management audit that admitted that there was a lapse of supervision and oversight. The report concludes that the corruption was caused by a few individuals whose wrongdoing had a “contagion effect.” This report (conducted just eight years after the Christopher Commission presented a scathing commentary concerning management and ethos of L.A.P.D.) suggested an outside civilian oversight committee. It might be out of the department’s hands at this point since they are now under a Court monitor. Why were police investigators blocked in their effort to uncover corruption? In what ways is the pattern of corruption similar in New York and Los Angeles? Do you see any differences? SOURCES: Rothlein, 1999; Winters, 1995; Glover and Lait, 2000; Lait and Glover, 2000; Jablon, 2000; Sterngold, 2000; Deutsch, 2001; Golab, 2000. DIFFERENT QUESTIONS/ DIFFERENT ANSWERS? Our theme in these chapters was that the police role in society is either crime fighter or public servant. One’s view of the fundamental mission of police affects each of the issues discussed. If crime control is the primary mission, then utilitarian reasoning is employed to analyze police tactics. For instance, Cohen (1987: 53) uses a utilitarian approach in the following justification for police action: 1. The end must itself be good. 2. The means must be a plausible way to achieve the end. 3. There must be no alternative, better means to achieve the same end. 4. The means must not undermine some other equal or greater end. Crank and Caldero (2000: 9) state, “We argue for a means-oriented ethic of negotiated order that will prepare police for America’s future.”Their idea is that noble-cause corruption stems from a utilitarian view of crime control as the fundamental mission of police, but that in today’s multicultural reality, police will have to negotiate an “end” that takes into account the needs of all ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES groups in society. This is still, however, fundamentally a utilitarian view of policing. The point is that a crime control model may subvert law, policy or human rights if utilitarian reasoning justifies it. In other words, the end, if important enough, will justify any means. If public service is the primary mission, then the values and ethos of law enforcement would focus on human rights, and the fundamental duty of police is to protect those rights. Kappeler, Sluder, and Alpert (1994: 243) present the U.S. Department of Justice recommendations for the values of a police department as the following: ¦ Preserve and advance the principles of democracy. ¦ Place the highest value on preserving human life. ¦ Prevent crime as the number-one operational priority. ¦ Involve the community in delivering police services. ¦ Belief in accountability to the community served. ¦ Commit to professionalism in all aspects of operations. ¦ Maintain the highest standards of integrity. A rights-based model of policing recognizes the police as servants to the public good.Although crime control is important, protection of civil liberties is the fundamental mission.There is a suspicion of state power in this approach and a fear that police will be used to oppress the powerless.The way to avoid this is to place protection of rights as the central theme of policing, rather than crime control, because the definition of crime may be subverted for political ends. This concept is more prevalent in Europe and the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials is a good example of this premise:“In the performance of their duty, law enforcement officials shall respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the human rights of all persons” (Article 2, reported in Kleinig, 1999). Neyroud and Beckley (2001: 62) describe Police Standards in the United Kingdom as reflecting an emphasis on human rights. Standards include the following provisions: ¦ To fulfill the duties imposed on them by the law ¦ To respect human dignity and uphold human rights ¦ To act with integrity, dignity, and impartiality ¦ To use force only when strictly necessary and then proportionately ¦ To maintain confidentiality ¦ Not to use torture or ill-treatment ¦ To protect the health of those in their custody ¦ Not to commit any act of corruption ¦ To respect the law and the code of conduct and oppose violations of them ¦ To be personally liable for their acts This discussion has become incredibly more pressing in the face of terrorist threats.The trend of community or neighborhood policing that sought to ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 226 CHAPTER EIGHT forge links between law enforcement and the community they served has now slowed, and indications are that federal support for such programs is being withdrawn. In the place of community policing, one sees troubling tendencies to nationalize police forces, reduce civil liberties, and encourage zero tolerance. The nationalization of police has been resisted because of the origins of this country and the legacy of distrust of centralized power, yet, today, it seems more of a possibility (Stuntz, 2002). The “end” of catching terrorists is incredibly more persuasive than the “end” of catching garden-variety criminals. Thus, while racial profiling has been legally and ethically condemned as a violation of rights when used to catch drug dealers, it has been resurrected as an appropriate and justified response to catching terrorists. Our Supreme Court has held that privacy is more important than catching criminals, so wiretaps have been used sparingly and with judicial oversight; but, the prevention of terrorist attacks has changed this balance between the end and means—many are willing to give up their privacy rights in order for government to protect them from terrorism. Some, however, argue that it is a false argument to weigh privacy or any civil liberties against security.Alderson (1998:23),writing before the attack on the World Trade Center, presents a prescient argument against the “end” of security as a justification for taking away liberties: I acknowledge that liberty is diminished when people feel afraid to exercise it, but to stress security to unnecessary extremes at the price of fundamental freedoms plays into the hands of would-be high police despots. Such despots are quick to exploit fear in order to secure unlimited power. Alderson argues that “A police devoid of a sense and a spirit of justice is inimical to the healthy progress of democracy” (1998: 67). He addressed terrorism directly:“It is important for police to maintain their high ethical standards when facing terrorism, and for their leaders to inspire resistance to any degeneration into counter-terrorism terror” (1998: 71). Since European police have had a longer history of dealing with terrorism, it is interesting that the trend there evidently has been to move toward a rights- based model of policing. British police, for instance, have had their share of noble-cause corruption in dealing with Irish terrorists, Spain has dealt with Basque terrorists, and so on.What may be the case is that “the end justifies the means” thinking by law enforcers leads inevitably to violations of civil liberties and fear, and this official oppression always leads to more bitterness and disenfranchisement, and, ultimately, more unrest and terror. CONCLUSION We began these chapters on law enforcement and will also close them with the images of the use of force by the Los Angeles police. Some of us remember earlier images from the 1960s, wherein law enforcement officers appeared on newscasts beating and using attack dogs against peaceful civil rights demon ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth ETHICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES strators. One might argue that those negative images of the 1960s led to greater professionalism, better training, and racial and sexual integration of police departments in the 1970s and 1980s. The Rodney King incident and the scrutiny that resulted had led to positive results in that is has fostered a groundswell of attention on “police ethics,” including a national outcry against racial profiling and discriminatory enforcement. Today, we face the greatest challenge of law enforcement in recent memory with the threat of terrorism. The enemy is more fearsome, the stakes are higher, and the fear is stronger. How that may affect the ethics of law enforcement remains to be seen. REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. Discuss the justifications and criticisms of undercover operations. 2. Explain the Dirty Harry problem. 3. Discuss possible change efforts to reduce or eliminate various forms of police misbehavior. 4. Discuss the rights-based concept of policing versus a utilitarian crime control model, and explain how each would resolve questions of use of deception and invasive investigative techniques. ETHICAL DILEMMAS Situation 1 While on the witness stand you answer all the prosecutor’s and defense attorney’s questions.You complete your testimony and exit the courtroom, knowing that you have specific knowledge that may help the defense attorney’s case. You have answered all questions truthfully, but the specific question needed to help the defense was not asked.What should you do? Situation 2 Youarea 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 a number of 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 and when you put the handcuffs on him.Your arrest report didn’t mention it, but there were a couple of seconds where you slipped as you went around the corner of the alley and ETHICS IN CRIME & JUSTICE Copyright 2005 Thomson / Wadsworth 228 CHAPTER EIGHT fell down. 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, butyou 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 possession with intent to distribute charge.What should you do? Situation 3 You are a federal agent and have been investigating a major drug ring for a long time. One of your informants is fairly highly placed within this ring and has been providing you with good information. You were able to “turn” him because he faces a murder charge—there is probable cause that he shot and killed a co-worker during an argument about five years ago, before he became involved in the drug ring.You have been holding the murder charge over his head to get him to cooperate and have been able, with the help of the U.S. District Attorney’s office, to keep the local prosecutor from filing an information and arresting him.The local prosecutor is upset because the family wants some resolution in the case.You believe that the information he is able to provide you will result in charges of major drug sales and racketeering on several of the top smugglers, putting a dent in the drug trade for your region. At the same time, you understand that you are constantly risking the possibility that he may escape prosecution by leaving the country, and that you are blocking the justice that the family of the murdered victim deserve.What would you do? SUGGESTED READINGS Alderson, J. 1998. Principled Policing: Lynch, G. (ed). 1999. Human Dignity and the Protecting the Public with Integrity. Police:EthicsandIntegrityinPoliceWork. Winchester, MA:Waterside Press. Springfield, IL: Charles C.Thomas. Crank, J. 2003. Imagining Justice. Cincinnati, Prenzler,T., and J. Ransley. 2002. Police OH:Anderson Publishing Co. Reform: Building Integrity. Sydney, Australia: Hawkins Press. Crank, J., and M. Caldero. 2000. Police Ethics:The Corruption of Noble Cause. Walker, S. 2001. Police Accountability:The Cincinnati, OH:Anderson Role of Citizen Oversight. Belmont, Publishing Co. CA:Wadsworth Publishing Co. Klockars, C., and S. Mastrofski. 1991. Thinking About Police. New York: McGraw-Hill.