What the nobility of policing requires

“We are rightly critical of journalists and members of the public who misrepresent what we do as police officers. Do we not, therefore, owe it to ourselves to be equally critical of fellow police officers, whose actions misrepresent the work we do?”

~Paul Grattan, Jr. One Police Project

This quote is very important in the context of our ongoing national struggle over police and public relationships. We do a lot of talking about how we feel under appreciated or maligned, but what are we doing about cleaning up our own house? I think we owe it to ourselves to do some serious soul-searching about this.

I realize that when we look at policing through our personal lens, we see only a few egregious cases of misconduct splashed across the headlines in any given period of time. We are right that the misconduct numbers are a small number of the thousands of calls handled each and every day. The problem comes when you look at the bigger picture.

Step back and look at the numbers nationally and the instances of misconduct start looking more widespread. They are not the norm, but trust me they are too numerous to ignore. We do so at our own peril because every instance that gives the profession a black eye affects your safety. Yet, we refuse to meet this internal challenge head on.

I know there are many checks on officer conduct and Internal investigators do a good job at identifying the worst cases. What I’m talking about is a culture of minimizing bad conduct. We cannot be okay with that.

Whether it’s a willful blind eye or an increasing tendency to conjure up some false equivalency in our collective hearts, we have created a situation where bad behavior lives within our ranks. There will always be criminals and criminals behave in deceitful, treacherous ways, but that can never be an excuse for any law enforcement professional to violate any code of ethics or standard of conduct. We are the professionals.

Let me give you a current example. The Pennsylvania State Police are currently dealing with a scandal regarding cheating at their academy. According to the final report, there was an ongoing practice of instructors giving exam answers to cadets. It had gone on for years. Dozens of cadets from the current class either resigned or were fired. The real problem is that not one instructor or full-time trooper was disciplined, let alone fired.

As a trainer and later supervisor, I personally experienced a number of cases in which I detailed misconduct of either recruits or tenured officers and those individuals were not fired. In two cases, the officers I had identified as being character-deficient, they ended up doing far worse things and embarrassing the agency. One is now in prison. So, why are we so ready to keep these folks in uniform? They are cancers in the community and cancers to internal morale. Purge them.

And before you tell me these are isolated incidents, explain why only four states in this country require decertification for misconduct. How many cases do you know where the officer was allowed to resign in lieu of firing? A little digging into a few of the high-profile cases of the past couple of years will show you that many of those officers had troubled histories prior to the one that made national headlines.

These are the dirty little secrets we don’t want to talk about in mixed company. I know. But we must find the courage to address this. I don’t say this to air dirty laundry. I say this because I care about policing. I care about the tens of thousands of you who are honest and out there doing a great job. Every single bad cop allowed to stay does damage that makes you unsafe. It’s that simple.

I’m calling on police leadership, unions, and everyday cops to insist we do better. Stop saying it’s all about the media or BLM or whoever. Those groups would have nothing to say if we eliminated those who do not embody the ethical code we swore an oath to uphold. If we stood up and publicly said we will not tolerate less than the highest standards, then we would gain so much more trust in the public eye. Some chiefs and sheriffs are exemplifying this approach and their departments enjoy above average public support.

These law enforcement leaders prove we can do this. We must. We owe it to the community we serve. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to every kid who looks at our shiny badge and dreams of being a hero one day. The nobility of policing requires it.