Police Ethics - The Corruption of Noble Cause 4E

Flashcards covering key terms, theories, and concepts of police ethics and the corruption of the noble cause based on the provided lecture transcript.

Neo-professionalism

An umbrella term under which many current police programs loosely fit.

Legal ascendancy

The status achieved by the noble cause during the War on Terror.

Ticking time bomb scenario

An illusion wrapped in a noble-cause fantasy.

Intelligence-Led Policing (ILP)

A management philosophy supporting optimal resource allocation based on fully understanding the operating environment.

Problem-Oriented Policing (POP)

A strategic police development from the late $1970s$ that has not caught on to the extent supporters hoped.

Lever pulling

A policing strategy based on deterrence that focuses on high-risk targets, such as the successful Boston project.

Zero-tolerance policing

Non-discretionary police work involving the blanket enforcement of all law, no matter how minor.

Hot spot policing

A central police tactic at the end of the $20th$ century that Rosenbaum ($2006$) noted has short-term deterrent effects but does not actually help reduce crime in areas.

Broken Windows policing

A strategy interrelated with zero-tolerance policing focused on interceding in public-order problems before citizens become fearful.

Third-party policing

Police efforts to persuade or coerce third parties to take responsibility for crime control and prevention.

Compstat

Aggressive incident management through the identification and mitigation of visual incident clusters.

Disorder (Skogan definition)

Individual behaviors that threaten the public order and signs of physical decay to neighborhoods.

Reciprocity

Police and community members working together to solve crime problems and develop crime prevention tactics.

Cognitive dissonance

A concept describing pieces of knowledge that seem to be inconsistent with one another.

First Principle of Dissonance Resolution

Dissonance would be reduced in the least resistant direction to change.

Second Principle of Dissonance Resolution

Dissonance tends to be resolved in terms of more recent behaviors.

Third Principle of Dissonance Resolution

Personal responsibility.

Empowerment

The ability for police officers to act in concert with the community and other officers to achieve what cannot be done alone.

Globalization theory

Huntington's ($1996$) observation that ethnic self-consciousness intensifies as diverse groups become more interdependent.

Importance/Usefulness dilemma

States that the more important a performance evaluation is for a candidate's career, the less likely evaluators are to provide useful distinctions.

Noble cause

A moral commitment to make the world a safer place to live, specifically by getting bad guys off the street.

Asshole (Van Maanen's definition)

An individual whose behavior is viewed as a challenge to the authority of the police.

Mama Rosa test

A loyalty test in the Slippery-Slope Model assessing if a rookie will be loyal to other officers rather than testing willingness to graft.

Model of Circumstantial Corruptibility

A model proposing that level of corruption is influenced by the roles of both the giver and the receiver.

Value-neutral perspective

The view that officers are not screened for value predispositions except for honesty, stability, and criminal history.

Terminal values

Values described in the Rokeach Value Survey as preferred end-states.

Instrumental values

Values described in the Rokeach Value Survey as preferred modes of behavior.

Social distance

The degree of friendliness and sense of comfort between two people or two groups.

Value transmission

The process by which values are carried from broader society into police work.

Smell of the victim's blood

Occupationally acquired knowledge emotionally tied to the noble cause that makes officers sensitive to victim harm.

Golden apple

An intelligent officer committed to the noble cause and highly focused on efficiency and effectiveness.

Somatic marker

An emotional marker left by the outcome of actions that tells an individual if they were rewarded or not.

Somatic net

The sum of somatic markers that guides the emotional psychology of decision-making.

Value-predisposition perspective

The view that officers are hired with values in place which are then selectively highlighted and tuned during training.

Latent and manifest content

The two types of content carried by war stories in police culture according to the text.

Accountability

Efforts to control the behavior of line officers.

External accountability mechanisms

Constraints such as Supreme Court decisions and civil litigation against the police.

Internal accountability mechanisms

Constraints such as the chain of command, internal affairs, and dash cameras.

Upside down bureaucracies

A description of police departments where organizational authority is reversed in important ways.

Pascal's Wager (Police version)

The internal question: 'Do you know for certain that you aren't being watched?'

Bounded rationality

The concept that humans act rationally but only in a limited, bounded fashion.

The Tower

A metaphor representing the willingness of police officers to place their lives on the line for strangers.

Just means

The perspective that means used to achieve ends should conform to human values and legal due process.

Dirty Harry problem

The dilemma concerning when an officer should commit a dirty act to achieve a good end.

Teleological

An ethical framework where a person is goal or ends oriented, seeking the greatest good for the greatest number.

Deontological

An ethical framework where a person is means oriented and follows established rules or 'the book.'

Code of silence

The inability of outsiders and managers to find out information about incidents involving line officers.

Crevasse

The official rank-determined boundary and conflict zone between line officers and those ranked lieutenant and above.

The code

The rule that line officers' activities on a particular shift are not to be discussed with others.

Logic of good faith

The principle by which public sector organizations operate, as observed by Meyer and Rowan.

Suspicion (Theme of the unknown)

One of Crank's themes of uncertainty, comprised of 'legal' and 'sixth sense' types.

Boomerang effect

When efforts to change the police increase line officer resistance, making change more difficult in the long term.

Warping effect

When police culture adapts to and shifts intended changes into its own existing values.

Avenging angel syndrome

When officers exact street justice on individuals or groups they personally dislike.

Magic pencil

A form of noble-cause corruption where officers write reports in a way that criminalizes a suspect.

CRASH unit

The LAPD unit investigated in $1999$ and $2000$ for crimes, coverups, and corruption.

Role stress

Stress produced by the characteristics of a person's organizational role.

Episodic stress

Stress resulting from violent or critical incidents.

Chronic stress

The day-to-day stress inherent in police work.

Boundary spanners

Individuals who represent organizational interests to other agencies and organizations.