TENSION BETWEEN THE MEANS AND THE ENDS

#1 – TENSION BETWEEN THE MEANS AND THE ENDS:

Officers will at some point in their careers encounter situations where the good ends cannot be achieved by legal ends. If they break the law to pursue good ends, they will have corrupted themselves by breaking the law they were sworn to uphold. Passionate officers are those so committed to good ends that they ignore just means. The three protagonists are LAPD officers. Edmund Exley is a “straight arrow” who informs on other officers in a police brutality scandal. He’s a politician and a ladder-climber first-and-foremost. This earns the antagonism of Wendell “Bud” White, an intimidating enforcer with a personal fixation on men who abuse women. Between the two of them is Jack Vincennes, who acts as more of a celebrity than a cop who is a technical advisor on a police television show called Badge of Honor (similar to the real life show Dragnet) and provides tips to a scandal magazine. What moral dilemmas do you see develop in the film? Identify each character’s passions and how should they be tempered with a real perspective?

#2 – THE BLUE CODE OF SILENCE:

The Blue Code of Silence or Wall of Silence is an unwritten rule among police officers in the United States not to report on a colleague’s errors, misconducts, or crimes. If questioned about an incident of misconduct involving another officer (e.g. during the course of an official inquiry), while following the code, the officer being questioned would claim ignorance of another officer’s wrongdoing. It represents an effort to control “ends,” the outcome of events; ends cannot be controlled. The code is considered to be police corruption and misconduct. Officers who follow the code are unable to report fellow officers who participate in corruption due to the unwritten laws of their “police family;” this is depicted throughout the move. When officers are hired, they are already on the crime-control side of the continuum. Important referents in their environment encourage behavior that is crime-control oriented and reinforce temptations for noble cause corruption. From an organizational point of view, something has to go wrong for line officers to move back towards a balanced perspective. In your opinion, which scene(s) depicts this concept most strongly and why? Please provide two examples.

#3 – ETHICAL DILEMMAS:

The purpose of this course is to provide a way of thinking about police ethical dilemmas, and for police officers to think ethically about their work. Accurate information about the prevalence of police corruption is hard to come by, since the corrupt activities tend to happen in secret and police organizations have little incentive to publish information about corruption. One study of corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department (focusing particularly on the Rampart Scandal) proposed that certain forms of police corruption may be the norm, rather than the exception in American policing. Understanding that this film was made for entertainment, in what areas of the film do you feel substantiate this concept? Please provide one example.

#4 – VALUES & CULTURE:

Police officers bring to their work a set of cultural predispositions, and police work has only a minor effect on these predispositions.  How have these predispositions shaped police subculture?

#5 – LEGITIMACY:

According to the text, legitimacy is whether or not influential constituents are in agreement with the way the police do their work. For police chiefs, maintaining legitimacy requires that they balance their expectations with departmental constituencies. As a police chief, how would you ensure police legitimacy?

#6 – STRESS:

Role stress refers to characteristics of a person’s organizational role that produces adverse consequences for officers. It is produced by the organization or factors related closely to the organization.  How does stress impact the theory of noble cause?

#7 -Training Day Movie Critique Question #1:

Analyze how the slippery slope theory contributes to ethical behavior in law enforcement. How does the slippery slope contribute to illegal and unethical decision-making in policing or corrections.

#8 –  Assignment 4B