MENU TITLE: Police Integrity Public Service With Honor.
Series: NIJ Report
Published: January 1997
149 pages
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U.S. Department of Justice

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Police Integrity 
Public Service With Honor

A Partnership Between the National Institute of
Justice and the Office of Community Oriented
Policing Services

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Project Managers

Stephen J. Gaffigan
Senior Policy Analyst
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

Phyllis P. McDonald, Ed.D.
Social Science Analyst
National Institute of Justice

January 1997

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U.S. Department of Justice

Natinal Institute of Justice

Jeremy Travis 
Director

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services
Joseph E. Brann
Director

Opinions or points of view expressed in this
document are those of the participants and do not
necessarily reflect the official position of the
U.S. Department of Justice

NCJ 163811

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Executive Summary

Chapter 1: Introduction and Background

Chapter 2: Keynote Addresses
 
 Ethics and Police Integrity: Some Definitions and 
 Questions for Study, Stephen J. Vicchio, Ph.D.11

 Integrity and Ethics: A Federal Perspective,  
 Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States

Chapter 3: Plenary Sessions

 First Plenary Session
 Second Plenary Session
 Third Plenary Session
 Fourth Plenary Session
 Fifth Plenary Session

Chapter 4: Small Group Working Sessions on
Integrity and Ethics

 Recommendations
 
 Model Practices

Chapter 5: Epilogue

Appendixes

 Appendix A: Attendees
 
 Appendix B: Selected Issue Papers on Plenary Panel
Presentations

 Appendix C: Bibliography of Related Sources

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Foreword

Integrity is universal to the human experience; it
can be considered the measure of an individual, an
agency, an institution, a discipline, or an entire
nation. Integrity is a yardstick for trust,
competence, professionalism, and confidence. Deep
within every human being is the subconscious
ability to interpret behavior and events as a mark
of integrity or a violation of trust. It is this
universal tendency that makes the study of
integrity complex, challenging, and important.

Policing in a democracy requires high levels of
integrity if it is to be acceptable to the people.
Historically, in the United States, there have been
many times when public trust in the integrity of
the police has been questioned. Events in the 1990s
eroded public trust in the integrity of the police;
this situation has resulted in a closer scrutiny of
the profession and its responses to this critical
issue. This concern, as expressed by citizens and
law enforcement professionals, motivated the Office
of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and
the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to assemble
a group of law enforcement personnel and other
professionals in a national symposium to examine
the issue of integrity.

In July 1996 the National Symposium on Police
Integrity took place in Washington, D.C. The 200
participants included police chiefs, sheriffs,
police researchers, police officers, members of
other professional disciplines, community leaders,
and members of other Federal agencies. This
participant mix was particularly noteworthy because
it reflected diverse views of individuals who
typically had not been at the same table in the
past. That the issue of police integrity attracts
international concern was evidenced by attendance
at the symposium of representatives from the United
Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belarus,
Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador, and Honduras.

During the 2 1/2 day meeting, participants and
speakers agreed that understanding how to establish
and maintain integrity was a common concern for law
enforcement. Further, in his synthesis remarks,
Mark Moore of the Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, observed that the pursuit of
integrity within one's profession is paramount to
an individual's self-respect and true work
satisfaction. There was also a clear understanding
of the tragic consequences that would befall the
profession, indeed our very democracy, if there was
a serious erosion of integrity.

What followed was an intense brainstorming session
that allowed participants the opportunity to hear
from one another and begin the dialogue toward
finding more effective solutions. The general
consensus following the symposium was that the
discussion of police integrity has been broadened
from a narrow focus on police officers' behavior
and internal investigations of corruption to an
understanding of the importance of other factors.
These included leadership, command behavior,
supervision, organizational structure, selection,
hiring, training, the disciplinary system, the
police subculture, community values, and political
and economic conditions. Participants explored how
these factors could affect behavior. They also
recognized that the protection of civil liberties
as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution is
fundamental to guaranteeing the personal dignity of
all people.

Another example of the need to broaden the
discussion of this issue was illustrated by the
desire to learn more from those law enforcement
organizations that historically have had little or
no problem around the issues of integrity and
ethics. These "healthy" organizations are quite
numerous throughout the country, and there is much
to be learned about why and how they have been able
to maintain high standards. We can learn at least
as much from examining what is right in police
organizations as what is wrong in them.

The presentations and small group working sessions
that took place at this symposium generated many
ideas and recommendations from participants. The
results of these deliberations are presented and
discussed in further detail in subsequent sections
of this report. In the months following the
symposium, we have worked with staff in analyzing
this information to identify specific actions that
our offices can initiate to continue the important
momentum that began with this event. This COPS
Office and NIJ joint action plan -- which is
included in this report -- was submitted to the
Attorney General for her review and approval. It
represents the commitment of the U.S. Department of
Justice to continue collaboration with the law
enforcement profession in search of improved
responses to the integrity issue.

We both are proud to present this report. It
represents the thinking that took place at the
symposium, the ideas that were expressed, and the
recommendations that were made. It is not meant to
be a definitive analysis of the police integrity
issue. Such analyses exist in the form of several
publications that focus on particular elements of
this issue (e.g., use of force). Rather, this
report suggests a broader framework for how we
should think about this issue in the future and
what actions might be necessary on the basis of the
scrutiny given it by symposium participants.

We both are very satisfied with the progress to
date. We are especially enthusiastic about and
encouraged by the high levels of interest expressed
by practitioners, researchers, and others concerned
with law enforcement. More importantly, we are
confident that the National Symposium on Police
Integrity represents a profound new beginning
toward a renewal of respect for the police and a
new drive by law enforcement professionals to
protect the personal dignity of both victims and
offenders and the public trust of citizens. We
encourage all members of the law enforcement
community to continue their commitment to work on
this critical issue at all levels of our profession
and to consistently demonstrate a willingness to
act decisively whenever necessary to enhance the
level of integrity in our democracy.

Joseph E. Brann, Director
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

Jeremy Travis, Director
National Institute of Justice

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Acknowledgments

Sheldon F. Greenberg, Ph.D., Associate Professor
and Chair, Department of Interdisciplinary
Programs, School of Continuing Studies, The Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, is to be
commended for his many contributions to the
National Symposium on Police Integrity and the
proceedings of that meeting. He devoted many hours
arranging the work group meeting that took place in
Baltimore in March 1996 and lining up a trainer for
the work group facilitators prior to the event.
Most significantly, following the symposium, Dr.
Greenberg summarized the intellectual and
action-oriented themes of the symposium for final
publication.

Work Group

In addition to COPS, NIJ, and other DOJ staff,
special thanks is extended to the following members
of the Police Integrity Work Group who were so
instrumental in helping to plan the national
symposium:

Sheldon Krantz, Piper & Marbury L.L.P.; Mary Ann
Wycoff, Police Executive Research Forum; Judge
Milton Mollen, Graubard, Mollen & Miller; William
K. Finney, Police Chief, Saint Paul, Minnesota;
George Kelling, Professor, Rutgers University;
Jimmy O'Keefe, Director of Training, New York City
Police Department; Dave Williams, Assistant Chief,
Portland Police Bureau; Michael Berkow, Police
Chief, Coachella, California; Tom Koby, Police
Chief, Boulder, Colorado; Jerry McElroy, Executive
Director, New York City Criminal Justice Agency;
Sheldon Greenberg, Chair, Department of
Interdisciplinary Programs, The Johns Hopkins
University; Elizabeth M. Watson, Police Chief,
Austin, Texas; Gerald L. Williams, Executive
Director, Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management
Institute of Texas, Sam Houston State University;
William A. Geller, Associate Director, Police
Executive Research Forum; Frank Monastero
(retired), U.S. Department of Justice, Drug
Enforcement Administration; Mark Moore, Kennedy
School of Government, Harvard University; Gilbert
Gallegos, Fraternal Order of Police; Philip
Arreola, Police Chief, Milwaukee, Wisconsin;
Johnnie Johnson, Jr., Police Chief, Birmingham,
Alabama; Mary F. Rabadeau, Chief, New Jersey
Transit Police; Jerome A. Needle, International
Association of Chiefs of Police; Jerome H.
Skolnick, New York University; and Stephen Vicchio,
Chair, Department of Philosophy, College of Notre
Dame.

Symposium Moderators

The symposium sessions were moderated by Ellen
Scrivner, Assistant Director, Training and
Technical Assistance, COPS Office, and Sally T.
Hillsman, Deputy Director, NIJ.

Conference Facilitators and Recorders

Small group discussions were an important part of
the symposium. The following professionals
participated as facilitators of the small groups:
 
Steven Edwards, Social Science Program Manager,
NIJ; Sam McQuade, Social Science Program Manager,
NIJ; Sheldon Greenberg, Chair, Department of
Interdisciplinary Programs, The Johns Hopkins
University; Tom Potter, former Police Chief,
Portland, Oregon; Marcia Chaiken, Director of
Research, LINC, Alexandria, Virginia; David
Hayeslip, Assistant Director, Policy Support,
Program Development and Design, COPS Office; Gayle
Fischer-Stewart, Consultant; Tom Koby, Police
Chief, Boulder, Colorado; and Michael Berkow,
Police Chief, Coachella, California.

Recorders were assigned to work with each of the
group facilitators to assist in documenting the
ideas and recommendations that emanated from their
work. The following staff provided this invaluable
service:

Tammy Rhinehart and Christine Whitledge of the COPS
Office and Robert Kaminski, Jeffrey Ross, Stephanie
Borque, Winnie Reed, and Richard Lewis of NIJ.

Final Report Editing
Special recognition and thanks to Jim Sweeney,
Acting Assistant Director, Communications Division,
COPS Office; Mary Graham, Publications Manager,
NIJ; and Gayle Garmise, National Criminal Justice
Reference Service editor.

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Executive Summary

I. Significance of the Event

The National Symposium on Police Integrity,
sponsored by the Office of Community Oriented
Policing Services (COPS) and the National Institute
of Justice (NIJ), was held July 14-16, 1996, in
Washington, D.C. Some 200 participants represented
a historic gathering of law enforcement executives,
researchers, police officers, labor organizations,
community and political leadership, and related
disciplines.

The purpose of the meeting was to provide a forum
for discussion of a special set of policing issues
that had been receiving extensive media attention.
Incidents of major corruption, excessive use of
force and brutality, and other forms of abuse in
law enforcement agencies around the country had
become prominent news items. These issues were not
new ones for law enforcement. Nonetheless, law
enforcement leaders and others perceived that new
forms of old problems may be at the center of the
issue. Therefore, it was time to examine them again
and search for new solutions. The U.S. Department
of Justice responded with the National Symposium on
Police Integrity.

A work group was convened in March 1996 to provide
direction for an agenda. Perhaps the most important
aspect of this work was selecting a title for the
symposium since language often determines
direction. Terms such as "officer discretion" and
"police accountability" were considered. However,
when the term "police integrity" was put forth, all
members concurred that this was the most
appropriate language for the issue at hand.

A focus on "police integrity" opened a whole new
domain. Although previous research, study, and
experimentation had focused on critical issues such
as corruption and excessive use of force, these
approaches had, in fact, revolved around single
dimensions. As a result, the solutions were
constricted in that they were derived out of a need
to control unwanted behaviors of individuals. In
comparison, police integrity guided the focus to
the broader domain of developing a healthy
organization that would serve to reinforce and
maintain the good character and constructive
motivations of many of the individuals joining the
ranks of law enforcement.

The format of the national symposium consisted of
two keynote addresses, a series of panel
presentations by well-respected individuals
speaking on behalf of the interests represented,
small group discussions to explore more thoroughly
the ideas presented, and a concluding synthesis by
another well-known and highly qualified police
policy researcher.

Three Strategic Tracks

Looking back at the process and outcomes of this
national discussion, it was clear that three
parallel tracks emerged: an intellectual domain, a
personal consideration, and a set of actions
representing a continuation of the symposium
discussions. Mark Moore, Harvard University,
described all three in his synthesis of the
symposium.

Intellectual. The focus on the intellectual domain
broadened the conceptual thinking about this issue.
It included identifying organizational, structural,
and community considerations that were critical to
establishing and maintaining healthy law
enforcement organizations and that positively
reinforced the qualities of its members.

Personal. Mark Moore described the personal
component of the deliberations in terms of the
significance of police integrity for both leaders
and police officers. An organization that has
integrity gives members job satisfaction. Without
that, the badge, so to speak, is tarnished,
resulting in a sense of failure or loss.

Actions. The small group discussions yielded a
series of action steps that can be pursued to begin
the process of seeking resolution for the issues
brought to the table. The small group
recommendations are summarized in Chapter 4.

Finally, Attorney General Janet Reno's keynote
address recognized that the work of the symposium
should not be considered an end point but rather a
beginning. She requested that a report be prepared
that outlines an action plan to enable NIJ and COPS
to continue the work suggested by the symposium
participants.

II. The NIJ/COPS Action Plan

Following the national symposium, COPS and NIJ
staff began to develop a plan for the upcoming year
based on the ideas and recommendations developed
during the symposium. The plan is designed to
develop the issues as well as implement some of the
small groups' recommendations.

The objectives of the action plan are to structure
future opportunities for expanded dialogue on
critical integrity issues in venues closer to the
State and local practitioner communities and to
produce tangible and useful products for the law
enforcement community.

The basic elements of the action plan are as
follows:

o COPS issued a solicitation in November 1996 to
establish several Regional Community Policing
Institutes throughout the country primarily to
deliver community policing training and technical
assistance. All of these institutes will be
encouraged to incorporate the subject of integrity
and ethics into their curriculums, with one or more
of these institutes developing a strong,
programmatic emphasis on integrity and ethics
issues.

o COPS will include articles on community policing,
integrity and ethics issues, and descriptions of
model practices and programs in this area in
bulletins for national dissemination.

o NIJ awarded grants for research on police
integrity based on priority topic areas identified
at the national symposium. NIJ will continue to
broaden its efforts in this area. The Office of
Science and Technology (NIJ) has a similar
commitment to focus on technology that may support
the development of early warning tracking systems
in the interest of prevention for police personnel.

o Both COPS and NIJ are considering ways to
initiate case studies of departments that have an
excellent track record pertaining to integrity. The
focus of these studies will be on departments that
are fully implementing community policing and have
successfully altered internal systems that have an
effect on integrity as part of that process and on
"healthy" police agencies that have a demonstrated
history of high standards of integrity and ethics.
Both offices are exploring ways to convene expert
work groups to catalogue for dissemination
state-of-the-art thinking on internal systems
necessary for integrity maintenance.

o COPS and NIJ will sponsor regional workshops to
enable more State and local practitioners to become
involved in constructive discussion relating to
integrity issues. These regional workshops will
resemble the structure of the national symposium.
Practitioner participants will be provided all
resources gathered to date and an opportunity to
contribute their unique experiences and perceptions
to the national discussion.

o A number of the recommendations of the national
symposium will be acted upon immediately in order
to prepare for the regional workshops: Videotapes
of symposium speakers will be duplicated; a
workshop with representatives of police
leadership/executive development programs and
representatives of State training commissions will
be conducted; a work group of representatives of
other disciplines to identify working models of
integrity maintenance will be convened; and copies
of the national symposium report will be reproduced
for distribution.

o At the end of fiscal year 1997, a status report
on the police integrity initiative will be prepared
for the Attorney General. This report will document
progress made on the preceding action plan, and it
will address the remaining recommendations for
future actions on the part of the U.S. Department
of Justice. These additional recommendations will
evolve from those presented at the national
symposium and will be discussed further at the
planned regional workshops during fiscal year 1997.

III. A Summary of the Small Group Recommendations
for Consideration

Work groups were structured so participants could
react to the symposium presentations. A trained
facilitator was assigned to each group. Many of
these issues have been analyzed by COPS and NIJ
staff for immediate action and have been included
in the action plan presented above that was
approved by the Attorney General. The remaining
recommendations will be discussed further and
analyzed during the course of regional workshops
scheduled for next year, and they will be presented
as part of a future action plan in the second
report submitted to the Attorney General in the
fall of 1997.

Small group discussions centered around the
following principal symposium topics:

o A general approach to the issue of integrity as
presented by representatives of other disciplines
and law enforcement executives.

o The related issues of leaders, organizational
structure, and the police subculture.

o Police officers' perspectives.

o Internal subsystems and external forces that had
an impact on the behavior of law enforcement
members.

The proposals can be grouped as follows:

Training and Training Materials

o Convene a national workshop inviting
representatives from the leading police executive
leadership development programs throughout the
country and representatives of State-level training
commissions to discuss integrity and ethics in
curriculums for greater effectiveness in training
programs.

o Develop a series of curriculum methodologies to
infuse integrity across recruit, inservice,
supervisory, and executive education and training
programs.

o Develop videotapes for police training programs
of selected presentations from the national
symposium.

o Prepare a collection of curriculum outlines and
lesson plans to establish a base of information on
the nature of integrity-related training for
national dissemination through the National
Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS).

Research and Related Program Initiatives

o Ensure that perspectives on integrity developed
at the symposium are incorporated into existing and
planned initiatives supported by NIJ and COPS.

o Develop and implement a national "train the
trainers" program to create a corps of instructors
versed in the theory and practice of integrity and
ethics to create consistency and quality in the
instruction being provided to police personnel.

o Assess entry-level screening and hiring processes
to identify reliable predictors of ethical
behavior.

o Identify and/or develop new models of performance
evaluation to enhance and encourage professional
behavior.

o Identify characteristics of officers,
supervisors, and executives who have a proven track
record of performance with integrity. Explore
positive reinforcers of positive behavior and
develop models.

o Assess citizen oversight of police agencies.

o Study the relationship between higher education
and quality police service.

o Study the handling of citizen complaints.

o Study nonpunitive approaches to dealing with
integrity violations that are not criminal acts.

o Study police members who violated the public
trust to identify causal factors and ways to
prevent these actions on the part of other members.

o Study supervisory training, preparation, and
accountability practices for maintaining integrity
for supervisors and their subordinates.

o Develop tracking systems to monitor police
members throughout their careers, including early
warning systems, education, evaluations,
recognition, and disciplinary actions to provide
special assistance when it seems a problem may
arise.

o Study labor organizations, their perspectives on
the issue, and their impact on police behavior.

o Compare the perception of integrity and ethics
among police members to citizens' perception of
police performance.

o Compare new recruits to experienced police
members to determine why some succumb more readily
to temptations.

o Identify links between the police and the
community that may either minimize the potential
for violations or reinforce behavior in the
interest of the public.

o Study arbitration rulings to evaluate their
impact on police behavior over time.

o Study the correlation between psychological
screening data and future violations of public
trust to identify reliable predictors.

o Study the estimated cost of integrity violations
to the individual police officer, the agency, and
the community.

Dissemination of Model Program Elements

o Design model subsystems, e.g., screening, hiring,
training, performance evaluations, disciplinary
programs, citizen complaint processing, and field
training programs, to establish and maintain
integrity within a law enforcement organization.

o Establish a National Institute on Police
Integrity and Ethics to provide a long-term,
ongoing commitment to improving and maintaining
integrity in public service.

o Identify and collect model practices applied
successfully in other disciplines to establish and
maintain integrity.

o Identify and collect model mission and values
statements that support integrity development.

o Identify and collect model media relations
programs that have successfully focused the
community on police integrity.

o Identify and collect best practices designed
specifically for small- to mid-sized law
enforcement agencies that do not have staff
dedicated to training, planning, or internal
affairs units.

o Identify and collect nontraditional employee
recognition systems in law enforcement agencies and
other professions.

o Identify and collect models for educating elected
officials on police integrity, the police
subculture, and related issues. These programs may
derive from professional associations and other
disciplines.

o Identify and collect model marketing strategies
that have been implemented in large- and
medium-sized law enforcement agencies.

Continuing the Dialogue

There were several recommendations related to
continuing the dialogue initiated at the national
symposium to further develop the issue and
introduce new concepts or programs to establish and
maintain integrity. They include the following:

o Conduct a series of regional workshops with
practitioners to provide an opportunity to share
the developmental work that has occurred and to
contribute to it.

o Convene a work group consisting of
representatives from law enforcement agencies,
civil rights organizations, labor organizations,
and civil rights enforcement agencies to examine
the impact of external forces on police behavior
and to generate common actions acceptable to all
parties.

o Convene a series of workshops on state-of-the-art
thinking on specific issues such as internal
auditing, recruitment and selection, performance
evaluation, entry-level and inservice training,
early warning systems, peer review systems, and
internal affairs and citizen complaint processes.
This would be a precursor to the specific research
projects recommended under "Research and Related
Program Initiatives."

o Convene a series of meetings, focus groups,
and/or public forums to engage the public in
indepth, open discussions on the purpose of United
States' police organizations and the issue of
integrity and the public trust. These meetings
could be held in public libraries, town hall
meeting environments, and/or on public television.

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Chapter 1

Introduction and Background

The most essential element of a successful
democratic government is freedom for all citizens
to exercise their constitutional rights without
fear or threat of endangerment. The basic mission
of the American criminal justice system is to
protect this freedom. The police, one of the
foundations of the criminal justice system, must
ensure the public trust if the system is to perform
its mission to the fullest. Public trust can exist
only when the police execute their duties with
fairness, equity, professionalism, and rigor. A
police service that performs in this manner also
has integrity and honor.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is a primary
protector of constitutional rights. The National
Institute of Justice (NIJ) is DOJ's research arm,
and the Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services (COPS) is a DOJ mission-specific agency
that is supporting the transformation of American
policing. Recognizing the significance of police
integrity to democratic government, these agencies
combined efforts to assemble dedicated law
enforcement leaders, members, researchers, and
other related professionals to review the state of
integrity in America's law enforcement services and
to formulate a national action agenda to maintain
police integrity and to ensure the public trust.

The National Symposium on Police Integrity took
place in Washington, D.C., on July 14-16, 1996, to
examine the issues of public trust, public
perception, and police integrity. In the national
law enforcement community, there has long been a
consensus that questions about police integrity
warrant a professional, collective response.

Two hundred professionals -- including police
administrators, DOJ officials, representatives from
the international law enforcement community, social
scientists, ethicists, members of various academic
disciplines, police union officials, members of the
judiciary, attorneys, students of criminal justice,
and police officers from a variety of departments
throughout the country -- came together for a
critical discussion about police integrity in the
United States.

The objectives of the National Symposium on Police
Integrity were to:

o Examine the causes of and solutions to violations
of public trust by police.

o Understand the dynamics of police integrity.

o Develop short- and long-term strategies to
establish and maintain high standards of
performance.

o Recommend research topics to NIJ and the COPS
Office.

The larger national context in which the symposium
took place includes a recent series of corruption
investigations within the New York Police
Department, the revealing testimony of Mark Fuhrman
in the trial of O.J. Simpson, the events at Ruby
Ridge and Waco, the beating of Rodney King, and the
recent assault of immigrant laborers by law
enforcement officers in Riverside, California.
Embarrassing events involving smaller police
departments in Citrus County, Florida; West
Hampton, New York; Southgate, California;
Anchorage, Alaska; and Chesapeake, Virginia, also
have generated intense public scrutiny of police
and sheriff's department officials and criminal
justice organizations throughout the country.

Are these incidents indicative of a crisis in
integrity among American police officers? Are they
symptomatic of a system that improperly selects and
trains its officers? Are these episodes part of a
larger cultural manifestation, a breakdown of moral
sensibilities and standards? Is the appearance of
increased violations of public trust simply the
result of improved candor and diligence in
investigating wrongdoing by police agencies, or
does it reflect advancements in the ability of the
media to instantly communicate events around the
country and world?

Whether or not there is a crisis in police
integrity in the United States, it was evident to
the symposium participants that both the public and
police believe one exists. Study results vary
considerably. Some recent research suggests that
the public's trust in police officers is at an
all-time low; other data conclude it is quite high.

Planning for the Symposium

In mid-March 1996 a special work group was
assembled at The Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore to plan the July symposium. The work
group included police executives, union
representatives, researchers, and others who had
made significant contributions to the study of
police integrity. Based upon this meeting, staff
designed the agenda for the symposium.

The symposium agenda included two keynote
addresses, five plenary sessions, and nine
small-group discussions. Professor Stephen J.
Vicchio, Department of Philosophy at the College of
Notre Dame (Baltimore), gave a keynote address
entitled "Integrity and Ethics: Definitions and
Historical Perspective." U.S. Attorney General
Janet Reno gave the second address, "Integrity and
Ethics: A Federal Perspective." Professor Mark
Moore, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University, was invited to observe the symposium to
assess the process and summarize final
recommendations to NIJ, COPS, and DOJ for pursuing
the national agenda to foster and maintain police
integrity.

The following presentations were selected for the
five plenary sessions:

o Interdisciplinary Panel on Integrity and Ethics.

o Law Enforcement Executives on the Integrity and
Ethics Challenges Facing the Profession.

o The Impact of Police Culture, Leadership, and
Organization on Integrity.

o How To Effectively Cope With Influences in the
Police Culture and Organization and in the
Community.

o The Impact of Internal and External Forces on
Police Integrity.

Symposium Objectives

A primary objective of the symposium was to open
channels of communication among police executives
and other professionals, e.g., police union
officials and law enforcement administrators,
police and researchers, government leaders and
academics, and the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) and law enforcement executives. It also
involved enlisting those concerned about
professional integrity in other contexts --
business, law, government, and the clergy -- and
listening to practitioners in these fields discuss
ethical issues and integrity problems endemic to
their professions. At still other levels, channels
of communication were opened between researchers
and practitioners so the public's perception of the
police might be measured against more empirical
information about police integrity.

A second objective of the symposium was to provide
opportunities for law enforcement administrators
and all other participants to communicate in
structured work groups. These work groups succeeded
in identifying critical needs and issues for which
members had the gravest concerns.

Identifying model practices, a third objective,
drew responses from both the panel presenters and
the work groups. The symposium provided
opportunities for participants to talk about
effective programs and strategies that foster
police integrity.

Pursuing a National Agenda

The paramount goal of the symposium was to develop
an agenda for fostering and maintaining police
integrity. Mark Moore's synthesis, hundreds of
pages of notes taken by recorders and participants,
and approximately 100 hours of videotape and
audiotape yielded essential components for an
agenda on police integrity.

This national agenda encompasses three primary
areas: a future research agenda, model programs,
and best practices.

It became evident that police executives,
researchers, and other criminal justice
practitioners, led by NIJ and the COPS Office, need
to commit to research in critical areas to provide
a full understanding of the issue.

Another element of the national agenda should be
the cataloguing and dissemination of model
practices and initiatives from around the country,
combined with a continuing dialogue on police
integrity in State, regional, and local
jurisdictions. What has worked; what has not
worked? What factors may have contributed to the
success or failure of particular practices designed
to foster police integrity? Can practices in one
department be applied to another despite different
internal and external cultures?

Finally, the national agenda should include an
examination of mechanisms and programs that, in
combination with effective investigative practices
in preventing, identifying, and controlling
corruption, have been shown over time to strengthen
police integrity.

Fundamental Questions

Ultimately, the major thrust of a national agenda
should focus on answering three profound and
fundamental questions:

o What is the relationship of democracy in the
United States to the mission of police
organizations?

o What is the relationship of the Constitution to
the police mission and, ultimately, our democracy?

o What is the relationship between police integrity
and community policing?

The issue of protection of civil liberties was
raised by one presenter. Through a poignant
recounting of his experiences while a police
officer, he conveyed to the audience how he came to
understand that integrity and civil liberties
protection were interconnected. Mark Moore
expounded further on this fundamental issue to
properly focus the questions.

COPS and NIJ believe that an integral relationship
exists between effective and creative community
policing and police integrity; one cannot exist
without the other. If the heart of community
policing is the desire to make the police effective
partners with communities in dealing with crime and
violence, then building and sustaining these
partnerships on mutual trust is critical to
success.

------------------------------

Chapter 2

Keynote Addresses

Ethics and Police Integrity: Some Definitions and
Questions for Study

Stephen J. Vicchio, Ph.D.

The following keynote address was presented by Dr.
Stephen J. Vicchio, professor of philosophy at the
College of Notre Dame in Baltimore. Dr. Vicchio was
asked to set the tone for the National Symposium on
Police Integrity due, in part, to his role as a
nationally renowned ethicist. He is part of the
faculty in the Police Executive Leadership Program
at The Johns Hopkins University, a lecturer to
executives in police service and other professions,
a member of the faculty of The Johns Hopkins School
of Medicine, and an expert witness in the insanity
defense.

The success of any conference is contingent on
setting clear goals, raising points for discussion,
and establishing a framework for participants to
accomplish their tasks. In his address, Dr. Vicchio
spoke on three matters: development of a working
definition of the concept of integrity, the latest
social scientific findings on whether moral
integrity can be taught, and the potential to
measure integrity in various professions, including
police service. Finally, Dr. Vicchio offered some
general observations about the symposium's goals.

------------------------------


We should therefore examine whether we should act
in this way or not, as not only now, but at all
times.
--Plato

------------------------------

If he really does not think there is no distinction
between virtue and vice, why sir, when he leaves
the house, let us count the spoons.
--Samuel Johnson, Letters

------------------------------

There is an old saying that "philosophers bake no
bread." What this expression is supposed to mean, I
gather, is that philosophers spend a good deal of
time minding other people's business while not
spending nearly enough on their own. Working
entirely in this spirit, the spirit of an
interloper, in this paper I wish to talk about
three issues -- issues vital to the success of this
conference and, ultimately, to the success of
police organizations throughout the country. First,
I wish to sketch out in a brief way what I see as
the component parts of the concept of integrity.
Second, I would like to spend a little time
exploring what the latest social scientific
research and common sense have to say about whether
integrity can be taught. And, finally, I will end
with some observations on the question of whether
integrity can be measured in professional contexts
such as police work. At the very end, if I might be
so bold, I will also make some general
recommendations about additional questions and
approaches that might be helpful in discussing the
issue of police integrity. I will begin, however,
with a short take from Plato's Republic.

In this section [Book II] of the Republic, Socrates
discusses with his friend Glaucon what it means to
act in a morally responsible way. Glaucon puts
forth a theory that is not all that far from a
general view of the issue that many hold in this
country. In essence, Glaucon says that we do good
because we risk punishment if we do wrong. Thus, we
accept certain limitations on our freedom because
we are afraid of being caught. So justice, in
Glaucon's view, is a kind of arrangement (like
traffic lights or stop signs) that is not
intrinsically good or valuable but put into place
to avoid harm.

In the course of their discussion, Glaucon and
Socrates allude to an old Greek story, "The Ring of
Gyges." The wearer of the ring was rendered
invisible, though he or she could still affect the
material world as visible bodies do. In the course
of the tale, the shepherd Gyges is given the ring,
and he uses it without fear of reprisal. Indeed, he
uses it to kill the king of Lydia and later to rape
the queen.

Glaucon argues that anyone in the shepherd's
position would be foolish not to take full
advantage of the power of the ring. In essence, it
gives the wearer the ability to do wrong with
impunity. Glaucon then goes on to suggest that
justice is nothing more than a series of checks, a
system of preventive devices. But if we possessed
the ring of Gyges, there would be no good reason
for doing the good. In the remainder of the
Republic, Socrates attempts to counter Glaucon's
view by suggesting that the citizens of a good
society would act justly because they knew and
appreciated the moral good and not merely because
they were afraid of getting caught.

There are several reasons why I begin with Plato's
story. It is best, I think, to look at "The Ring of
Gyges" as a cautionary tale, for it seems to me,
for better or worse, the police officers in this
country, at least when they are working on the
street, often are possessors of the ring of Gyges.
No supervision of police officers working with the
public, no matter how thorough and conscientious,
can keep bad cops from doing bad things. There
simply are too many police officers and too few
supervisors. Like it or not, the police in this
country are possessors of the ring of Gyges.

A second realization to be made from Plato's tale
is that police departments in this country often
operate as if Glaucon's view of justice is the
proper one -- that we do the good out of fear, a
level that developmental psychologists tell us is
the lowest common denominator in the moral
equation. If we put these two points together, that
there will never be enough supervision to catch
everyone and that good behavior on the job is
motivated by fear, we should see that they are
contradictory. If there is not enough supervision,
then the bad cop will not be afraid. If we add a
third element, that the bad cop always makes the
news, then we have a recipe for disaster.

Public Trust in the Police

One of the major repercussions of the confluence of
these three elements, (1) Glaucon's view of virtue,
(2) there will never be enough supervisors to catch
everyone, and (3) the bad cop always makes the
news, is that we see over the past two decades in
America an erosion of public confidence in public
officials and their institutions. Consider, for
example, the following tables of Americans' ratings
of their confidence in various professionals. In
this study 100 Americans were asked to rank the
moral confidence/trust they have in the following
professionals to do the right thing. (Position 1 is
most trusted, position 12 is least trusted of those
professions listed.)

------------------------------

1980                    

1. pharmacist
2. clergy               
3. firefighter          
4. teacher
5. police officer
6. doctor               
7. dentist
8. accountant
9. stock broker         
10. lawyer             
11. funeral director   
12. politician         

1995

1. firefighter
2. pharmacist
3. teacher
4. dentist
5. clergy
6. stock broker
7. doctor
8. accountant
9. funeral director
10. police officer
11. lawyer
12. politician         

------------------------------

In this study, trust in police officers recorded
the largest drop from 1980 to 1995 (5 spaces),
followed by the clergy (3), doctors (1), and
lawyers (1), though lawyers simply moved from 10th
position to 11th.

Another disturbing element to these findings 
is that although there was no significant
difference between men and women respondents, there
was a very big difference between African-American
and white respondents. Among blacks, "police
officer" had the 9th position in 1980 and the 11th
position in 1995, just ahead of "politician."

One major conclusion we can make from this study
and from other like studies from around the country
is that the public thinks police departments have
an integrity problem, even if the police themselves
do not.

What complicates this issue still further is that
in departments where corruption appears to be low
and where citizen complaints are minimal, we assume
that our officers on the job are people of
integrity. Sometimes this is a faulty assumption,
particularly if the motivation to do the right
thing comes from fear of punishment. Often in
professional contexts in this country we think of
integrity as our ability to refrain from certain
activities. But, clearly, if the concept is to mean
something more than what Glaucon suggests, it must
involve higher levels of thinking and feeling on
the part of police officers.

If we believe that community policing is the most
effective way to protect and to serve the public,
and then we put officers who operate from the fear
of punishment in more direct contact with the
community, then the community will not find
officers of integrity but, rather, people who know
the rules and regulations and keep them simply
because they are afraid of getting caught.

If this conference has some major goals, it seems
to me, they should include these: How do we define
integrity? How do we identify it in police
officers? How do we make sure that the police
officers we involve in community policing efforts
are people of character and integrity? If we do not
answer these core questions, then a conference like
this is useless, indeed perhaps worse than useless,
because we have pretended to get something done.
Pretending to get something done in any profession
is always dangerous. Let us then try to make some
headway in our first question: What do we mean by
the concept of integrity?

The Concept of Integrity

The first thing to say about the concept of
integrity is that we often use organic or spatial
metaphors to explain it. This, of course, hints at
the etymological origins of the word integritas,
"whole or complete." But when we go beyond the
metaphors, it is not so easy to articulate what we
mean when we say that a person possesses integrity.

Martin Benjamin, in a helpful book called Splitting
the Difference: Compromise and Integrity in Ethics
and Politics, identifies five psychological types
lacking in integrity. The first he calls the moral
chameleon. Benjamin describes the type this way:

"Anxious to accommodate others and temperamentally
indisposed to moral controversy and disagreement,
the moral chameleon is quick to modify or abandon
previously avowed principles.... Apart from a
commitment to accommodation, the moral chameleon
has little in the way of core values.... The moral
chameleon bears careful watching. If placed in a
situation where retaining her principles requires
resisting social pressure, she is likely to betray
others as she betrays herself." 

Benjamin's second type, the moral opportunist, is
similar to the moral chameleon in that his values
are ever-changing. But where the moral chameleon
tries to avoid conflict, the moral opportunist
places primary value on his own short-term
self-interest. While the moral chameleon's motto
might be "above all, get along," the moral
opportunist's is "above all, get ahead." 

The moral hypocrite is a third type lacking in
integrity. "The hypocrite," writes Gabriele Taylor,
"pretends to live by certain standards when in fact
he does not." The hypocrite has one set of virtues
for public consumption, and another set he actually
has as a moral code. The lack of integrity comes in
that the hypocrite pretends that the code is
different than what it actually is.

Benjamin's fourth type, the morally weak-willed,
has a reasonably coherent set of core virtues, but
they usually lack the courage to act on them. They
are unlike the moral chameleon in that they know
what the good is, they simply lack the courage to
do it. Benjamin's final type, the moral
self-deceivers, have at their core a basic
contradiction. They think of themselves as acting
on a set of core principles, while in fact they do
not. To resolve this conflict, and at the same time
to preserve their idealized view of themselves,
they deceive themselves about what they are doing.

By looking at these five types, we immediately see
what integrity does not look like. But if we look a
little closer, we also may get some hints about a
proper understanding of the concept. First, a
person of integrity has a reasonably coherent and
relatively stable set of core moral virtues. And
second, the person's acts and speech tend to
reflect those principles. Individual integrity,
then, requires that one's words and actions should
be of a piece, and they should reflect a set of
core virtues to which one is freely and genuinely
committed.

But what ought these virtues to be? The answer to
that question may differ in different professional
contexts, but integrity in the context of police
work should amount to the sum of the virtues
required to bring about the general goals of
protection and service to the public. In short,
professional virtue should always bring about the
moral goals of the professional organization in
question. A list of the virtues of a good cop,
then, ought to tell us something important about
why police departments exist. Professional
integrity, then, in any professional context, is
the integrated collection of virtues that brings
about the goals of the profession. Presumably, in
police organizations those major goals are
connected to protection of and service to the
public.

A List of Core Virtues

Lists of professional virtues are difficult, if not
foolish, to compose, particularly if an interloper
is doing the compiling. The following list is, of
course, by no means complete. Rather, I consider it
to be essential to the purposes of police
organizations. These virtues, in other words, must
be required by police officers if the goals of the
organization are to be met. These virtues are not
listed here in any order.

o Prudence. Practical wisdom, the virtue of
deliberation and discernment. The ability to
unscramble apparent conflicts between virtues while
deciding what action (or refraining from action) is
best in a given situation.

o Trust. This virtue is entailed by the three
primary relationships of the police officer: the
citizen-officer relationship, the officer-officer
relationship, and the officer-supervisor
relationship. Trust ought to engender loyalty and
truthfulness in these three contexts.

o Effacement of self-interests. Given the
"exploitability" of citizens, self-effacement is
important. Without it, citizens can become a means
to advance the police officer's power, prestige, or
profit, or a means for advancing goals of the
department other than those to protect and to
serve.

o Courage. As Aristotle suggests, this virtue is a
golden mean between two extremes: cowardice and
foolhardiness. There are many professions --
surgery and police work, to name two -- where the
difference between courage and foolhardiness is
extremely important.

o Intellectual honesty. Acknowledging when one does
not know something and being humble enough to admit
ignorance is an important virtue in any
professional context. The lack of this virtue in
police work can be very dangerous.

o Justice. We normally think of justice as giving
the individual what he or she is due. But taking
the virtue of justice in a police context sometimes
requires the removal of justice's blindfold and
adjusting what is owed to a particular citizen,
even when those needs do not fit the definition of
what is strictly owed.

o Responsibility. Again, Aristotle suggests that a
person who exhibits responsibility is one who
intends to do the right thing, has a clear
understanding of what the right thing is, and is
fully cognizant of other alternatives that might be
taken. More importantly, a person of integrity is
one who does not attempt to evade responsibility by
finding excuses for poor performance or bad
judgment.

At a minimum, then, these seven virtues are
required for integrity because they are required as
well by the general goals of police organizations.
There are probably other virtues I have missed, but
most others will be variants of these seven. In
short, a police officer who exhibits integrity is a
person who has successfully integrated these seven
virtues so that they become a whole greater than
the parts. The police officer of integrity
habitually will exhibit traits of character that
make clear the goals of protection and service.

In The Johns Hopkins Police Executive Leadership
Program, we are planning a study that will attempt
to identify exemplary police officers. We hope to
determine whether the virtues we have listed above,
as well as some others, are consistently found
among the best of our police officers.
Additionally, we hope to analyze the relationship
of these virtues to performance evaluations,
commendations, citizen complaints, and other
variables and also to ask them for practical advice
about how and why they have remained good cops.

Can Integrity Be Taught?

Needless to say, this is a second important
question that should be at the top of our research
agenda. If one looks at what evidence is now
available from social scientific literature, the
answer to our question seems to be "yes" and "no."
Since most researchers agree that the practice of
virtue -- the component parts of integrity -- is a
habitual activity, it must be learned and
reinforced. Other evidence suggests that the most
effective time to teach virtue is early on, so the
"yes" part of our answer is that children in
stable, loving homes who regularly have the
requisite virtues modeled for them are the most
successful people at developing a track record for
integrity.

The "no" part of the answer comes with the
realization that most evidence about problems with
integrity suggest that they, too, are habitual
problems. By and large, people who habitually have
trouble in school with behavioral problems become
adults who have the same problems. This is not to
say that people's behaviors cannot change. But
change always comes when the person has a clear
goal and incentive for changing. The fear of
punishment has rarely been enough to change
habitual behavior.

These findings clearly should have some important
ramifications for the way we go about recruiting
and testing police officers. Testing instruments
need to be better than they are now. Longitudinal
studies need to be completed that show us how well
we have done in the past and the present in
recruiting people who will grow to be police
officers of integrity. This is one of the goals of
the Hopkins study I alluded to earlier.

One other area of inquiry worth pursuing is to
track the relationship of the kind and extent of
ethics training in police academies to the
performance of those recruits as police officers.
My initial sense is that the more extensive the
training, the clearer the effect will be, though
the social scientific evidence on the relationship
of academic ethics training and moral behavior, at
least at this point, is ambiguous. One element
about academy ethics training is clear: if it is to
be effective, it needs to be rigorous and it needs
to emphasize critical thinking skills, reasoning
skills, reasoning ability, and problem-solving
techniques. In short, it needs to be the right
blend of the theoretical and the practical.

Can Integrity Be Measured?

The answer to this question in the general area of
professional activity is that we do not know. If we
measure police integrity the way State medical
organizations measure the integrity of physicians
or the way State judicial review boards measure the
integrity of lawyers, we will not be successful.
Historically, these organizations try to determine
what their members have been successful in
avoiding. Integrity in these contexts is seen as
not leaving a sponge in a patient's abdominal
cavity or not having conflicts of interest. In
short, these governing bodies look to see if the
doctor or lawyer has followed the rules and
regulations and has avoided doing wrong. But
avoiding wrong behavior is not the same as having
integrity, any more than simply avoiding bad notes
will get a singer to Carnegie Hall.

If we are to be successful in measuring police
integrity, we must find measuring tools that not
only enable us to determine that police officers
effectively avoid certain behaviors but that they
also regularly practice prudence, courage, justice,
honesty, trust, self-effacement, and
responsibility.

One way to begin this task is first to refine the
definition and identification of the virtues that
go into making a police officer of integrity. If we
have missed the boat in identifying what we see as
the core virtues, we will know soon enough. A
second item that must be put on our list of things
to do is the development of an agenda -- a national
mission statement, if you will -- that says in a
broad way what the moral purposes are of police
organizations. All definitions of virtue and
integrity, Aristotle forcefully argues, only make
sense in the context of what he calls telos, the
larger reason or purpose in which those virtues are
placed. What we want a department to be ultimately
should tell us a great deal about what we want our
officers to do.

If we are going to think of ourselves as a
profession, then we must assume the level of
responsibility that a professional life entails.
The profession ought to require more from its
members than we expect from the general population.

------------------------------

Integrity and Ethics: A Federal Perspective

Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States

Attorney General Janet Reno was called upon to set
the tone for the symposium and discuss potential
outcomes. Since her appointment as Attorney General
of the United States and in her prior role as a
prosecutor, she has expressed continued concern
about and interest in improving police integrity at
the Federal, State, and local levels.

Attorney General Reno focused all participants on
the task at hand: "The public trust is something
that all of us hold sacred; you wouldn't be here
otherwise." She challenged participants to go
beyond the norm in pursuing integrity and quality
service to communities: "You can set the high
standards, you can set the policies, you can set
performance standards, but it is following up to
make sure that those standards are met and that
those policies are carried out that is important."
She urged the police profession to learn from other
fields and from colleagues in other countries. She
encouraged more open dialogue on a subject that has
traditionally remained behind closed doors. She
asked symposium participants to provide her with a
viable agenda through which the Department of
Justice can support a nationwide effort to improve
and maintain police integrity.

------------------------------

I am delighted to be here today because as I look
out on the audience, I see old friends and people
that I have met since I came to Washington who have
become my friends. As I have said on prior
occasions when I left Miami, I worried that I would
lose my sense of community, my sense of being able
to look over and see a police chief and the sheriff
and to understand how a system worked. But now I've
just discovered that I have inherited a lot more
communities, and the diversity and strength of them
is exciting to behold.

The public trust is something that all of us hold
sacred; you wouldn't be here otherwise. And,
fortunately, most of the men and women in law
enforcement throughout this country hold it sacred.
They are honest; they are hard-working, wonderful
public servants who approach their roles with
integrity and with respect. And we need to identify
those officers, the best examples, and figure out
how we replicate their actions across the face of
America.

I have said on so many occasions that being a
police officer is probably the single hardest job I
know. I just heard a very experienced assistant
United States attorney on detail to Washington
describe how she had to go testify in court the
other day. And she said, "This was really my first
experience. Now I have a whole new regard for
agents and police officers who a year later have to
testify as to what happened and have to recall and
have to be subject to cross-examination." And you
think of the role of the police officer -- the
truth teller, having to be able to testify to the
truth day in and day out after having had to calm
an angry crowd, perhaps in an emergency without
even a backup, having to make legal decisions
without having gone to law school, without having a
law library at their back. What we ask of police
officers is more, really, than we ask of most
professions, and we ask them to perform under the
most difficult of circumstances.

And so I think we should recognize how important
this symposium is as a means of providing
education, training, and information so that all
police officers can benefit. But as we recognize
that most in law enforcement are dedicated, honest
public servants, we also recognize there are some
who do not uphold those standards. There are some
who are just plain bad people, but there are bad
lawyers and bad doctors. I've often wondered why it
was the bad police officer who caught the attention
of the public more so. I think it's because there
is probably no such expectation. They believe so in
their police officer. They want to believe in their
officer. That officer has protected them perhaps on
another occasion. And then to have that officer
disillusion them is something that they did not
expect. That they did not anticipate it makes it
all the more important.

It's really exciting -- particularly as police
around the country are focusing on community
policing, focusing on the neighborhood, involving
the neighborhood -- to walk through a neighborhood
and have the neighbors tell me how much that police
officer means to them, that 3 years ago they could
not walk out from behind their doors because they
were afraid, and now they can come out. Their
number one issue now is not the drive-by shooting.
That was the issue 3 years ago. Now, it's graffiti
in the neighborhood, the overgrown lot, and what
they are going to do about some vandalism.

It is so exciting to see police officers on the
cutting edge, bringing America's communities
together. But as so many wonderful police officers
do that, there is disillusionment thrown in, and
that's why your work here today is so important.

The Federal agencies have heard this before -- it
hurt me to see the Feds come to town and say,
"We're going to conduct this investigation. We're
going to go after this. We're going to go do this."
And then there might be a Federal police shooting,
and they'd say, "You stay away, you can't have
anything to do with this. This is our problem." We
want to be in this with you together, working
together as a team to develop the best training
mechanisms applicable to Federal, State, and local
agencies, to develop the best mechanism for
ensuring integrity. We want to learn from you what
we can do better at the Federal level.

It makes no sense for the Federal government to
come to town and say, "Your jails can only have a
certain population," and not have the same
standards apply to us. Or have the Civil Rights
Division come to town and say, "Your officers must
do x, y, and z," and not be able to pass muster at
the Federal level. So we expect to adhere to the
same high standards, and we can and will learn so
much from State and local law enforcement officers
who are on the front line in so many different
issues that face this Nation.

We have taken steps at the Federal level to ensure
that our agencies function at the highest level of
effectiveness. We put into process a means of
assessing and reinforcing integrity in every
Federal unit. Furthermore, the Department of
Justice will conduct policy and procedure reviews
for specific areas such as multijurisdictional task
forces.

In reviewing the many topics which you will be
discussing throughout the symposium, it is evident
that you have made a connection between the high
standards of performance and sound policies and
procedures. But there is more to it than just that,
and from what I've heard at the conference today,
you are bringing out some of these examples. You
can set the high standards, you can set the
policies, you can set performance standards, but it
is following up to make sure that those standards
are met and that those policies are carried out
that is important.

In some instances, I have seen wonderful policies
announced, and nobody followed up, really, to see
that they were implemented. Nobody took an
independent look at an investigation conducted by
an internal review unit to see whether the policies
were really adhered to or to see what could be
learned from the investigation to improve our
training or prevent the problems. And so I will be
anxious to hear, to listen, to learn what you
develop as a means of providing a check and balance
on our whole process.

Our goals for the Department of Justice include --
as Jeremy [Travis, Director of the National
Institute of Justice] has pointed out -- improving
cooperation and communication among all agencies.
When I came to town, there were different policies
and procedures with respect to the different
Justice Department agencies, and certainly with
respect to Treasury agencies, and I asked, "Why?"
It seems to me, if one policy applies one place it
should apply in the other. And so we've been in the
process of reviewing those in a cooperative effort
through the Office of Investigative Agency Policy.
This compels all of the Justice Department law
enforcement agencies to come up with uniform
standard policies and procedures, recognizing that
there are certain exceptions, such as in the Bureau
of Prisons. There may be different standards with
respect to the unjustified use of force that we
take into consideration but do so in a mutual way
that recognizes the mission of each agency and
produces a standard -- the highest standard
possible.

We want to continue, as I had mentioned, to reach
out to State and local law enforcement, to learn
from you, to benefit from your experience, to find
out what we can do better at the Federal level --
what we can do better in terms of our
responsibilities in investigating State and local
law enforcement and how can we exchange information
with you. It's frustrating to me to see an
investigation conducted without somebody going back
and looking at it after the investigation is over.
Maybe after we've obtained the conviction, we can
sit down with the local police agency and say, this
is how it happened. You can trace this cop from the
time he was honest. Then, he got in with this
crowd; his sergeant wasn't very strong; his
sergeant didn't pay any attention; he got in with
these guys who came into the field without adequate
field training. And looking at the scenario, you
can see you could have anticipated the events and
see what was going to happen. We really need to
look at these cases, and learn from past
experience, and understand how things happen and
how people get into this situation.

We want to establish the highest possible
performance standards, both organizational and
individual. I think one of my great frustrations is
to see the different Federal agencies scattered
across the country -- 94 U.S. attorneys; the FBI
[Federal Bureau of Investigation] organized in one
way; the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration]
organized in different regions in another way; a
marshal in each of the 94 Federal districts; INS
[Immigration and Naturalization Service] broken
down into border control, investigative officers,
and inspectors. Just trying to make the whole
operation function according to each agency's
mission, but at the same time according to the
highest possible national standards, is very
important to me.

This past Thursday I flew to the New Mexico border.
I stopped in Las Cruces and talked with Sheriff
Clay and Chief of Police Hampton, getting from them
a flavor of what we needed to back them up and what
we needed to do to support Federal law enforcement
along that border. What impresses you as you go
down the border is that the problem is different at
each part of the border. So we've got to recognize
the uniqueness of situations and recognize that we
can learn from local law enforcement in addressing
these unique situations.

I think the single most important thing we can do,
certainly at the Federal level, is to develop the
highest possible training capacity, and I am
committed to doing that. We have brought, for
example, a significant number of new border patrol
agents on board. My message from the beginning has
been that we will not bring those agents on without
ensuring proper training. We will not cut corners.
We cannot, because of the crisis on the border,
minimize what we are doing in terms of training. I
need your support for that effort because there is
a loud voice heard that says we need more border
patrol agents. They've just asked for 700. We need
1,500. And I need State and local law enforcement
to explain that we may be able to provide
instructors and provide training. But then we pull
experienced officers from the border to do the
training, and we weaken the border and the field
training on the border as we train agents in the
academy.

It is so important to emphasize to the funders of
these operations that training doesn't stop at the
academy -- that some of the best training in the
world, some of the best integrity in the world, is
learned from that field-training officer on the
street, on the border, or wherever you go. And so,
as we develop law enforcement efforts, it is
important that we develop a coherent plan of
training not just at the academy but in the field
and in continuing education, which I consider so
important. I think it is important that we look at
patterns of misconduct to see what we can learn
from them, to share this information with each
other to better understand what's happening and
take steps to analyze our problems and see what
could have been done to prevent them.

As we consider all of these issues, I believe that
we should consider the other disciplines. What can
other disciplines offer us? What has the legal
profession learned? What has the medical profession
learned? What can we do to learn from other
disciplines? What steps can we take to ensure the
highest standards of professionalism? How can we
form partnerships with our international neighbors
who are similarly attempting to ensure integrity
within their own public service?

I am delighted that we have representatives from
other nations here because I recognize that in this
next century law enforcement at almost all levels
is going to be international. A sheriff in a remote
rural county may well have a bank that is the
subject of a hacker's attempt from across the
ocean. With modern technology and with modern
transportation, we must join forces around the
world -- with our colleagues -- to develop the
highest possible standards and to exchange
information about what is working and what is not
working.

We have a special responsibility to reach out to
developing nations to help them in training and to
establish standards. As we try to do that, the
headlines on CNN [Cable News Network] about some
officer who did not live up to our standards
attracts more attention than the wonderful work
being done by our representatives who are reaching
out to others. It is so important to listen, it is
so important to hear, but it is also important to
realize that we can train an awful lot of people to
police the right way.

I have a favorite theory. I think about 10 percent
of the people, if that many, may be just plain bad.
But most people in the world want to do the right
thing. Another 10-15 percent probably don't know
how. We can help them do it and teach them how to
do it. Another 10-15 percent are probably just too
lazy, and we can motivate them. But there is a
wonderful core of people who can, if we involve
them in our training efforts, contribute to our
efforts to ensure the highest possible standards.

I am going to look for your report. I am going to
follow the work here closely. Both Jeremy [Travis]
and Joe Brann [Director, Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services] will keep me briefed. I
am very anxious to see the final product that comes
out of this symposium, and, most of all, I want to
see it put into effect. It used to bother me when I
would come to Washington at the invitation of the
Federal government or some other agency to talk
about something and then see the report on my
shelf. I'd read it and try to implement it. But I
didn't see much being done with it. As Attorney
General, I'm going to make sure that I do something
with this report because just looking at the people
who are in this room today, it's going to be a good
one. Thank you.

------------------------------

Chapter 3

Plenary Sessions

Introduction

Five moderators and 27 speakers were invited to
present their views during the plenary sessions.
Each person was allowed 20 minutes to speak.
Although audience members could ask the panelists
questions, most questions were posed during the
nine work group sessions. This section presents an
overview of the key points made by the speakers
during the five plenary sessions.

------------------------------

First Plenary Session

Interdisciplinary Panel on Integrity and Ethics

This panel enabled experts from other disciplines
to describe the nature of integrity issues and
suggest solutions in their respective professions.

Moderator: Tom Potter, Consultant, 
Portland, Oregon

Participants: John Feerick, Dean, Fordham
University School of Law 

Ray Kemp, Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown
University

Kurt Schmoke, Mayor, Baltimore, Maryland

Winthrop Swenson, Managing Director, Business
Ethics Service Group, KPMG Peat Marwick

------------------------------

"Attorneys have multidrives which are at times
misunderstood by the public."  
--John Feerick

------------------------------

As the first speaker, John Feerick explained in
detail the restraints imposed on the behavior of
attorneys by the adversary system: the duty the
lawyer has to keep the client's concerns and
interests confidential and to zealously advocate
the client's position, even when the attorney feels
the client may be acting unjustly. He suggested
that what lies beneath these obligations is the
belief that in an adversary system the truth will
emerge and justice will be done.

He also pointed out the dual roles the attorney
often plays in the American system of
jurisprudence: the role as officer of the court and
the role as zealous advocate for the client. In
addition to these sometimes conflicting roles, the
American attorney also serves as an agent, not as a
principal, often adding to the complexity of the
job. Additionally, the lawyer works as a
businessperson. The need to make a living often
puts pressure on the lawyer to act in his or her
own self-interest as well as the interest of the
client. Much of the bad public perception of the
moral character of attorneys comes from a failure
to understand the American lawyer's different and
sometimes conflicting roles.

A third area covered by Mr. Feerick involved the
roles American law schools, and the American legal
community in general, are playing to change the
perceptions the public often has of the legal
profession and its practitioners. American law
school classes on the institution of legal ethics
and efforts by the courts and local and national
bar associations are under way to sharpen the moral
consciousness of attorneys and emphasize the
importance of a moral dialogue between lawyers and
their clients, not to speak of the commitment to
pro bono work by lawyers throughout the United
States.

------------------------------

"Professionalism must include care and concern for
each member and a willingness to be open to
scrutiny by the public served."  
--Father Ray Kemp

------------------------------

The common concerns shared by the police and
members of the clergy were addressed by Father Ray
Kemp. The principal and overarching concern, he
argued, is the dedication to the securing of the
common good. He cautioned that the clergy's
understanding of their role in this goal must begin
with a sense of their own vulnerability and
weakness. The church has become more open in
admitting that priests are subject to the same
weaknesses and temptations as everyone else. The
enormous morale problem of the prosecution of
priests charged with pedophilia and sexual abuse is
not an easy issue to discuss, analyze, or prevent.

Father Kemp encouraged each participant in the
symposium to draw a mental picture of what the
larger society ought to be, a society where people
are in right relation to one another. This vision
of the common good ought to be the basis for this
society. He explained that those who attempt to
bring people to right relations must be committed
to justice themselves. They must be held to a
greater standard of decency because they stand at
the intersection of good and evil. In this vision
of right relations, said Father Kemp, freedom and
responsibility must be seen as complementary.

Experience has taught people that two areas of
professional activity now demand constant
attention: (1) the care and feeding of the
professional person, and (2) an openness to
continued scrutiny by the public. Father Kemp
described several needs for today's clerical
training: annual evaluations, clear promotional
criteria, help in planning for retirement, and the
necessity of ongoing training and mentorship beyond
seminary or theological instruction. This training
should include real cases of ethical dilemmas that
commonly confront the contemporary cleric.

Regarding openness to scrutiny by the public,
Father Kemp said secrets that have potential for
disaster must come to the surface promptly and in a
helpful environment. Rules and expectations must be
clear and realistic. The whistle-blower must be
tolerated and supported not as an informant but as
one who has the best interest of the organization
at heart.

------------------------------

"One key issue for ethical government is leadership
by example." 
--Mayor Kurt Schmoke

------------------------------

Maintaining integrity in local government is a
challenge faced by Mayor Kurt Schmoke every day. He
outlined four key elements in the city of
Baltimore's ethics program. First, there must be
leadership by example -- setting an ethical tone
for the organization. Values must be discussed
openly and often with cabinet members and the
public. Issues must be dealt with forthrightly,
even when they may be embarrassing. The second
element of the program is a code of conduct with
clear expectations, written in concise and easily
understood language.

The third element Mayor Schmoke discussed is an
independent body to ensure the code of conduct is
implemented. A group of citizens make up a board of
ethics. The board meets regularly and makes ongoing
recommendations to the mayor. The final element in
Baltimore's ethics program is training. Mayor
Schmoke said training is ongoing and is often
conducted in partnership with the Civil Service
Commission.

During the second half of his talk, Mayor Schmoke
explored how these four elements apply to the
police department. The mayor spoke of the
importance of keeping the police separate from
political interference. He cited three specific
areas: political meddling in emotionally charged or
high-profile cases, endorsements of political
candidates by the police chief, and union
endorsement of political candidates.

------------------------------

"Clear standards and procedures tend to curtail
unethical behavior and corruption."  
--Winthrop Swenson

------------------------------

For the past two decades, according to Winthrop
Swenson, ethics has been a topic of significant
debate within the business community. He cited a
1980 study, conducted by Fortune magazine, of the
800 largest companies in America. The study covered
corporate corruption in five areas, and it revealed
that 11 percent of these top companies had
committed blatant ethical offenses. Many of these
companies were multiple offenders.

Among the results of this widespread lack of
integrity by American corporations, said Mr.
Swenson, was the creation of the U.S. Sentencing
Commission by Congress. The Commission was charged
with writing laws and rules for Federal judges in
sentencing corporate criminal defendants. In 1991
the Commission released the Corruption and Crime
Sentencing Guidelines.

Mr. Swenson explained that the guidelines are based
on the "spectrum approach." Members of the
Commission divided offending companies according to
the corporate cultures they exhibited prior to the
infraction. Significant punishments were attached
to companies with weak compliance and internal
systems for control of unethical behavior. Less
severe punishments were imposed on companies that
had a history of good compliance and demonstrated
systems to control corruption and unethical
behavior.

From the experience of dealing with these
companies, said Mr. Swenson, the Sentencing
Commission developed the following seven-step
program to promote and encourage ethical behavior
in organizations:

1. Develop standards and procedures that can be
reasonably expected to curtail unethical behavior
and corruption.

2. Institute oversight by high-level personnel.

3. Take care in delegating authority.

4. Effectively communicate standards and
procedures.

5. Develop reasonable steps (auditing, monitoring,
and hotlines) to ensure employees are meeting these
standards.

6. Use appropriate discipline.

7. Learn from mistakes made in the organization.

Two major problems have been found in implementing
this seven-step program in various companies.
First, Mr. Swenson elaborated, some companies take
too narrow an approach to compliance and ethics
issues. These organizations take a "check the box"
approach to the seven-step program, and they have
been generally less successful than others. Second,
some of the companies take a legalistic or
control-oriented approach. This misses some of the
fundamental drivers of corporate misconduct: no
upstream communication, unrealistic goals and
expectations of employees, and use of untrained
staff to teach ethics and compliance. This creates
inservice education programs that are
incomprehensible to employees.

Generally, though, the seven-step program has
proven successful and has had a positive effect on
internal and external integrity. A similar kind of
moral audit, Mr. Swenson concluded, may have merit
for police organizations.

------------------------------

Second Plenary Session

Law Enforcement Executives on the Integrity and
Ethics Challenges Facing the Profession

This session allowed selected law enforcement
executives an opportunity to recount their
experiences and share their best advice.
Moderator: Gerald Williams, Director, Bill
Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute, Sam
Houston State University

Panelists: Lee Brown, Professor of Sociology, Rice
University

Dan Corsentino, Sheriff, Pueblo County, Colorado

Edward Flynn, Chief of Police, Chelsea,
Massachusetts

Howard Safir, Police Commissioner, New York, New
York

David Walchak, Chief of Police, Concord, New
Hampshire

Elizabeth Watson, Chief of Police, Austin, Texas

------------------------------

"Selection and training must be conducted in the
spirit of service, not adventure, if we are to
ensure police officers who are motivated to serve
the public."  --Dr. Lee Brown

------------------------------

Dr. Lee Brown has served as the chief executive
officer of several major police agencies. He noted
that the conference theme could be taken from the
daily headlines of many American newspapers. Abuses
by police officers appear to be a regular subject
in American media. Dr. Brown offered a prescription
for change: "If, in law enforcement, we are to rid
ourselves of the specter of wrongdoing, we must
fundamentally change the police culture."

"The leadership of a police organization," Dr.
Brown said, "ultimately will determine the
character of the organization." Line officers must
know and understand the core values of their
organizations, and beyond that the department must
be willing to stand by officers who foster those
values.

All police agencies should have a written code of
ethics. It should appeal to common sense and be
easily understood by those required to live by it.
These values must become the guide for police
officers so they can judge right from wrong and
acceptable from unacceptable behavior. They must
understand that their mission is to protect the
constitutional rights of each citizen, regardless
of race, creed, color, sexual preference, or
gender.

Police executives, Dr. Brown maintained, must
understand the true meaning of accountability to
the community. The community must be regarded with
respect, and the police must see citizens as
partners. Therefore, the question is, "How can we
select officers to ensure their commitment to
serving citizens and protecting civil liberties?"
Dr. Brown made a strong recommendation: Police
officers must be selected and hired in a spirit of
service, not adventure. Only then can a department
ensure that its officers will be motivated to solve
problems and not be motivated by a need to exhibit
strength, force, and machismo.

Finally, it is critical that police leaders judge
their own behavior on the following basis: "Do my
actions have the `appearance' of impropriety,"
rather than "Have I violated the law?" Perception
of impropriety, which is the Washington Post test,
is as important as actual impropriety and should be
considered in that light. Service then should be
the acid test for both the chief executive and the
police officer. Then and only then, said Dr. Brown,
will the public be truly served.

------------------------------

"All bad ethical choices are the result of cultural
conditioning, character conditioning, and
ineffective internal systems, such as training or
poor quality control."  
--Sheriff Dan Corsentino

------------------------------

Sheriff Dan Corsentino began his talk with a short
history of the county he now serves. During the
several years before he was elected, four
consecutive sheriffs had been indicted on felony
charges. This corruption affected all levels of the
department and led to an annual attrition rate of
20 percent. Citizens did not call for service
because they were not confident that deputies would
"do the right thing." "I hear, see, and say
nothing," was the rule among citizens. Good
deputies began to wonder why they should maintain
their integrity. The entire department lacked
self-confidence and direction.

Sheriff Corsentino then discussed the three major
steps undertaken to correct the situation and
regain respect for the sheriff's department. First,
the department instituted a plan to enhance
recruitment. Second, a three-tier ethics training
program was started. Third, internal systems and
quality control measures were improved.

The department's ethics program, explained Sheriff
Corsentino, consists of training at the academy
level as well as at the middle management and
executive officer levels. All bad ethical choices
are the result of cultural conditioning, character
conditioning, poor systems and training, or poor
quality control. These root causes are discussed at
all levels of the ethics training program. The
sheriff's department, Sheriff Corsentino concluded,
also changed the role of the Internal Affairs
Division from not only detecting infractions but
also identifying the root causes of those
infractions.

------------------------------

"Police chiefs are better equipped to face
integrity issues if they take the time to remember
their own experiences as young officers." 
 --Chief Edward Flynn

------------------------------

When police executives are deciding how to judge
the behavior of police officers, Chief Edward Flynn
stated, they must reflect on their own experiences
as officers. A police chief must recall what it was
like to be a young 22-year-old officer confronting
a situation in which he was highly vulnerable.
Often in such a situation, an officer is rescued by
fellow officers. It is no mystery that at that
moment, officers experience loyalty to another
officer, a feeling of separation from the community
and management, and a need to maintain a cloak of
secrecy.

In reality, police officers are given little
guidance as to how to behave in situations that are
morally ambiguous. Police executives are not quick
to offer "life rings" to officers -- too often it
is fellow officers who do.

The police profession does not attract people who
want to commit acts of brutality, Chief Flynn said.
In reality, the police profession attracts
individuals who are seeking moral clarity and who
have a strong desire to correct the wrongs of
society. It is the responsibility of police
executives to take advantage of this situation and
create an environment in which young, morally
strong officers can actualize their idealism. These
new officers are virtuous and have a compelling
desire to serve the public. Sometimes, because
police chiefs forget their pasts, it almost appears
as if they dislike officers. Yet, it must be noted
that chiefs have to deal continuously with officers
who have made serious mistakes. Executives must
focus on building a bridge between themselves and
those many officers who arrive in the department
with a fine and worthy intent.

Chief Flynn also appealed to NIJ and COPS to
provide a forum in which police management and
labor could come together and find a common ground
-- a consensus that there will be a few officers
who will never be able to fulfill the police
mission and will need to be fired. Management and
labor also must agree to support and retain good
officers.

At the present time, concluded Chief Flynn, police
chiefs are at a serious disadvantage because the
formal mechanisms of accountability are
dysfunctional. "Ironically, as the public demands
more police accountability, the system delivers
less." Legislatures pass bills of rights for
officers. Arbitrators and civil service
commissioners routinely overturn the disciplinary
decisions of chiefs. Meanwhile, those chiefs who
insist on police accountability are vulnerable to
union no-confidence votes and political reprisals.
"Chiefs must be accountable for their departments,
but their leadership cannot overcome the negative
aspects of the police culture if they are the only
ones held accountable."

------------------------------

"An untapped resource for promoting integrity is
having cops who did get into trouble recount their
experiences and what they learned to other cops." 
--Police Commissioner Howard Safir

------------------------------

A series of initiatives have been taken by the New
York Police Department, Police Commissioner Howard
Safir told the audience, to root out corruption in
the ranks. In addition to raising the educational
requirement for employment and instituting random
integrity checks (over 500 of the department's 650
annual integrity checks are done randomly), clear
expectations are provided to officers. Codes, said
Commissioner Safir, should be clear and practical.
Accountability must exist up and down the chain of
command. Fear of getting caught is sometimes a
useful motivation. One of the most effective
untapped resources for fostering police integrity,
Commissioner Safir explained, is the anecdotal
stories of cops who have gotten in trouble -- cops
talking to other cops about how and why they went
bad and how the department responded.

------------------------------

"Perhaps the best administrative technique for
controlling corruption is to stress individual
accountability and to clearly fix responsibility.
Failure to hold personnel accountable breeds
corruption." 
--Chief David Walchak

------------------------------

A recent Gallup poll, said Chief David Walchak,
shows that the police were held in high esteem by
the public when compared to other professions.
Other studies reveal the following: a 1991 study in
one State found that the three major ethical
problems for police officers are drug and alcohol
abuse, lying to protect other officers, and conduct
prejudicial to the department. In a 1994 study in
another State of 861 officers, 26 percent had seen
racial harassment on the job, 24 percent had seen
abuses of stop-and-frisk procedures, 20 percent had
seen more force used than necessary, and 6 percent
had seen records falsified.

Other findings, Chief Walchak continued, suggest
that years of service are not associated with
ethical infractions, college-educated officers are
less likely to incur citizen complaints, and female
officers are more likely to report unethical
behavior than their male counterparts, regardless
of rank.

Chief Walchak proposed several suggestions,
including enhancing recruitment and selection
procedures, developing reward systems that reflect
the goals of community policing, increasing the
number of academy hours devoted to ethics training,
promulgating a written set of departmental values,
fostering discussions on the importance of proper
off-duty behavior, and implementing early warning
systems for identifying officers at risk.

------------------------------

"A major problem with police integrity is middle
managers who do not understand or are unwilling to
embrace the moral goals of the police department." 
--Chief Elizabeth Watson

------------------------------

The integrity problem, Chief Elizabeth Watson
charged, is not with the line officer. It never has
been and isn't today, she continued. The problem is
that there is a void in leadership at every level.
This situation will only be corrected when chief
executives begin to invest properly in their
personnel to ensure that their behavior is based on
a common set of core values that serves as a basis
for the discipline of subordinates.

Line officers are sincere and hard-working.
Supervisors, however, need to be taught what it
means to make core values part of the department's
operations and how to translate those values to
apply them to judgments of subordinates' behavior.

Unfortunately, said Chief Watson, there are still
those supervisors who see no conflict in acting on
their own personal values, imbedded with prejudices
and biases, rather than responding on the basis of
the department's core values. Most of the time,
personal values will be in accord with departmental
values, but supervisors need to be acutely aware of
those few times when their personal values conflict
with departmental values.

The issue becomes one of alignment. The dictionary
differentiates between ethics and integrity but
defines integrity as "firm adherence to a code or
standard of values." The major challenge, then,
becomes one of ensuring that supervisors are good
followers who understand what it means to translate
beliefs into judgments and behavior. If supervisors
cannot translate values into behavior and continue
to judge behavior by the attributes of the
violator, they will find that their badges will not
shine as brightly. One judgment by favoritism,
instead of with impartiality, inhibits all other
objective judgments. Investment in supervisors and
managers, concluded Chief Watson, is a strong
solution needed to protect line officers.

------------------------------

Third Plenary Session

The Impact of Police Culture, Leadership, and
Organization on Integrity

This session focused on the dynamics and derivation
of the police subculture, the role of leadership,
the organizational structure, and how these affect
police integrity.

Moderator: Jerome Skolnick, John Jay College of
Criminal Justice, The City University of New York

Panelists: Robert Colville, District Attorney,
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Gilbert Gallegos, National President, Fraternal
Order of Police

William Johnston, Deputy Superintendent, Police
Department, Boston, Massachusetts

Judge Milton Mollen, Graubard, Mollen & Miller

Ramona Ripston, Executive Director, American Civil
Liberties Union, Los Angeles, California

Hubert Williams, President, The Police Foundation

------------------------------

"One underpinning of the police subculture is the
belief among police officers that no one -- i.e.,
management or the public -- understands them." 
--Professor Jerome Skolnick

------------------------------

A culture or, in the case of many police
organizations, a subculture, is the set of norms or
beliefs that guide a particular group's behavior.
They are, said moderator Jerome Skolnick, the
truths that officers feel in their bones, the
touchstones that govern their attitudes and
behavior. The text Beyond 911 suggests that the
police culture includes at least the following six
beliefs:

o The police are the only real crimefighters.

o No one else understands the work of a police
officer.

o Loyalty counts more than anything.

o It is impossible to win the war on crime without
bending the rules.

o The public is demanding and nonsupportive.

o Working in patrol is the least desirable job in
the police department.

Professor Skolnick told the audience that it is
essential to understand how an organization's
values become translated within the subculture. In
the tape of the Rodney King beating, the
interesting people are the 10 to 12 officers who
stood around and watched. This is an example of
what happens when the values and beliefs of a
subculture come into direct conflict with the
stated values of the organization. Few executives,
said Professor Skolnick, grasp how or why the
values they set forth are interpreted differently
at various levels of the organization.

------------------------------

"Organizations must consider integrity improvement
as a long-term goal -- there are no quick fixes." 
--District Attorney Robert Colville

------------------------------

Police, said District Attorney Robert Colville,
have not changed substantially over the years in
how they view the community or their agency. They
are susceptible to many of the same temptations as
they were 30 years ago. Corruption was rampant in
the Pittsburgh Police Department in the 1960s.
Police officers ran towing companies, cashed in on
free lunches, and succumbed to many of the same
temptations that are present today. Two things, Mr.
Colville related, changed police attitudes toward
corruption in the 1960s and 1970s: The Internal
Revenue Service and other Federal agencies began to
indict police, and a new public attitude about the
police grew out of the civil strife and upheaval of
the 1960s. After the 1960s, police came under
greater scrutiny by citizens than at any other time
in recent history.

When police departments were forced to change, Mr.
Colville said, a number of things had to occur for
the change to last. First, training was enhanced.
Second, leadership was improved. Third, working the
media needed to be mastered. Leaders had to be
honest, open, candid, and principled. Fourth,
advice was needed from other disciplines that had
experience in improving integrity. Last, concluded
District Attorney Colville, organizations had to
consider integrity improvement as a long-term
process -- with no quick fix.

------------------------------

"Partnerships between management and line officers
must be based on mutual respect and equal
responsibility for integrity improvement." 
--FOP President Gilbert Gallegos

------------------------------

All people who serve the police profession, said
Fraternal Order of Police President Gilbert
Gallegos, need to review the Law Enforcement Code
of Ethics. Police officers come from the citizenry
and the culture of the community. If there are
value problems in the culture as a whole, there
inevitably will be value problems among police
officers.

Key questions, continued Mr. Gallegos, need to be
answered about codes that set forth ethics and
values. What role do line officers play in
formulating the code of ethics? How often does
management discuss with line officers the
differences between the corporate code of the
department and the informal code of the street?

Partnerships between administrators and officers
need to be formed. They must be built on mutual
respect and equal responsibility for improving
integrity. But, said Mr. Gallegos, management must
also understand the responsibility of the union to
defend its officers. Unlike most attorneys, union
representatives do not have the option to walk away
from a client. Unions, concluded Mr. Gallegos,
should be actively involved in politics,
particularly when so many sheriffs are elected
officials and so many chiefs of police serve at the
pleasure of a mayor, city manager, or county
administrator.

------------------------------

"I learned through painful personal experience that
the only way to preserve dignity for all those we
serve is by protecting constitutional rights."
--Deputy Superintendent William Johnston

------------------------------

Superintendent William Johnston eloquently
recounted his experiences throughout his 30 years
as a police officer that revealed a startling and
critical recommendation for symposium participants.

Police officers are special people, said
Superintendent Johnston. They are the ones entering
the scene of a robbery or burning building when all
others are leaving as quickly as they can. Too
often, their training and orientation propel them
down a path that will eventually lead them to harm
rather than to protect the people they serve.

Superintendent Johnston illustrated this
observation with a series of personal experiences
that sowed seeds of his own change and reformation
as a police officer. Early in his career, he was
assigned to a tactical patrol force that had a
culture of promoting force and arrogance in its
treatment of people. Within that unit he became a
decoy officer (an officer who poses as a victim).
As a decoy officer, he began to understand what it
was like to be an actual victim -- to be accosted
and threatened with a knife or gun. He also learned
what it felt like to be discriminated against. He
learned that if people regard an individual as
being different from the norm, they treat the
person differently, most often in a negative way.
The poignant lesson was brought home when Johnston
served as a homosexual in a gay bar and was badly
treated and harassed by police officers.

Later, he was transferred to a unit to deal with
hate crimes. Originally, he regarded hate crimes as
inane and harmless compared with other crimes
against persons. Then he had to respond to a call
involving a minority family living in an all-white,
middle-class neighborhood. On this particular
evening, 18 windows in the family's home had been
broken with rocks. Johnston recounted that he
arrived to find the father, the head of the
household, in tears and paralyzed, not knowing
which member of his family to respond to first. In
that moment Johnston understood that the most
heinous crime was one that resulted in the loss of
personal dignity. He recognized that in the past,
he was responsible for damaging the personal
dignity of some of the people he was supposed to
serve. What, he pondered, would serve to prevent
such an insult to the personal integrity of the
people served by the police?

Biased behavior, Superintendent Johnston imparted,
begins with seemingly harmless words and jokes and
ends with the performance of a Mark Fuhrman. He
recognized that the behavior of a Mark Fuhrman robs
all police officers of their credibility, and
Johnston himself had contributed to that situation.
Superintendent Johnston finally arrived at a most
courageous solution, which he has been instrumental
in implementing in the Boston Police Department.
All police officers, he concluded, must be taught
the true significance of the U.S. Constitution, not
simply the constraints it places on the procedural
aspect of the officers' job. The U.S. Constitution
is the only standard that can uniformly protect and
preserve the personal dignity of all people in the
United States by guaranteeing civil liberties, if
the police fully adopt it as a means to govern
interactions.

------------------------------

"The shock is not that there are corrupt police
officers but that too often police departments are
incompetent when it comes to investigating
corruption." 
--Judge Milton Mollen

------------------------------

The Mollen Commission, led by Judge Milton Mollen,
found "pockets of corruption" in the New York
Police Department (NYPD) predominantly related to
the drug trade. The major shock in the
investigation, Judge Mollen told the audience, was
not that corruption existed in a 38,000-officer
department but, rather, that the police department
was incompetent and inept when it came to dealing
with the corruption. Another important observation
was that there were various cultures within the
NYPD: a cop-to-cop culture, a cop-to-management
culture (the blue wall of reluctance), and a
cop-to-community culture. They are very different
and exist in other police agencies as well.

The Commission, Judge Mollen said, made important
recommendations for both internal reforms and
external oversight. There must be an outside,
independent monitor to oversee the effort to
eliminate corruption. Dissenters must have a voice
and should be encouraged to come forward. Better
training and supervision are needed. Some basic
questions must be answered if integrity is to be
improved: What happens to good, idealistic
recruits? How do they lose their idealism? What
happens in training, supervision, and patrol that
changes these people? Judge Mollen closed by
saying, "The biggest victim of the crooked cop is
the honest cop."

------------------------------

"If managers only ensured compliance with existing
policies and procedures, there would be far less
corruption."
--ACLU Attorney Ramona Ripston

------------------------------

Ramona Ripston began her remarks by talking about
the perceived antipathy between police officers and
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), but she
reminded the audience that the largest client group
served by the ACLU are police officers, primarily
women suing police departments because traditional
police culture makes their jobs very difficult. Ms.
Ripston remarked that one of the most important
goals of police organizations ought to be
convincing the community that the police perform
their work in ethical and moral ways.

Ms. Ripston's group has studied the way the Los
Angeles Police Department handles citizen
complaints. Only 5 of 18 divisions are following
existing rules of procedure. Culture needs to be
instilled from the top down. One of the major
impediments to compliance is managers who do not
know the regulations or are not willing to follow
them. Ms. Ripston also alluded to the Christopher
Commission report. She observed that police unions
are one of the most significant obstacles for
bringing about the Christopher Commission's
recommendations. Above all, Ms. Ripston stressed
that the police and members of the ACLU are in the
same business -- securing and protecting the civil
rights of those they serve.

------------------------------

"Most police chiefs are honest and have integrity,
but they fail due to an ignorance of what is
occurring in their own departments."  
--Hubert Williams

------------------------------

Hubert Williams began by observing that police
chiefs don't receive near the credit in this
country they deserve. In general, police chiefs act
with integrity and honesty. Where they sometimes
fail is in fully understanding what is going on in
their departments.

Mr. Williams remarked that values come not just out
of the documents that describe them but from
traditional police culture. Often, there is a gap
between what the documents say and what is actually
happening in the police department. There is what
Williams called a "disconnect between policies and
practices." Sometimes this information does not
make its way to the top of the chain of command.
Police officers frequently protect each other. They
sometimes see those in management as people who are
against their interests. These perceptions clearly
need to be changed.

Mr. Williams also discussed several recommendations
for improving the integrity of American police
officers: (1) develop operational strategies for
more positive and creative methods of discipline,
(2) give more time to designing and implementing
intervention strategies for problem officers, and
(3) focus on professional integrity as opposed to
political opportunity.

Fourth Plenary Session

How To Effectively Cope With Influences in the
Police Culture and Organization and in the
Community

This session allowed line officers an opportunity
to voice their perspectives and concerns about
police integrity.

Moderator: John Nicolleti, Police Psychologist,
Denver, Colorado

Panelists: Dr. Ted Hunt, Director, Los Angeles
Police Department Protective League

Sergeant Donald Cahill, Police Department, Prince
William County, Virginia

Captain Ross Swope, Metropolitan Police Department,
Washington, D.C.

Darryl Jones, President, National Law Enforcement
Integrity Institute

------------------------------

"Police unions derive their strength from the
failure of management to protect officers'
interests and to listen to officers' needs." 
--Dr. Ted Hunt

------------------------------

Dr. Ted Hunt began the session by quoting from
Edgar Schein's article, "Coming to a New Awareness
of Organizational Culture." "Organizational culture
is a pattern of basic assumptions and behaviors
adopted in order to provide external adaptation and
internal integration." Many of the traditional
internal strategies for providing external
adaptation and internal integration have not
worked, Dr. Hunt argued. Hence, external forces
(e.g., the Christopher Commission, the ACLU, the
Mollen Commission) have had to intervene. Internal
systems have not met the needs or expectations of
the community. Police unions have arisen as an
internal mechanism to respond to the failures of
these traditional strategies. In the process, they
have provided officers with protection against
unilateral decisionmaking as well as helping
individuals and the organization to cope with
change.

The law enforcement community is in the midst of
enormous change. Many U.S. police forces are based
on a 1940s military model, said Dr. Hunt, one that
was given up by the military long ago. This model
is based on a threat-and-fear management style. In
many American departments, the support functions
have become more important than the basic patrol
functions. The American law enforcement community
needs to do a better job of declaring its major
role: Is it crime fighting, or is it crime
prevention? Law enforcement is in the midst of a
paradigm shift, and it is middle managers who have
the most to lose.

Dr. Hunt suggested that the average police officer
wants two things: a decent wage and appreciation
for a job well done. Officers thrive on
appreciation, but middle managers do not know any
model other than the military model, so they do
what was done to them. The focus must be on quality
control strategies. The values of the organization
must be inculcated starting in the academy and
continuing throughout one's career. Partnerships
must be forged between formal and informal police
organizations. Values must begin at the top, but
they also must be driven from the bottom up; the
energy for change must come from inside and outside
the organization.

In his concluding remarks, Dr. Hunt focused on
ideas that have been implemented in the Los Angeles
law enforcement community:

o A Center for Police Organizational Studies has
been organized. It is a partnership among the L.A.
Police Protective League, the University of La
Verne, and the California Commission on Police
Officer Standards and Training. Its mission is to
study and improve police organizational culture.

o The L.A. Police Protective League has formed a
liaison committee. During its formation effort was
taken to include minority membership. The League
also has negotiated with the city council to begin
reengineering the disciplinary process.

o The L.A. Police Protective League has acted as a
liaison with the Inspector General as well as with
officials from the Department of Justice.

o The L.A. Police Protective League has played a
pivotal role in bringing tax dollars back to city
and county departments.

------------------------------

"The forces that influence an officer to adhere to
professional behavior are the extended family,
trainers, mentors, the behavior of model managers,
and the fear of loss of reputation and employment."
--Sergeant Donald Cahill

------------------------------

Donald Cahill, a senior sergeant with the Prince
William County Police Department, opened by citing
a list of characteristics of a good police officer:
sets an example on and off duty; enforces the law
fairly and impartially; obeys the laws he/she is
sworn to enforce; considers the badge a symbol of
public trust, not a door opener or discount card;
is helpful to others who are in need; acts
prudently and intelligently; takes care with
evidence; shows proper courtroom demeanor; and
attempts to be a leader in all senses of the word.

Sergeant Cahill then asked what positive influences
help to reinforce these characteristics. Among
those he cited were the following: extended family
and the network of values built by them, supportive
teachers, peers whom one must face every day,
military training, senior officers who act as
mentors, the availability of extra training, and
the fear of loss of one's reputation and
employment. Among the negative influences on police
integrity, Sergeant Cahill named the availability
of corrupting influences in the culture. He also
spoke of the poor example given by other officers
as a major influence on recruits coming out of the
academy. Short cuts taken by agencies, lack of
resources to accomplish goals, lack of disciplinary
action against supervisors, supervisors overlooking
misconduct, and supervisors who say, "It is right
because I say it is right," were also cited by
Sergeant Cahill as significant influences that sour
street cops.

At the end of his talk, Sergeant Cahill offered a
few recommendations. First, raise standards. It may
require making the pool bigger as well, but in the
long run, it will be worth it. Second, ethics
training must begin early and be ongoing. Finally,
proper ethics training needs to happen at the
supervisory level as well.

------------------------------

"Mediocrity is the major cause of lack of integrity
in American policing."
--Captain Ross Swope

------------------------------

At the heart of Captain Ross Swope's remarks was a
simple yet profound observation: the major cause in
the lack of integrity in American police officers
is mediocrity. Mediocrity stems from the failure to
hold officers responsible and accountable. It comes
from a lack of commitment, laziness, excessive
tolerance, and the use of kid gloves. Dealing with
mediocrity, said Captain Swope, is perhaps the
greatest contemporary challenge to American law
enforcement. The responsibility for dealing with it
ought to lie with police sergeants, lieutenants,
and captains.

Captain Swope asked: How is mediocrity dangerous?
He answered by providing the example of a bell
curve, the standard distribution curve in
statistical analysis. In a standard bell curve,
there will be few officers with many core virtues
(prudence, trust, courage, effacement of
self-interest, justice, intellectual honesty, and
responsibility). The expectation is that there will
be many officers with some of these core virtues
and, unfortunately, some officers with few of these
core virtues.

The extent of moral influence in a police
department depends on the extent of influence
exerted by the lower and upper portions of the bell
curve. Those who control the extent of this
influence, said Captain Swope, are sergeants,
lieutenants, and captains. Police officers are
extremely sensitive and attuned to what fellow
officers do and do not do. Officers know who files
false injury claims, who the second car is on a
"man with a gun" call, who steps over the line with
excessive force, and who is likely to get lost for
a full tour of duty. When officers in the middle of
the bell curve see that these people are not dealt
with, they sometimes begin to imitate their
behavior. Similarly, when those in the middle of
the bell curve see fellow officers take extra
calls, quickly respond as backup, and testify
clearly and honestly, they begin to imitate them as
well. The principal agents in bringing about this
emulation are sergeants, lieutenants, and captains.
Behavior, concluded Captain Swope, runs both ways.
All but those at the lower end of the bell curve
welcome change.

------------------------------

"The true leader in law enforcement is the one who
has model performance and behavior, not the one
designated by rank or title." 
--Darryl Jones, Retired Police Officer

------------------------------

Darryl Jones cited a number of hindrances to high
ethical performance among American police officers:
recruitment is difficult and the pool is often too
small; standards for measurement are often
nonexistent; harassment, excessive force, and
discrimination are rampant; chiefs don't often have
enough discretion in making moral decisions;
resources are insufficient; the public trust in
American law enforcement is on the decline;
officers sometimes don't reflect the communities
they serve; and the average academy ethics training
consists of one 4-hour block.

Mr. Jones suggested that many of these problems are
not new, nor is the notion of community policing.
In some ways it is another name for putting cops
back on the beat. No matter what strategies are
devised, four areas, said Mr. Jones, need constant
attention if there is to be significant improvement
in police integrity.

1. A community-based approach to problem solving
should be used. Police service must be oriented to
community needs.

2. All departments need internal review and
assessment. Racism, sexism, harassment, and
cronyism need to be dealt with through a systems
approach. The system must include credible internal
assessment.

3. Ethics training needs to be proactive. It should
be less warm and fuzzy and should be done by people
who have credibility with those who are being
taught.

4. The concepts of human dignity, equity, and
social justice have to be considered when judging
promotions and commendations.

Mr. Jones ended with three other connected points:
First, that integrity is event sensitive; second,
that the negative is contagious; and third, that
the "broken window" theory applies in police work.
What these three points have in common, he said, is
that they refer to an important maxim in police
work: Leadership is based on performance and
behavior, not on position.

------------------------------

Fifth Plenary Session

Impact of Internal Systems and External Forces on
Police Integrity

This session explored the many internal subsystems
and external forces that affect police integrity.

Moderator: William Geller, Associate Director,
Police Executive Research Forum

Panelists: Dennis Nowicki, Chief of Police,
Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina

Dr. Sam Walker, Professor of Criminal Justice,
University of Nebraska at Omaha

Robert Scully, Executive Director, National
Association of Police Organizations

Richard Roberts, Chief, Criminal Section, Civil
Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice

Steven Rosenbaum, Chief, Special Litigation
Section, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of
Justice

Richard Williams, Chief of Police, Madison,
Wisconsin

Merrick Bobb, Special Counsel to Los Angeles
County, California

Moderator William Geller opened the fifth plenary
session with a few introductory remarks. He
commented that a decade ago the conference might be
called "Crime in a Free Society." Today it can more
properly be labeled "Freedom in a Crime-Weary
Society."

------------------------------

"One part of the formula for police integrity is an
environment where police officers are involved in
the improvement process." 
--Chief Dennis Nowicki

------------------------------

Chief Dennis Nowicki, the first of the speakers,
shared some strategies and programs he has put in
force as head of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police
Department. He began with two assumptions: that his
department should be a value-driven department, and
that most cops are good and if a chief involves his
or her officers in continual improvement, one can
create the best environment for integrity to
thrive. Many of the ideas he discussed at the
conference were brought forward by other members of
his department. Among those were the following: the
police academy must move from a boot camp to an
adult learning center; and curriculum-based
inservice training must be made available to
everyone in the department.

Among Chief Nowicki's other recommendations were
the following: inservice training should include
core courses as well as electives; quality speakers
and teachers must be brought in from the outside to
help in training and teaching police officers;
internal affairs should develop early warning
systems; the department as a whole should develop
compliance/ethics audits; recruiting and selection
processes could be improved by recruiting on
college campuses; a chaplaincy program is an
important part of building integrity in the
department; and the training of peer counselors is
an effective way to build compliance with the
department's values.

In the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department,
Chief Nowicki has instituted a peer-review
use-of-force committee; no committee member has a
rank above sergeant. The department is also
experimenting with the idea of cross-district
review. Although some concerns about liability
issues and confidentiality have been voiced, Chief
Nowicki concluded, these peer-review boards so far
have had promising results.

------------------------------

"Research on which types of internal audits are
most effective in fostering police integrity is
essential." 
--Dr. Sam Walker

------------------------------

Dr. Sam Walker brought to the session his expertise
on various forms of external audit of police
departments. He began with a review of the facts:
There has been a dramatic growth in the past 20
years in this country in citizen oversight of
police departments; the rest of the
English-speaking world has been slightly ahead of
the United States on this issue; and there are a
variety of external oversight models used
throughout this country. Some cities use an office
of citizen complaint, others an ombudsman. In still
other cities, there is a compliance auditor and, in
Los Angeles, an inspector general. Dr. Walker asked
which of these models seems to have been most
effective. His answer: The jury is still out. 

More importantly, the new American political
environment now more or less demands some form of
external review of police departments. This history
over the past two decades has taught some important
lessons. Dr. Walker suggested that the lesson to be
learned for managers is, "Do it, or have it done to
you." The lesson for union leaders is, "Get on the
train or be left at the station; citizen review is
going to happen." 

Dr. Walker ended his comments with two final
observations. First, merely doing something,
anything, is not enough. This has been shown in
cities like the District of Columbia, where the
civilian review board was a failure, and the New
Orleans Office of Municipal Investigations, which
has failed to curb police misconduct. Second, there
is much to be learned from these failures. If a
viable external review system is to be constructed,
one must first learn why systems that have been
tried have not worked.

------------------------------

"Police departments need to move from punitive
discipline to positive discipline. Police officers
deserve this level of respect." 
--Robert Scully

------------------------------

Robert Scully pointed to the importance of having
union people invited to take part in this
discussion of police integrity. He reminded those
in attendance that the labor movement is not simply
made of officers but also includes many managers.
Most of Mr. Scully's observations came in the form
of the following strategies and ideas for improving
police integrity:

o Move from punitive discipline to positive
discipline.

o All departments should have an open-door policy
for all sworn officers and conduct regular
debriefing sessions, off the record; this should
help identify problem officers at the early stages.

o The Department of Justice should share more
information about police officers under
investigation.

o Equal employment opportunity agreements must be
developed between labor and management in every
department.

o Performance evaluations need to be improved and
should be less subjective.

o All police officers should have collective
bargaining agreements.

o All police officers should have due-process
rights in their departments.

Mr. Scully also made some recommendations about
academy and inservice training:

o The case study approach should be used more than
it is, particularly in line-of-duty death,
use-of-force, and corruption cases.

o The families of police cadets and young officers
must be better integrated into the life of the
department. Stress management training programs are
a must for officers and family members.

Mr. Scully suggested that civilian review boards
are by and large not helpful and should be
abolished. The principal reason he gave is that
civilian review board members usually know very
little about police work. Although Mr. Scully
voiced his opposition to civilian review boards, he
said that if they are to be used, members should
meet minimum qualifications and go through some
training.

------------------------------

"Where a systematic weakness in police integrity
undermines the rule of law and jeopardizes the
rights of citizens, [the Department of Justice]
must intervene." 
--Richard Roberts and Steven Rosenbaum

------------------------------

Richard Roberts and Steven Rosenbaum, of the
Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, are
cochairs of the Attorney General's Task Force on
Police