Noble Cause Corruption
Noble Cause Corruption
Every day, communities across the United States unleash trauma, stress, and other difficult situations for police officers. Their job is tremendously important to many aspects of our communities. Sometimes though, police officers lose sight of their ethics towards the communities and its citizens. What factors help a responsible, morally loyal individual to turn or appear to turn to deviance when their job is to help fight corruption and deviance? A term called noble cause corruption refers to situations where a police officer bends the rules to obtain the “right” result or putting a criminal in jail by bending rules or law enforcement procedures. It is also referred to as the Dirty Harry syndrome (Dempsey & Forst, 2011). It involves police officers misusing their law enforcement authority, but typically, is not making decisions for personal gains.
I think that sometimes police officers may have an “us versus them” attitude towards the community because maybe that particular community has a high crime rate so officers are involved with a lot of criminals, maybe more than they are with the law-abiding citizens of their communities. Of course, criminals don’t particularly enjoy being around the police so I am sure the criminals give officers a very hard time. I could see to where that would wear on a police officer’s attitude towards the general public after awhile of being on the force.
Police corruption comes in all forms ranging from drug-related corruption, police deception, sleeping on duty, sex-related corruption, to domestic violence within their families. I feel as when an officer commits an act of corruption, they feel because they are the police and there is a code of silence between police officers, that the corrupt officers may feel like they can commit acts of corruption without getting caught or reprimanded. Drug related corruption will lure the police to look the other away and in return make a lot of money for
Every day, communities across the United States unleash trauma, stress, and other difficult situations for police officers. Their job is tremendously important to many aspects of our communities. Sometimes though, police officers lose sight of their ethics towards the communities and its citizens. What factors help a responsible, morally loyal individual to turn or appear to turn to deviance when their job is to help fight corruption and deviance? A term called noble cause corruption refers to situations where a police officer bends the rules to obtain the “right” result or putting a criminal in jail by bending rules or law enforcement procedures. It is also referred to as the Dirty Harry syndrome (Dempsey & Forst, 2011). It involves police officers misusing their law enforcement authority, but typically, is not making decisions for personal gains.
I think that sometimes police officers may have an “us versus them” attitude towards the community because maybe that particular community has a high crime rate so officers are involved with a lot of criminals, maybe more than they are with the law-abiding citizens of their communities. Of course, criminals don’t particularly enjoy being around the police so I am sure the criminals give officers a very hard time. I could see to where that would wear on a police officer’s attitude towards the general public after awhile of being on the force.
Police corruption comes in all forms ranging from drug-related corruption, police deception, sleeping on duty, sex-related corruption, to domestic violence within their families. I feel as when an officer commits an act of corruption, they feel because they are the police and there is a code of silence between police officers, that the corrupt officers may feel like they can commit acts of corruption without getting caught or reprimanded. Drug related corruption will lure the police to look the other away and in return make a lot of money for
References: 1. Dempsey, J & Forst, L. “Police”.2011. Delmar Publication. Clifton Park, NY.