Table Of ContentENHANCING POLICE INTEGRITY
Enhancing Police Integrity
CARL B. KLOCKARS
University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
SANJA KUTNJAK IVKOVIC´
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
M. R. HABERFELD
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA
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In memory of Carl B. Klockars
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
PREFACE xi
1. THE IDEA OF POLICE INTEGRITY 1
2. MEASURING POLICE INTEGRITY 13
3. PROFILES OF INTEGRITY 39
4. THE CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA,
POLICE DEPARTMENT 63
5. THE CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG,
NORTH CAROLINA, POLICE DEPARTMENT 83
6. THE ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA,
POLICE DEPARTMENT 111
7. THE SECOND SURVEY 137
8. RECRUITMENT, SELECTION, AND TRAINING 165
9. PROCESSING CITIZEN COMPLAINTS 183
10. METING OUT THE DISCIPLINE 201
11. CIRCUMSCRIBING THE CODE OF SILENCE 229
12. ENHANCING POLICE INTEGRITY 251
INDEX 271
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Wewouldliketothankmostsincerelythemanypoliceofficersandadministrators
whogenerouslysharedtheirexperiences,opinions,andattitudesaboutthecomplex
issuesofpoliceintegritywithusduringthe18monthsofourfieldwork.Thisbook
certainlywouldnotcometofruitionwithouttheirhelp,support,andcandor.Thanks
are especially due to the police officers who served patiently as members of our
study groups.
We are very grateful to the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) for providing
substantial funding for the project (Grant Number 97-IJ-CX-0025). This book is
based on the Final Report we submitted to the NIJ in 2001.
WewouldliketotakethisopportunitytojoinCarl’sfamilyinexpressingdeepest
regret that Carl passed away before the book was completed and went to the
publisher. Although the manuscript was in its final stages at the time of Carl’s
untimely death, we have missed the special, unique touch that Carl brought to
the table.
ix
PREFACE
A series of events in the 1990s drew public attention to police misconduct. The
events ranged from the corruption investigation into the NYPD by the Mollen
Commission,therevealingtestimonyofMarkFuhrmanintheO.J.Simpsontrial,to
thequestionabledeathsatRubyRidgeandWaco.Andthen,therewastheRodney
King incident. The 68-second excerpt from the videotape recording of the Rodney
King beating on March 3, 1991 was broadcast around the world. This high-profile
beating by the LAPD officers started the chain of events that included a state
criminal trial, a federal criminal trial, and a civil trial, as well as the establishment
of the Christopher Commission to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the
excessiveuseofforcebytheLAPD,theresignationoftheformerLAPDPoliceChief
DarrelGates,andtheriotsthatleft54peopledeadandmillionsofdollarsindamage.
In a Gallup Poll conducted shortly after the Rodney King incident,1 more than
two-thirds of the respondents in a nation-wide sample thought that incidents like
this happened frequently across the country. Yet, this perception is quite contra-
dictorytotheresultsofthe1999BureauofJusticenationwidesurveyofmorethan
80,000 respondents about police-citizen contacts.2 The BJS survey found that the
respondents who had contact with the police reported that the police used force
rarely, in less than 1 percent of all encounters and excessive force in only 0.76
percent of all the encounters.
In a study measuring the level of confidence/trust in various professionals to do
the right thing,3 policing was the profession that suffered from the largest drop in
confidence between 1980 and 1995. Whereas in 1980 police officers were in the
middle of the scale (ranking 5th of 12) and closely following pharmacists, clergy,
firefighters, and teachers, in 1995 they were at the bottom of that scale (ranking
10th of 12), right before lawyers and politicians. Does this decline signal a crisis
in public confidence in the police?
The traditional emphasis on police misconduct—be it police corruption, use of
excessiveforce,policetestilying,orsleepingonduty—andtheissuesofitscontrol
(or the lack thereof) traditionally dominated the public and police administrators’
views. Such an approach was mostly individualistic, focusing on a few individual
police officers—“rotten apples”—and their misconduct. Investigations conducted
1 GallupPollMonthly(1991).AmericansSayPoliceBrutalityFrequent,No.306:53–56.
2 Langan P. A., Greenfeld, L. A., Smith, S. K., Durose M. R., & D. J. Levin (2001). Contacts
between Police and the Public: Findings from the 1999 National Survey. Retrieved on April
8,2006fromhttp://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpp99.pdf#search=‘police%20citizen%20contact%
20survey%20langan’.
3 SeeVicchio,S.J.(1997).EthicsandPoliceIntegrity:SomeDefinitionsandQuestionsforStudy.In
Gaffigan, S.J., & McDonald, P.P. (Eds.). Police Integrity: Public Service with Honor. Washington,
D.C.:U.S.DepartmentofJustice,p.13.
xi
xii Preface
byvariousindependentcommissions4andsocial-sciencestudies5overatwo-decade
periodfromtheearly1970stotheearly1990sshiftedthefocusfromtheindividual-
isticapproachtotheorganizationalapproachbyincorporatingfactorsbothinternal
and external to a police agency that potentially contribute to the extent and nature
of police misconduct within the agency.
However,tryingtomeasuretheextentofpolicemisconductisquitechallenging;
participants in a corrupt transaction, police officers and citizens alike, have no
reasonstoreportittothepoliceordescribetheirexperiencetotheresearchers.On
the contrary, they have incentives not to do it. Witnesses at the scene may lack
credibility(e.g.,peoplewithcriminalrecords)ormayadheretothecodeofsilence
(e.g., fellow police officers) and thus be quite unlikely to come forward.
Two prior projects experienced a range of challenges when attempting to ask
policeofficersabouttheextentandnatureofpolicemisconduct.Fabrizio6 surveyed
experiencedpoliceofficersattendingtheFBI’sNationalPoliceAcademyand,under
the veil of confidentiality, asked them to describe incidents of police corruption in
theiragencies.Noneoftherespondentsprovidedananswertothisquestion.Several
otherstudiestackledthechallengeofmeasuringpolicecorruptionbyaskingpolice
officers about the frequency of corruption in their agencies. These challenges are
illustrated by the Department of Justice study of police behavior.7 The original
grant to the Ohio Governor’s Office of Criminal Justice Services was expanded to
include the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority and the Pennsylvania
Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Because the Fraternal Order of Police in
Pennsylvaniaputastrongpressureandencouragedpoliceofficersnottoparticipate,
thestudywasdroppedinPennsylvaniabeforeitevenbegan.8Similarly,theFraternal
Order of Police in Chicago decided not to endorse the Illinois project in Chicago,
forcing the researchers in Illinois to exclude the Chicago Police Department—
whichrepresentsapproximatelyone-quarterofthefull-timemunicipalpoliceforce
in Illinois—from the project.9
4 See,e.g.,[KnappCommission]CommissiontoInvestigateAllegationsofPoliceCorruptionandthe
City’s Anti-Corruption Procedures (1972). Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption. New
York:GeorgeBraziller;PennsylvaniaCrimeCommission(1974).ReportonPoliceCorruptionand
theQualityofLawEnforcementinPhiladelphia.SaintDavids,PA:PennsylvaniaCrimeCommission;
[ChristopherCommission]IndependentCommissionontheLosAngelesPoliceDepartment(1991).
Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department. Los Angeles:
IndependentCommissionontheLosAngelesPoliceDepartment;[MollenCommission]NewYork
CityCommissiontoInvestigateAllegationsofPoliceCorruptionandtheAnti-CorruptionProcedures
ofthePoliceDepartment(1994).CommissionReport.NewYork:MollenCommission.
5 See,e.g.,Sherman,L.(1978).ScandalandReform.Berkeley,CA:UniversityofCaliforniaPress.
6 Fabrizio,L.E.(1990).TheFBINationalAcademy:AStudyoftheChangeinAttitudesofThoseWho
Attend.Chicago,IL:OfficeofInternationalCriminalJustice,UniversityofChicago.
7 Martin, C. (1994). Illinois Municipal Officers’ Perceptions of Police Ethics. Chicago, IL: Illinois
CriminalJusticeInformationAuthority,StatisticalAnalysisCenter.
8 Id.
9 Id.
Preface xiii
The events in the 1990s not only eroded the level of public confidence
in the police, but also prompted the Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services (COPS) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ)—the research arm of
the U.S. Department of Justice—to hold a national symposium to address this
emerging problem. While struggling with the title of the COPS/NIJ conference,
the organizers were debating whether to use the term “officer discretion,” “police
accountability,” or “police integrity.” The traditional approach—to select the
title that would either discuss police misconduct, ethics, or use of discretion—
would center the discussion about various forms of misconduct and the ways
of controlling or limiting it. A natural tendency would be to end up talking
about events that signal the lack of integrity. As Hickman and colleagues put
it, “[a]ll too often we infer integrity from its demonstrated absence. That is to
say, research that focuses on corruption infers ideas about integrity absent its
measurement.”10 At the end, the COPS/NIJ team decided to use the term police
integrity as the guiding theme for the conference. Such a choice has far reaching
consequences, as the organizers put it while discussing the significance of the
event,11
The 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 dimension. 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 on the broader
domainofdevelopingahealthyorganizationthatwouldservetoreinforceandmaintainthe
goodcharacterandconstructivemotivationsofmanyoftheindividualsjoiningtheranksof
lawenforcement.
Another advantage of using the term integrity over discretion or ethics is
that integrity can be a feature of individuals, as well as small groups (e.g.,
patrol districts, shifts) or, for that matter, the entire police organizations. Conse-
quently, we can discuss the level of police integrity of a particular police
officer, within a specific patrol district, or within the whole police agency.
Finally, compared to the problems associated with the empirical study of
police misconduct directly,12 studying police integrity is prone to far fewer
problems.
In July of 1996, under the auspices of the National Institute of Justice and
the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, some 200 police leaders,
politicians, lawyers, and researchers attended a three-day National Symposium
10 Hickman,M.,Piquero,A.R.,&J.R.Greene(Eds.)(2004).PoliceIntegrityandEthics.Belmont,
CA:Wadsworth/ThomsonLearning,p.1.1.
11 Greenberg, S. F. (1997). Executive Summary. In Gaffigan, S.J., & P.P. McDonald (Eds.). Police
Integrity: PublicServicewithHonor. Washington,D.C.: U.S.DepartmentofJustice. Retrievedon
April08,2006fromhttp://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/163811.pdf,p.v.
12 See,e.g.,Fabrizio,supranote6;Knowles,J.J.(1996).TheOhioPoliceBehaviorStudy.Columbia,
OH:OfficeofCriminalJusticeServices.
