In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it became evident that police departments would have to implement various forms of community policing programs to assist in the fight against ever increasing crime rates. Departments were, for the most part, chronically short of resources and, when coupled with a developing siege mentality, continued to reinforce an ”us” versus ”them” attitude against the communities they were paid to serve. There was increasing realization that police departments could not by themselves manage the crime scene in their communities without assistance, input, and cooperation from other partners such as community associations, individual citizens, and municipal, state/ provincial. and federal agencies.
It also became evident that a paramilitary, hierarchical policing service would have difficulty participating in such programs without significant changes to its organizational culture and behavior. Police officers were obligated to comply with inflexible operational policies and procedures. This severely restricted their ability to collaboratively develop and implement practical solutions to community problems and supported the perception by police officers that their police services were isolated from the communities they served.
As mentioned earlier, community policing emphasizes individual initiative rather than compliance with inflexible operational policies and procedures. Legal frameworks emphasize the individual rights of citizens with corresponding limitations on police powers. There is a demonstrated need for peace officers to recognize this dichotomy and to be able to resolve ethical issues and ethical dilemmas. To institute an ethics dialogue within an organization, it is necessary to change the culture of an organization.
The adoption of the philosophy of community policing as a service delivery model requires a proactive collaborative approach in partnership with key elements of the communities of interest. The ability to deal proactively with the root causes of crime and social problems should be the desired outcome rather than the traditional reactive response associated with the professional policing model, which emphasizes command and control as the dominant response. A shared leadership style of management should be identified as the sought after approach and the optimum model for the organization.
The initial step would be to establish a working group comprised of a cross section of employees to review existing policy structures with the objective of establishing guidelines to streamline and eliminate redundant policy directives that inhibit the ability of employees to operate in a shared leadership environment. This review would also send the message within an organization that senior management is serious about implementing the required changes and willing to champion the process.
To achieve a shared leadership approach in its service delivery model, a second internal grassroots initiative should be considered. The objective is to develop a mission statement for a department supported by a corporate vision and underlying organizational core values aligned in all respects with the community policing philosophy. This process can take several months and involve extensive consultation and discussion with many employees and other stakeholders representing all categories, from police officers to support staff.
This process can be accomplished by initially training a number of employees in facilitation methods with each facilitator subsequently working in their own units or sections in sessions with individual groups of twenty or thirty people. Each group’s members would look at how they saw themselves within the organization and how the organization was seen within their communities. At the same time, employees would be encouraged to identify contentious issues of concern to them that they felt needed to be addressed. Their concerns would cover a wide spectrum and include everything from administrative issues through to communications and on to operational issues. These issues would be subsequently reviewed by the relevant policy centers. Their responses would then be communicated to all employees in the form of a staff newsletter or other appropriate form of communication.
Training in principle-based leadership such as the Stephen Covey approach on the four roles and seven habits of effective leaders should be implemented. This could be complemented by community policing workshops at which officers discuss issues among themselves and with citizens of the community they serve.
Most police departments have extensive discipline and grievance processes in place. However, in a shared leadership environment, there should be an opportunity for employees and management to work out their differences in an informal environment. An informal, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) initiative should be put in place. It provides a simple formula for building stronger relationships and is another way of doing business. It offers a fresh approach to finding sensible resolutions to internal conflict. With ADR, talk comes first. Early face-to-face discussions between parties are encouraged and quite often offer the best results. The ADR process can also significantly reduce the cost of resolving outstanding conflicts and avoids costly discipline or grievance procedures, which are much more formal and labor intensive.
Finally, in focusing on the operationalization of the mission, vision, and values, and to ensure that the exercise does not become just another ”notice on the wall,” a department should consider the appointment of an ethics adviser. The principal role of this position would be to serve as an adviser to senior management and as an ambassador working with all employees to ensure that the core values are internalized and become part of one’s everyday behavior. The ethics adviser would also be expected to articulate the relationship between the core values and discipline and grievance policies in effect in the department, and to bridge the values-based culture with compliance requirements.
The ethics adviser should be ”a trusted and very senior officer who is respected all around for being of the highest integrity” (Change management 2000, 18). The ethics adviser also must have considerable experience in operational matters and professional standards. People must be able to consult with the ethics adviser on issues affecting both themselves and others, and much time is spent in traveling to various units advocating the inculcating of the mission, vision, and values into each and every activity and meeting employees face to face to explain and discuss the process undertaken. The ethics adviser could also assign the responsibility of championing the dissemination of best practices, the sharing of which is fundamental to the success of a continuous learning organization.
In the words of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) commissioner of the day, ”Ethics is not a subject to be taught or a set of rules to be memorized, but rather a dimension of whom and what we are. We do not teach ethics as a module, rather, we follow a more holistic approach, integrating ethics with diversity, dignity and respect” (Change management 2000, 19). The RCMP core values of integrity, honesty, professionalism, compassion, respect, and accountability, as prescribed by the commitment of the RCMP to its employees and the communities they serve, are in fact the Code of Ethics for the RCMP. Further elaboration on the mission, vision, and values of the RCMP and of the organization itself can be obtained on the RCMP website (http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca).
Community-based policing is the very embodiment of the ethical behavior that police departments should implement. Community policing by principle-based leaders is about partnering with the communities an organization serves in open dialogue to identify policing problems and community-tailored solutions. It means putting the needs of the communities first and empowering all employees to make decisions on the front line. Acceptance of change is never easy. Only through valuing people and developing a truly ethical workplace can the diverse challenges of the coming years and the expectations of a department’s many clients and stakeholders be met.
The process just described can be implemented by most departments to change culture and behavior. Initiatives such as policy reviews to streamline and eliminate redundancy, the use of in-house facilitators to lead discussion groups on organizational renewal, an alignment task force to permit the organization to be more flexible and adaptable, and the training of managers and supervisors in leadership and ADR are valuable tools in such a review process. An ethics adviser within a department could also be an integral player in supporting and promoting ethical behavior, integrity, and decision making and to shift the department from an emphasis on ”rules-based” to a ”values-based” form of leadership and to maintain the appropriate balance between the two. Recruiting and staffing procedures will also have to be reviewed to ensure that a department is employing individuals who emulate those ethics and values adopted by the department.
It is essential in today’s environment to develop and maintain the trust of the community being served by a department. The constant monitoring of police activities by citizens, the media, and government agencies requires police departments to demonstrate that they are concerned with the ethical behavior of their employees. The implementation of an ethics and values program should provide a department with the tools required to inculcate expected behaviors throughout their organization and provide employees with a guide to handle their ethical dilemmas in service to their communities.
