The public expects its police to enforce the law while obeying the law. To be more precise, the police are expected to enforce the criminal code while adhering to certain procedural constraints. But this represents only our minimum threshold requirement. We further expect our police to comport themselves with honesty, fairness, and impartiality; in short, we expect the police to embody our collective notion of justice. We extend this expectation beyond their uniformed life, to include off-duty activity as well. To summarize using a commonly expressed sentiment, we hold police officers to a ”higher standard” than we might hold ourselves.
Integrity in policing thus includes not only adherence to procedural law, but in a broader sense, adherence to a set of morals that guide officer decision making. The public presumes that officers have been subjected to a rigorous screening, selection, and training process, and that police agencies are vigilant in monitoring and responding to officer behavior. But because policing is such a visible occupation, involving direct personal contacts with citizens, the presumption of integrity can quickly be destroyed by incidents involving poor officer behavior. The public cannot see integrity within the officer; they see integrity as it manifests in officer behavior—how officers carry out their official duties, including their decision making and subsequent actions. The public experiences officer behavior through direct police-citizen contact, and indirectly through exposure to the experiences of family, friends, and acquaintances, as well as media reports of police misbehavior and portrayals in the entertainment industry.
Police integrity is partly perceptual, and officer behavior has direct consequences for public perceptions. Although police administrators, reformers, and others have long recognized this perceptual component of policing, it wasn’t until the United States reached a national crisis of race relations and police legitimacy during the 1960s that public opinion data motivated large-scale change efforts to improve the relationship between the police and the communities served. For example, national surveys cited by the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (1967) provided evidence that while the public as a whole exhibited favorable attitudes toward the police, African Americans consistently gave lower ratings on police effectiveness and conduct. One survey found that while only 9% of the public believed police brutality existed in their community, this overall figure included 35% of African American males. The same survey found that two-thirds of whites believed the police were “almost all honest,” but only one-third of African Americans felt so. Ten percent of nonwhites believed the police were “almost all corrupt,” compared to less than 2% of whites. Another survey found that 15% of African Americans believed that the police in their communities took bribes, compared to less than 4% of whites. In summarizing these findings, the commission wrote that attitudes toward the police are influenced most by the actions of officers, and that community programs will be ineffective to the extent that citizens—particularly minority citizens—are mistreated during contacts with the police.
The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals (1973) considered these findings in writing Standard 1.2: “Every police chief executive immediately should establish and disseminate to the public and to every agency employee written policy acknowledging that police effectiveness depends upon public approval and acceptance of police authority.” Further, police departments should periodically survey the public “… to elicit evaluations of police service and to determine the law enforcement needs and expectations of the community.” Today, many agencies conduct surveys of the public. In 2000, about one-quarter of the roughly thirteen thousand local police departments in the United States, including more than 60% of those serving populations of one hundred thousand or more residents, surveyed citizens during the prior year (Hickman and Reaves 2003). Eighteen percent of all departments, and more than half of the larger departments, inquired about citizen satisfaction with police services. About two-thirds of agencies provided this information to their officers.
The linkage between officer behavior and public perceptions is demonstrated by recent research showing that incidents of police misconduct substantially influence public opinion about the police. For example, Weitzer (2002) examined public opinion trends in Los Angeles and New York prior to and following several negative incidents. In Los Angeles, these included the 1979 killing of an African American woman, the 1991 Rodney King incident, a 1996 videotaped beating, and the unfolding scandals involving the LAPD’s Rampart Division in the late 1990s. A substantial drop in favorable ratings of the police followed each incident. For example, prior to the King incident, the percentage approving of the LAPD’s job performance was 80% among Hispanics, 74% among whites, and 64% among blacks. These figures fell to 31%, 41%, and 14%, respectively, following the King incident and eventually returned to preincident levels, although recovery took longer among Hispanics and blacks as compared to whites.
Integrity in policing is thus best conceptualized in terms of two components: police behavior and the public perception of that behavior. Police behavior within a particular neighborhood, throughout cities, and across the states is interpreted and reacted to by the citizens served. The public can view police behavior as being respectful of the awesome and necessary power entrusted to them, or as a violation of that trust. Integrity in policing at any time and place, whether speaking of a specific officer or an entire agency, is strong when actual police behavior is trustworthy and the public perceives police behavior as trustworthy, and weak when either actual police behavior is untrustworthy or the public perceives police behavior as untrustworthy.
Evidence suggests that how the police treat citizens and procedural justice (that is, the extent to which the process police use to arrive at decisions is viewed as fair) are the most important factors influencing public judgments of police legitimacy, which includes elements of trust and confidence in the police (Tyler 1990; Tyler and Huo 2002). Tyler and Huo argue that citizens are in general more likely to cooperate and defer to police authority when the police are viewed as legitimate, and that citizens will be more likely to accept negative outcomes because they are more focused on fairness in decision making. Their research suggests that the police may be able to influence long-term public perceptions of the police by ensuring fair treatment in citizen contacts.
Citizen allegations of wrongdoing will occur, however, and these events give rise to the timeless question of ”Who will police the police?” Integrity in policing depends on the extent and effectiveness with which officer behavior is monitored, and the adequacy of agency responses to integrity lapses. The monitoring of and responses to integrity lapses are tied to the notion of police accountability; simply stated, integrity in policing is diminished where accountability is weak. Here, accountability can be defined in terms of two aspects: (1) whether the behavior that the public views as a violation of trust is acknowledged by the agency and other governing bodies as a violation of public trust; and (2) whether something is being done to correct the problem (that is, to compensate or restore the damage, punish the wrongdoer, and/or punish the agency to ensure the behavior does not continue to occur). Police accountability at any time and place, whether speaking of a specific officer or an entire agency, is strong when the answers to these two questions are in the affirmative and weak when they are not. Here, too, the issues of treatment and procedural justice are important—allegations of wrongdoing must be taken seriously, and processed fairly.
The monitoring of officer behavior can be described in terms of both internal and external processes, with the traditional internal process being an internal affairs unit or its equivalent. Most large agencies have an internal affairs unit, while smaller agencies have designated personnel to handle the internal affairs function on an as-needed basis. External processes include those of other government agencies (for example, city agencies and, more recently, the federal government) as well as citizen-based entities such as civilian complaint review boards (CCRBs) or similar agencies (see Walker 2001).
A growing trend in police monitoring is the development and use of early warning systems (EWSs) to identify negative officer behavior patterns before they develop into more serious problems. EWSs are essentially data management tools in which information about officers is continuously compiled and analyzed, with the goal of averting potential problems. Some EWSs are fairly simple and operate on a ”three-strikes” approach; for example, the generation of three citizen complaints in a short period of time triggers a ”flag” suggesting that an officer may be having some problems and is in need of assistance. Other EWSs are more sophisticated and take into consideration officer background histories, academy performance, work context, and other factors. EWSs have been around since the late 1970s, when the idea of early warning was focused largely on the use of force, and has expanded into other areas of officer behavior. Recently, EWSs have been recast as early intervention (EI) systems having four key components: performance indicators, a process for identifying officers in need of formal intervention, formal intervention (for example, retraining, counseling), and post-intervention follow-up (Walker 2003).
In sum, integrity in policing is rooted in both police behavior and the public perception of police behavior as trustworthy. Integrity in policing also depends on effective monitoring of officer behavior and the adequacy of responses to integrity lapses. Available evidence suggests that the treatment of citizens, procedural fairness, and attention to public opinion are key issues for agencies committed to the maintenance of integrity in policing.
