Signature Assignment: Create a Code of Ethics Plan
Instructions
Imagine that you were hired as the police chief for the Small Town police department. Small Town is a community of about 2,000 citizens in a rural area. Your police department consists of 20 sworn officers and 10 civilian support personnel.
Talking to the citizens and assessing the citizen complaints and internal affairs files, you discover several ethical violations.
- While on duty, police officers attend to personal business such as shopping and dropping and picking up kids from school, resulting in longer response times to 911 calls.
- During lunchtime, patrol vehicles are parked at the same restaurant because the owner provides free lunches to police.
- An anonymous caller reported that Officer Frank racially profiles all minorities driving on Main Street on Friday nights. He stops only vehicles driven by Hispanics and African Americans, and then searches their vehicles without probable cause.
- Officers can work additional security details at the local high school football games. You examine the shift schedule and notice that Officers Hall and Jones signed up and are being paid for the detail at the high school football game, while also being paid for their regular patrol shift, thus double dipping on pay.
- You learn that the two narcotics officers are taking bribes from the local drug dealer to avoid patrolling the area when the drug deals are being made.
Using your critical thinking and knowledge from this course, you present solutions to solve these problems and to transform the agency into an ethical law enforcement agency.
The assignment is three-fold:
- PowerPoint Presentation
- Create a Code of Ethics for all employees, sworn officers, and civilian personnel. Be sure to use the knowledge from the course, including all aspects of the acceptable ethical behavior of law enforcement officers. Consider the ethics system and ethical theories that you discussed in Week 1. Signature Assignment: Create a Code of Ethics Plan
- Video
- Create a short video that introduces your code of ethics. The video should be about 3 minutes in length and contain the key concepts of your code of ethics. You may use technology to create and upload your video.
- Action Plan
- Design a 10 to 12-page action plan to implement the Code of Ethics. These elements are required for the action plan for the code of ethics:
- Ensure all personnel is aware of the Code of Ethics and the consequences of violations.
- Incorporate enforcement methods for violations of the Code of Ethics.
- Create a breach of violation of the code of ethics letter. Choose one of the unethical behaviors listed in the scenario as an example.
- Improve ethics training provided to the officers. Provide two options for ethics training, and then explain why you chose that type of training.
- Generate an assessment to measure the officer’s ethical behavior in the future.
Length: 10-12 pages
References: Include a minimum of five scholarly resources.
Signature Assignment: Create a Code of Ethics Plan