Terrorism, corruption, ethics and conscience

All over the world, criminology faces most challenges owing to its fragile nature of balancing between law enforcement, terrorism, ethics, corruption, and conscience. This has been attributed to the complexity of decisions that have to be made by the police during emergencies or fatalities. Despite the harsh realities, the police officers in the United States have stood loyal to the police mission. Terrorism has had myriad impacts on the police missions because unlike in the past, special units have been formed and trained on how to identify and handle terrorist crimes. According to Los Angeles Police Department, contrary to the expectations of the police officers to curb terrorism, the emergence of internationally orchestrated criminal groups with wide networks and deep rooted financial support, there is a high threat on national security than ever before.

In the long run, police departments such as the California, Los Angeles, New York Police Departments have been impacted by threats posed by the highly adaptive and interconnected terrorist activities in the United States (Michael, 2009, p 52). In response, they have developed networking and adaptive policing strategies aimed at convergence of several policing elements to safeguard personal liberties while curbing terrorism. The best example elucidating the impact of terrorism on the U.S police missions is the incorporation of social scientists and anthropologists into the military units in order to help them understand foreign cultures and their impact on terrorism. In addition to the old strategies such as training on investigative skills, the police have seen the need to change the policing mission from prevention to prediction. This is whereby police offices are trained on how to identify would be terrorists.

With the realization that terrorist activities can be divided into three groups, the first being homegrown terrorism such as the Al Qaeda, the second group are terrorists who operate from the U.S but launch attacks all over the world while the third group has global affiliations to internationally recognized terror groups. Therefore in an effort to promote security, community policing has proved to be a stronghold for all police departments in the U.S. The local communities are encouraged to report any suspicious activities in their areas of residence so that suspects are apprehended through the legal system. The efforts of community policing have proved elusive owing to disagreements raised by human watch groups because it undermines privacy and personal liberties.

The act of safeguarding personal liberties and fighting terrorism is a twofold duty for the policemen. This means one of the two is likely to suffer in the hands of the other. For instance, increased terrorism activities will hurt personal liberties likewise; the fight against terrorism has so far proven to be undermining personal liberties of citizens. This is because with the policing principle on prediction, suspects are arrested and arraigned before courts of law and incase justice is served and the person is found innocent and devoid of terrorist acts, then his personal liberties, ethics and conscience will suffer from the experiences suffered while in custody. This implies that there are several disagreements raised by human rights lobby groups with respect to the behavior and conduct of the police while enforcing the law. Secondly, there has been a disagreement on the move to include anthropologists and social scientists in policing citing that the move would undermine the locals who might be tortured into giving information regarding their knowledge on terrorist activities in foreign countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Police Officers just like civilians are guided by work ethics. Ethics is a moral fabric that holds society together thus it promotes sanity and promotes delivery of justice in both public and private institutions. While administering their duties, police officers interact with people which bring about the most crucial aspect of social stigma. Law enforcement has at times been affected by prejudice caused by biased services provided by police officers. Likewise poor attitude against policing can be another attribute towards social bias among police officers. For example, certain ethnicities have suffered violence caused by the U.S during civil strife and wars against terrorism.

Biased foreign policies, sanctions and immigration issues have also been a leading factor in foreign bias against U.S police officers. To elucidate this further, an increase in terrorist activities in the year 2008 which led to the 9/11 bombing of the Pentagon and the Times Tower by terror groups was a cause for social bias among Muslims and ethnic groups with Arabic decent who claimed that their religion was being targeted by the U.S police. Whereas Islam is a globally recognized religion with more than one billion peaceful followers in Western countries especially the United States, activities of its members have been put under scrutiny for fear of terrorist attacks.

The concept of law demands that all citizens regardless of their ethnicity or religious affiliation be treated fairly and equally but since police officers have to adhere to the police mission, they have no option be to see to it that the laws are applied. This has been a major source of social bias in the U.S police. From the above experience, social stigma has played an active role in influencing police ethics. The effects have further influenced the public opinion in relation to corruption. According to psychologists, it has been identified that police officers who worked under the fear of victimizations often ended up committing the mistake so as to justify the false claims. Likewise, social bias has played a role in increasing corruption in some police units since the officers are more concerned with correcting the bad image bestowed upon them by the public than overseeing the corruption is curbed.

Contrary to the common believe that social stigma could lead to rise in the levels of corruption, the Knapp Commission report on an investigation conducted on the New York Police Department noted that loyal police officers have tried to restore the good image of the police force by fighting corruption by taking legal measures against corrupt citizens (Sanja, 2003, p 41). But despite these efforts, police officers have often practices some sort of corrupt acts such as kickbacks, shakedowns, corruption of authority, opportunistic theft, hazing and police fixing. The effects have been detrimental in the fight against terrorism and further increased social bias (Johnston, 2005, p 23). Because of such acts, police corruption has been a leading social problem across most police units globally thus promoting social bias.

Ethical forces that promote corruption among police officers have been observed to be related to those involved in pushing police officers into abusing their powers. Among these forces is the noble cause corruption which has been defined as a form of misconduct committed by a police officer who attempts to fabricate evidence, manipulate facts on reports and provide false evidences in the courts. According to police ethics such actions are illegal owing to the fact that police officers are supposed to be role models but the fact that good police officers are also prone to such mistakes; it becomes hard to fight corruption among police officers. Thus the same forces that lead police into abusing their power can be seen to push them into corruption. Public corruption is the breach of public trust entrusted in federal, state and local officials as well as accomplices in the private sector.

Among the four components of public corruption identified in the field of criminal justice include police brutality, off duty behavior, biased performance and white collar crimes. The four components are widely associated with how public officers use their power to undermine the personal liberties of people. The practices of police brutality or excessive use of forces are unacceptable according to the police ethics. In addition, public officers are supposed to uphold ethics whether at work or while attending to off duties. Biased performance has been noted in many crimes related to criminal justice where public officers make biased selection of employees basing on race, nepotism and personal prejudice rather than proven track record. The fourth component with is white collar crimes relate to criminal justice where employees conspire to misuse or mismanage public funds for personal benefits (Johann, 2007, p 45). Such practices are against the code of good conduct which dictates ethics at work places. Such corrupt practices have been controlled through public audits to identify swindling of funds, proper vetting of public officers to ascertain their integrity and performance track records before taking up public responsibilities.

Individual conscience is that personal conviction that restrains someone from committing an offence. Conscience is vital in reminding someone that whatever they are about to do is likely to breach a code of conduct or rather it is immoral or unethical. For example, in the first encounters with a mistake, the individual conscience is often loud but consistent performance of the same mistake seers the conscience which then becomes a normal mistake. Police assignments are defined by the responsibilities accorded to police officers by the state organ in charge of internal security. The main duties assigned to police officers include maintaining of law and order among citizens and safeguarding them from aggression. These assignments bestowed upon the police demands that the officers practice ethics in their daily conduct with the people to reduce social bias. This brings up the need for training which will enable police officers to be certain when faced by ethical dilemmas. The best training would be the evidence based training where sample case scenarios describing possible dilemmas are studied by the police officers. The trainers then help them make critical analysis of the dilemmas and from the experience; police officers will be better placed to make ethical decisions.

Reference

Johann, G. (2007). The institutional economics of corruption and reform: Theory, evidence and policy. Cambridge University Press.

Johnston, M. (2005). Syndromes of corruption: Wealth. Power and Democracy. Sidney: Cengage Learning.

Michael, P. (2009). Policing terrorism in the United States: The Los Angeles Police Department’s Convergence Strategy. Los Angeles Police Department: Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau.

Sanja, K. I. (2003). To serve and collect: Measuring police corruption. The Journal of Law and criminology 93