Group Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Group Ethics - Essay Example In the next few pages, this essay will take an in depth look at police crimes, especially police brutality, and determine if an individual officer is likely to report crimes against fellow officers. Most laypeople have heard the term â€Å"blue wall of silence.† It refers to the fact that police officers, colloquially called boys in blue, do not report the crimes of one another, and would, in fact, lie to defend another officer if necessary. The author of â€Å"Police Ethics and Integrity: Breaking the Blue Code of Silence† (Westmarland, 2005) administered a study that showed some evidence to the contrary. She performed a questionnaire survey that revealed â€Å"officers’ attitudes towards certain unethical behaviour† (Westmarland, 2005). The questionnaire asked officers about a wide range of crimes including accepting â€Å"gifts† from business owners, accepting money from citizens caught in traffic violations, but wanting to avoid tickets, stealing items from crime scenes, and committing violent acts against community residents. The results of the study showed that in some instances, officers would feel compelled to report the bad deeds of o ther officers. For example, 97 percent of officers reported they would tell on a fellow officer if he saw him taking money from a found wallet; 98.5 percent of officers reported that would inform against an officer who stole a watch from a crime scene; but only 65.5 percent of those officers thought that hitting a suspect during an arrest was a very serious offense, and a small number of officers felt that punching a suspect was not serious at all. Basically speaking, the blue wall seems to have its own code of ethics. Officers who are violent against citizens are still more acceptable than officers who break the law for financial gain. Racial profiling, or targeting members of a particular ethnic group based on preconceived notions about that group, is thought to be one