Preventing Misconduct and Promoting Wellbeing in Police Forces: Part 1

Misconduct in police forces can have far reaching consequences. In the first of two articles and of interest to all SCT readers, Mario Pierobon investigates what misconduct is, the factors that can lead to it, how it can be countered and by doing so, promote workforce wellbeing more generally.

The role of the police officer is very a critical one to ensure the living of a safe and secure society. Police officers, however, are often exposed to extreme circumstances and, in particular in areas with high crime rates, they are required to handle difficult situations which are unpredictable and can easily escalate. This distinctive working environment can lend itself to police misconduct.

Efforts implemented by police departments play an important role in preventing police misconduct. In this first part of a two-part article, we shall attempt a definition of police misconduct, identify the leading factors of misconduct, address ways to recognise the leading factors and prevent misconduct, as well as culture change management.

Defining Police Misconduct

Second Lieutenant Julian Berger III of the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office observes that when a community considers police misconduct, the terms most frequently applied are corruption and excessive force. “Corruption is the appropriate term when law enforcement personnel use their position, authority, or power to accomplish an unlawful act. Egregious behaviour by law enforcement, however, is not limited to corruption. Law enforcement officers may breach their public trust by engaging in criminal conduct that may not rise to the level of corruption,” he said. “It is entirely possible that personnel engage in criminal activity on-duty without invoking their authority, or they may engage in criminal conduct off-duty that is likewise not related to their positions as law enforcement officers. While corruption and criminal activity are examples of egregious misconduct; law enforcement professionals are more frequently guilty of violating an organisation’s rules, policies, and procedures.”

In Canada, misconduct is defined in the Police Services Act (PSA). The term has broad application, including insubordination, neglect of duty, deceit, breach of confidence, corrupt practice, unlawful or unnecessary exercise of authority or use of force, damage to clothing and equipment, discrimination, abusive or insulting conduct, incivility, withholding a complaint, and acting in a manner prejudicial to the reputation of the police service, according to the Ottawa Police Service (OPS). “Every new police officer is required to swear an Oath of Office under O Reg 268/10 of the Police Services Act”, says the OPS. “While the disciplinary process and the conduct of investigations do not normally focus on causation, it is recognised that there is often a connection between member wellness and misconduct. Underlying wellness issues tend to contribute to poor decision making.”

Origins of Misconduct

Ervin Staub, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and founding director of the Psychology of Peace and violence programme, highlights that there is a matter of obedience and disobedience and some of the police officers bring with them this obedience orientation and demanding obedience as part of their personality. “But they also learn as part of their training that they are the authority, and they must be obeyed.”

As to how the leading factors of police misconduct originate, Berger observes that unlike other professions, law enforcement personnel have constitutional enforcement authority granted to them to help aid in serving the communities they are sworn to protect and serve. “They have invested upon them immense legal authority to detain, search, and arrest without first seeking approval from a neutral party, magistrate, or their own supervisors. Error or misconduct may originate through a lack of constitutional policing, improper supervision, improper training, and not holding personnel accountable for their actions,” he commented.

Ronald Weitzer, professor of sociology at the George Washington University, observes that there are 18,000 police departments in the United States, and about 800,000 police officers and that, therefore, it is difficult to generalise about the causes of misconduct. “However, misconduct correlates with opportunities (such as engaging in corruption), a lack of robust accountability mechanisms and insufficient penalties for violations of the law or department rules, and weak rewards for proper conduct, such as peer intervention when another officer is engaged in misconduct, as in the George Floyd case.”

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A peculiarity of the role of the police officer is that they must learn to deal with certain groups of people. “One way they learn that is this it is part of the culture. When they deal with people who engage in criminal or inappropriate behaviour, as far as the police is concerned, they work in neighbourhoods where there may be a lot of minority and then they generalise from that experience with some people to every member of that group,” said Staub. “They come to see members of that group in a negative light, and that makes it more likely to engage with them in harsh ways.”

Another factor that leads to police misconduct is that police officers may have been themselves abused, mistreated, or badly treated, according to Staub. “So, they become very sensitive to anything that in any way challenges them or insults them. And they strike hard in response. Another thing is that exercising force or power over somebody else can fulfil a basic need for the capacity to exercise control over events, to create a positive identity as a strong and powerful person. So, they may fulfil these important needs by power over others.”

An influence is also exercised by the group culture of the police officers, Staub observed. “If there are other people in the group who engage in unnecessary harmful behaviour, police officers may come to engage in unnecessary harmful behaviour too. Individuals and whole groups learn by doing, as a result of their own actions,” he says. “If they harm people, then they justify that by further devaluing those whom they harm and thinking that they are serving the common good. And so all this becomes part of the culture and therefore they are more likely to engage in unnecessary harmful behaviour."

Recognition and Prevention

According to Berger, ways to recognized in time and mitigate the leading factors of police misconduct include constitutional policing, proper supervision, ongoing training, and personnel accountability through enforcement of existing rules, policies, and procedures. “All these serve to create a sustainable atmosphere of trust. This methodology can serve as the foundation for professionalism and to recognise and root out acts of misconduct.”

At OPS, the Professional Standards Unit works closely with the Wellness section in real time to provide member support when wellness issues are identified during the course of misconduct investigations. “This includes an incident-by-incident assessment of risks to the member, the police service and the public from a wellness perspective.”

Weitzer observes that misconduct can be limited to a few officers in a department or be more widespread in a particular unit or precinct. “One reform that has some potential to curb misconduct are early intervention systems, where officers who accumulate a threshold of complaints from citizens or who otherwise get flagged for violations are identified and undergo counselling or some other corrective action to prevent future misbehaviour,” he said. “Training has a more limited impact. Once officers graduate from the academy, it does not take long for them to be re-socialised by fellow officers as part of the police subculture. Periodic retraining, every two years, can help, and greater emphasis on de-escalation techniques and community sensitivity. But what really matters is whether officers see evidence that other officers are held accountable for misconduct as well as rewards for proper policing. In short, training has only a limited impact on how officers engage with members of the public.”

Culture Change Through Training

One important preventive measure is culture change, according to Staub. “Part of the police culture is that one is supposed to support one’s fellow officer no matter what the fellow officer is doing. So, if the fellow officer engages in harm doing, then one is supposed to, at the very least, not interfere and possibly also engage in harm doing in support of that officer.”

Staub has been involved in the development of two police officer training programmes to prevent harmful behaviour on the side of police officers, the programmes are called Ethical Policing is Courageous (EPIC) and Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE). “One of the things that we do as part of the training is to rework what a good collaboration with a fellow officer is. There are many benefits to turning this around and looking at good collaboration and stopping the fellow officers from harm doing rather than supporting it,” he said. “The first people we train are superior officers so that they sign up for the training and rather than punishing people who intervene and stop harmful behaviour by a fellow officer, they encourage this, and they support it. So, for example, the Superintendent in New Orleans, after he went through the training, wore the little label that we give everybody at the end of the training and this let his officers know that if he did anything inappropriate, they could intervene with him.”

Another important element in training is to provide the officers with skills in intervening. “We train officers to intervene very mildly first, for example, in New Orleans, when an officer got heated and was about to attack demonstrators, another officer just put his arm around the shoulder of that officer, calmed that person down and repeated to that person the acronym of the training, which was ‘EPIC’. As a result, the person was able to calm down,” said Staub. “But then, if necessary, one has to escalate. If that is not effective, one has to possibly tell his/her fellow ‘Ok, I am taking over here now’ or, if necessary, bodily restrain the fellow officer.”

It is also effective for officers to learn to turn to other officers if they are present and intervene together in case of unnecessary harmful behaviour. “When some officers who may be inclined to engage in unnecessary harmful behaviour know that fellow officers rather than coming to support them, are going to intervene in some way and try to stop them, then this makes it much less likely that they are going to do anything harmful because none likes to be humiliated by being prevented by fellow officers from doing certain things,” said Staub. “What leads people to help other people and, in this case, to stop them from harmful actions is a feeling of responsibility for others. This call can come from the person him/herself, from the inner characteristics, or it can come from the environment. So, we focus on officers about their responsibility.”

Indeed, training plays a key role in mitigating misconduct. “Poor or ineffective training may be viewed as contributors to misconduct. This could also include insufficient academy or in-service training. In general, academy training alone is inadequate and must be combined with ongoing reinforcement of the agency mission and values. Most jurisdictions mandate that officers receive a specific number of hours of training annually or bi-annually to maintain their certifications,” said Berger.

The second part of this story will illustrate other training items to prevent police misconduct, including the role of bystanders, and will illustrate best practices for police support programmes.

References

The quotes by Second Lieutenant Julian Berger III of the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office are based on the publications below: