, prejudices, animosities, or friendships to influence my decisions.
I will enforce the law courteously and appropriately without fear or favor, malice or ill will, never employing unnecessary force or violence and never accepting gratuities.
I recognized the badge of my office as a symbol of public faith, and I accept it as a public trust to be held so long as I am true to the ethics of the police service.
The above ethics guidelines are often relegated to a secondary position of importance when it comes to actual law enforcement. Well-publicized cases often make us question whether or not officers pay any attention whatsoever to the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics. For example, a black student in New York, unarmed, was brutally gunned down by police officers who claims they thought he was reaching for his gun. Another New York immigrant was sodomized by a plunger and brutally beaten while in police custody. However, these well publicized cases are an overt form of police misconduct and unethical behavior. There are much subtler forms of police misconduct at work that thwart the objective of respecting the constitutional rights of all men to liberty, equality, and justice. Take the following description of a police officer, one who, from an ethical standpoint, is not permitted to allow “feelings, prejudices, animosities, or friendships to influence” his decisions, “If there are two Nissans—one with black males and one with white males—I’ll go with the car with black males in it because my experience is that the majority of lookouts in my district are for black males. Who would you follow? I’m not going with the black guys because I want to get them, or because I think all are criminals. The bottom line is my experience shows that the majority of robberies are committed by black males. I’m p
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