Coming Soon - Ethical or Unethical Cops

Coming Soon on Beyond the Big Screen!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is Beyond the Big Screen podcast with your host
Steve Guerra. Yeah, people want to people want to be supportive.
They don't want to support you, you know. And and
the reality is is that most most law enforcement officers
are are are paid a pretty decent salary. I mean,

(00:28):
it varies across the country, and summer are higher than others.
For sure, there's a lot of disparity from from even
within you know, a single state, you know, from agency
to agency. But but uh, you know, we're not at
the times that Antmerst saw where you know, I mean
he was wondering what what dinner was going to be
that night, if if he could, you know, he had

(00:51):
to figure that out because there wasn't anything in the cupboard.
You know that that just isn't happening as much in
most places in the country. Not that there aren't some
places that are severely underpaid and understaffed and under equipped,
that's certainly true. But you know, it comes down to
the it's a big question of ethics, right, I mean,
and if it's a gift that's given, that's not a

(01:13):
very substantial gift and it's merely to express support, you're
probably not going to enter into any sort of ethical
quandary there. But the expectation of a quid pro quo
is where you definitely are. And but it can it
can develop. You know, we've talked before about noble cause corruption.
It can develop from very small things. I mean, the

(01:34):
place that offers twenty five cent coffee for cops to
stay awake on the road. That was part of the
part of the motivation. They don't want people crashing. And
they gave it to the ambulance drivers and the bread
drivers and the taxi drivers too, anybody who's driving at night.
But it was mostly targeting the cops. And hey, if
you come in and get your twenty five cent a
cup of coffee and you knock out a couple of

(01:56):
reports and you're there for thirty minutes on a break
slash working break, odds of somebody walking in and sticking
the place up while you're sitting there are exceedingly low.
And so there is a benefit that there's a quid
pro quote that's occurring there. A little bit is that unethical?
I mean, I don't think so, but you could make
that argument, and certainly it's something that we have discussed

(02:19):
in leadership classes when we get to the ethics pro
portion of the course. But now imagine that you you know,
the owner comes in every morning and says, hey, guys,
how's it going, And then he goes in the back
and he does his books or whatever, and so they
know who the owner is of this place. And now
he gets stopped for a dui. You know, does he

(02:39):
expect that you're going to give him a break? Do
you want to give him a break because he's a
good guy and you know, and he's treated you well.
I mean the human response is yes. But is that ethical?
Even just stepping back to the previous scenario, I'm in
there for half an hour writing my reports, and I'm
there every night for half an hour writing my reports,

(03:01):
and so they're getting half an hour of coverage essentially
of protection, and the Texaco half a mile away is
getting zero. Is that fair? Is that ethical? I mean,
I'm not saying it is unfair, and I'm not saying
it is unethical. I'm saying those are questions that if
you examine it from an objective viewpoint, you have to ask.

(03:23):
And but it's all happening in the human arena, right,
and so you know it's not We're not robots, and
neither is the public. And so the answer isn't always
clear cut. Now, somebody giving you, you know, hunterre bucks
to not book them into jail, that's a different story, right,
I Mean, that's you know, uh, you know, or cops

(03:45):
shaking people down for protection money or something. I mean,
that's there's that's obviously not good, that's obviously criminal, that's
obviously an ethics violation or whatever. Those are the easy ones,
you know, the deep water is very easy to spot.
But it's it's when you're in the shallow end of

(04:05):
the ethics pool that you have to, you know, ask yourself,
is this ethical or isn't it? And different people in
different areas of the country, Uh, will differ. M m
m m m m m m m m m hmmm.