Secrecy Is Loyalty

...Or Is It

Loyalty in the police force appears to be very strong and obvious. The police are seen to be so close to one another that there are comments that describe the police force as being a “brotherhood” or “family”(Barker, Carter: 1994, 50). A typical police organization being a bureaucratic system also shows signs of a particular social organization due to the majority of the police personnel being involved in and sharing significant activities such as their police duties (ibid). Each individual has their own history of their continued interaction with peers based on the way in which they carry out their duties. It is this clannishness that gives each police member their own particular identity in relation to such interaction. This solidarity that police members share enables these members to share special norms and values with a particular jargon (ibid, 52). The solidarity of police members is one which could be described as a subculture, and sociologists such as Strecher (1967) have stated that people within a subculture are to protect themselves and their peers.

Loyalty would have to be one of the most powerful notions in protecting oneself and peers, because “we rely on those whom we believe to be loyal to us” (Kleinig: 1996, 41). When friends stick together they are strong and loyalty is one of the reasons why social groups stay together. This notion of loyalty is also present within the police force, and that “there is very little more important in the police force than mateship” (McLean: 1995), but there are many more factors and greater risk when discussing loyalty within the policing profession. The police force has rules, regulations, codes of conduct, ethical standards and the like, which place all members of the police sub-culture under pressure to do what is correct. Some members think that being loyal to their workmates is correct, some to their job, and others to themselves, and the list goes on.

Skolnick (1966) states that there is a recurring theme in how a person’s work is affected whilst working in their preferred job. The members of police are regarded as being socially isolated from the society and community they serve and they draw a large number of friends from their police groups (ibid). It is because of this relative isolation from outside organizations that police members are seen to become more and more involved with their own police groups which indicate “that police officers are extremely reluctant to accuse other officers of wrongdoing” (Goldsmith: 1995). This involvement gives a lot of support and approval to workmates and are then subjected to large amounts of peer group pressure, influence and control.

Police officers have to be loyal to many areas affecting their lives. Members of the police have different ideas of who they have to be loyal to and for what reasons. A liberal democratic society demands a utilitarian approach to policing in relation to the greater good for the greater number – that being the public. A police member’s loyalties could be any combination in relation to their family, job, job standards, fellow officers, and the public and also to themselves. Personal loyalty as Souryal and McKay (1995, 44) explain is more complex because it requires for police officers to make choices to specific personnel for long periods of time, which can suspend their judgement about what is right and wrong. Police can be loyal to all of the above without being disloyal to any others. An officer’s loyalty could be towards his job and job standards which would include taking his job very seriously and keeping with in the guidelines of all oaths, codes of conduct and the law. This mentality is a perfect example of how police should act in that they are satisfying the job requirements and therefore “the quality of police service is ultimately dependent upon the individual police officer”(Stoddard: 1972, 344). An officer with these values would be seen by other officers as a threat insofar as if those officers are to put one foot out of place then they could be reported to their superiors. With the police force being described as being a subculture this idealistic officer would soon become an outcast of the group and ultimately banished from the group. Exclusion from the group because of their ideals and morals, is done in order to protect the group and its credibility and thus the rejection of certain officers or acts done by the police force is considered to be disloyal. But Kleinig (1996: 43) suggests that the officer who is totally loyal and dedicated to his job and its values is not disloyal to his colleagues if the officer reports them as behaving or engaging in certain acts that are not supported by the job - an example being corruption. If the ideal officer had good reason to report the corrupt activities of their workmates then Kleinig (ibid) sees this as being correct in that the loyalty that the idealistic officer had placed in his workmates has now been drawn out of them because of their wrongful behaviour and as a result the officer is then considered not to have been disloyal to their peers but rather loyal to his job and all that it stands for. A deontoligical approach to these issues might be in order as it would look at the motive and intent and would seek the need for universal rules in relation to unethical behaviour. These rules may already be a part of certain oaths and codes of conduct which each officer swears by but officers must ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you’ whilst acting for the greater good rather than their fellow workmates.

Another aspect of loyalty is whose beliefs are you loyal to? If you are loyal to your own beliefs that are a part of your conscience then you have to ask yourself whether or not your decisions are benefiting yourself in relation to accepting money, gaining promotion through suspect means or by making a decision that would cover up wrongful behaviour. If this is the case then you are considered to be disloyal to the public, your career and the like because this would indicate that an egoism ethical approach has been taken which only benefits the personnel concerned and is thus a rejected ethical framework. If such a decision was to be made that included the ideals of the police service and was seen to benefit the public, the government or the service’s credibility then this is regarded as loyalty in the true sense of the word. Assistant Commissioner Neil O’Loughlin said that he wants people who would benefit the organization rather than themselves (Miller, Mayhead: 1996, 6).

An officer who is loyal to his peers to such an extent that the officer secretly knows of unethical behaviour that their peers are conducting in and just continues to maintain secrecy about such matters is considered to be loyal to peers but, in being so, are in fact disloyal to their job and the public, to name a few. This officer who is seen as being loyal to their corrupt colleagues and will do so whatever the circumstances require is believed to be one who can be trusted by his\her peers and therefore a part of the social organization. This type of loyalty is labelled as being ‘blind loyalty’ and is regarded as being the type of loyalty that makes corruption and other unethical behaviour continue to grow. People who are continually being led blindly to believe that their loyalty to his/her peers is correct does not realize that loyalty is all but one virtue within the equation. Such virtues as honesty, truth, and doing what is right by the organization are also considered essential for the maintenance of a good life, but personal loyalty to workmates and superiors is not particularly necessary to the achievement of public good (Souryal, McKay: 1995, 45). Blind loyalty and unethical behaviour involves a certain amount of self-sacrifice (Kleinig: 1996, 43). Self sacrifice that led a Gordon Liddy to accept a prison sentence rather than tell the truth or attempt to defend himself (Personal loyalty). As discussed earlier there are many loyalties that officers are guided by. These loyalties can be directed to certain aspects of one’s life insofar as your own personal beliefs or led blindly by your peers, but the usual types of loyalties are those which overlap each other such as being loyal to your conscience, the public, the values of the police service etc. However when there are many loyalties one has to realise that often difficult ethical situations arise where a conflict of loyalties might occur. For instance, if you choose to be loyal to the public then your partner if a wrongdoer may suffer and vice versa. When an officer is confronted with a conflict of loyalties he must understand that “loyalty can be misguided, that it can foster harm if directed to evil ends”(Mehler:1996, 57).

People hold secrets for one reason and one reason only and that is to withhold information from a particular person or group. People within the police force often keep information secret in order to protect certain aspects of the force, whether it being certain people’s unethical behaviour or the force as a whole for a particular wrongdoing.

Secrecy can take various forms. People can just not say a word about anything and pretend that nothing has or is happening which means that only a few people would know for it to remain secret. Another is being able to sweep certain information ‘under the carpet’ by saying words like ‘don’t worry about it,or, it’s nothing much’ which indicates that a certain number of people know that something is odd or wrong but cannot distinguish whether or not is it unethical behaviour or not. Another response is that of total deception in relation to saying something different in order to keep certain information secret and not allowing the real issue to surface.

Secrecy is a means of identifying whether something could be wrong within the police force. Of course it can be positive when police remain secret about operational matters such as future drug busts or undercover work. However, other than these instances, there is no need to be secret about behaviour within the police force that is of an unethical standard because all sworn officers are to conduct their duties in a professional manner in accordance with the code of conduct, ethical standards and other stipulated rules and regulations. If however there were certain personnel keeping secrets then it could be assumed that these secrets are of a destructive or unethical nature to either the force and what it stands for and/or to particular officers regardless of rank (Kleinig: 1996, 44). Therefore one can assume that police officers do not need to keep certain information secret unless it includes public knowledge of criminal activity within the community. But there should not be the need for secrets between peers when it includes the behaviour and wrongdoings of police members therefore striking out any form of corruption and promoting the need for internal informants to come forward. The notion of loyalty is still heavily regarded, but, it shifts from being loyal to your colleagues to being loyal to the public, the force and the values of what the force is trying to promote. So secrecy is by no way considered to be loyalty amongst peers because you are then disloyal toward the greater good, being the public who expect a high standard of policing, and also other police officers who are dedicated and also loyal to their job.

True ethical behaviour is not always what we hear of and in the not so distant past there have been cases where officers have spoken out about unethical behaviour in the police force. This is evident in the case of Karl Konrad and the Window Shutter Scam. Konrad was uncomfortable when he was “urged to accept one of the $100 kick-backs as a way of proving he was ‘trustworthy’ to his fellow officers” (Ryle: 1995). Konrad reported the incident, doing what was considered to be correct and ethical to only be verbally abused and what he describes as “10,000 police officers wanting to punch my head in”(ibid). The police Internal Investigation Department (IID) now called the Ethical Standards Department (ESD) stated by Commander Tom McGrath that internal informants are encouraged, looked after and are respected for their courage (Miller, Mayhead: 1996, 7). In the case of Karl Konrad “unpaid sick leave scarcely seems an adequate gesture by any police force committed to protecting whistleblowers”(Goldsmith: 1995).

It can be seen that loyalty within the police force can place pressure on officers and become a most difficult issue to address. When listing remedies or recommendations on what officers should do in certain ethical situations, thought has to be given to the public and other officers of the force. The greater good have to benefit when an officer is to make an ethical decision. Therefore officers that resort to secrecy in order to improperly protect and remain ‘loyal’ to their peers are doing themselves, the force and the public an injustice. Secrecy is certainly not considered to be loyalty, and can only be considered to be so if it properly arises in a selfless environment and protects the greater good.

me your thoughts of this page