Tarnished Honor

The occupational deviance perspective suggests that every occupation, including policing, provides opportunity for deviant behavior related to employment. What we must realize is that every time police occupational deviance (POD) occurs, it results in the erosion of the public trust in the American criminal justice system. POD is not a term we hear very often. Instead we hear about actions such as police misconduct and police corruption. The reality is police occupational deviance is the umbrella term for both police corruption and police misconduct, both of which apply to the officers role as an employee rather than to their policing practice. Police misconduct involves violations of the formally written normative rules, traditional operating procedures, and regulations of both the police and other public service agencies, as well as the criminal and civil laws of the municipality. Police corruption is any forbidden act that involves the misuse of the officers official position for actual or expected material reward or gain. This is the reason that police occupational deviance is so important and this is the reason we cannot afford to ignore it any longer. Each and every incidence of police occupational deviance violates the public trust in the entire criminal justice system. And public trust is essential, because without it there would be no criminal justice system. Over time police occupational deviance negatively shifts the publics perception of law enforcement until officers of the law are viewed as villains rather than saviors. The officers themselves are viewed as the problem rather than the solution and the costs associated with their deviant behavior are practically incalculable. The reality is that only a small percentage of the law enforcement community participates in these deviant behaviors, yet their actions often overshadow the work of the entire system. In this book we are going to take a deeper look at the issue of poli