Get a room full of police officers together and ask them why they became cops. It doesn't matter they will all tell you the same thing. It doesn't matter if they are senior staff or probationary officers. If you think they will say it is because of the money, then make sure to let me know what police work pays a lot of money. The answer is the same everywhere, except they may say it a little differently. They might say things like, "I believe in it." They might say something like, "I wanted to contribute to society." Or, "I wanted to do something important with my life." No matter how many different officers a person asks and no matter how many different answers a person could get, it doesn't matter. Everyone has different ethics. In this paper I am going to talk about different situations that change the way people think about ethics as police officers. Different kinds of ethics. And I will try to explain how ethics should be taught to cut down on corruption.
Most police officers when joining the force go into it thinking they are going to be super cops, they are going to arrest every person who breaks the law. They are going to write a ticket to every person who speeds. When these police officers finally get into a police force they often times find it doesn't work that way at all. They start out by arresting people for petty crimes and writing all kinds of tickets for people going 4mph over the speed limit. But then they figure out they can't catch everyone who breaks the law. They find out that there are so many people who break the law everyday why should they even care. This is when a police officers ethics must come into play. Police officers will start to ignore the small things and try to concentrate on bigger things thinking maybe that will start to teach people a lesson. But then they find out they can't stop all those people either. Finally one day while arresting someone the law breaker offers the police officer money.
