Police Misconduct

Although “police misconduct” is a rather sweeping and somewhat amorphous concept, it is generally used in reference to illegitimate police behaviors or activities that are related to the performance of an officer's official duties and violate state or federal criminal laws, department policies, professional ethics, or administrative rules and procedures. Police misconduct is an important public policy issue as well as a recurring problem that is widely discussed and debated by police officers, police administrators and executives, lawmakers and public officials, and members of the public. The diverse definitions of [Page 347]misconduct are, like the behaviors, motivations, and contexts involved, highly complex and multifaceted. Even a cursory review of the history of American policing reveals that misconduct has been a perennial and enduring problem in policing, and that repeated police misconduct scandals have been a powerful (if not entirely effective) impetus for the reform of police organizations as well as the institution of policing as a whole.

The study or discussion of misconduct is hampered by a need for greater definitional precision as well as by the multiple contexts in which the various behavioral patterns and practices falling under the expansive rubric of misconduct can take place. Although some might improperly equate police misconduct with police corruption, for example, the two are distinguishable insofar as some actual violation of state or federal law is generally a necessary definitional feature of corruption. This is not the case with the more broadly defined concept of police misconduct, and therefore, corruption can be considered a subset of misconduct.

The competing definitions or conceptions of precisely what constitutes police misconduct vary widely according to the particular context in which specific behaviors are considered: public definitions and discussions of misconduct, for example, are generally more inclusive and embrace a greater range of illegitimate activities than do legal conceptions, which tend to narrowly specify the particular activities and necessary motivations involved. Because organizational and public notions of misconduct generally include activities that violate an agency's administrative procedures, these definitions can also vary among and between agencies and communities. A police department that unequivocally forbids officers from accepting free meals under any circumstances, for example, would label this behavior as misconduct, whereas an agency with no such formal proscription would probably not. Some members of the public might view the acceptance of free meals under any circumstances as de facto misconduct, whereas others are likely to have a more tolerant view regardless of the agency's policy. Finally, an individual officer may encounter exigent situations where the acceptance of a free meal does not compromise his or her professional ethics or personal integrity, and that officer would likely not subjectively define the behavior as misconduct. The legitimacy or illegitimacy of a particular police behavior (or misbehavior) must therefore be considered in terms of the social, organizational, legal, and ethical contexts in which it occurs. Discussions of police misconduct must also recognize the nature and quality of misbehavior involved and the fact that these behaviors reflect a continuum of severity: Some instances of misconduct (e.g., administrative rule violations) are intrinsically less injurious or harmful than others (e.g., serious criminal offenses engaged in under color of law).

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