A Consideration of the Need for Ethics Training for Police

Abstract

In this article, the author, a long-serving senior Canadian police officer, notes that the teaching of ethics to police officers in Canada and elsewhere has long been a neglected subject with very little having been written about ethics. This article details the pitfalls associated with the lack of ethics training and some instances where the lack of ethics played a significant part in the hiring process. While an effort is being made to place more emphasis on ethics in the training of police officers, the author suggests that moral values cannot be separated into professional and off-duty moral values. The moral system of values must be present all the time and no book of rules or set of policy manuals can fully determine the course of action to take.