Research for Practice 

COMMUNITY ORIENTED POLICING SERVICES 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Enhancing Police Integrity

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

D

National Institute of Justice

E

C. 0

5

www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij 
U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

810 Seventh Street N.W.

Washington, DC 20531

Alberto R. Gonzales

Attorney General

Regina B. Schofield

Assistant Attorney General

Glenn R. Schmitt

Acting Director, National Institute of Justice

This and other publications and products

of the National Institute of Justice can be

found at:

National Institute of Justice

www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij

Office of Justice Programs

Partnerships for Safer Communities

www.ojp.usdoj.gov
DEC. 05

Acknowledgments

The authors extend their

sincere gratitude to all the

police officers, police

administrators, and police

chiefs interviewed during

18 months of field work.

Thanks are especially due

to the police officers who

served patiently as members of study groups. Our

thoughts are with Carl

Klockars, whose early

passing prevented him

from seeing the results of

our joint work in print.

Enhancing Police Integrity

Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the

authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the

U.S. Department of Justice.

This research was supported by the National Institute of Justice under

grant number 97–IJ–CX–0025. Additional support was provided through a

transfer of funds to NIJ from the Office of Community Oriented Policing

Services.

NCJ 209269
R ESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / DEC. 05

ABOUT THIS REPORT

Measuring police corruption

has proven to be a difficult task

for researchers. A recent study

applied a new approach—

rather than focusing on corruption, researchers measured

the integrity of police officers

and their organizations. The

tools and techniques the researchers developed for the

study can be used by police

executives to find out how

well officers understand their

agency’s rules on misconduct

as well as their opinions about

the seriousness of the different types of misconduct, the

appropriate discipline for the

misconduct, and their willingness to report the behavior.

What did the

researchers find? 

An agency’s culture of integrity, as defined by clearly understood and implemented

policies and rules, may be

more important in shaping the

ethics of police officers than

hiring the “right” people. The

cooperation of line officers is

essential in detecting breaches of integrity, but concern

for the personal welfare of

their colleagues discourages

many officers from reporting

misconduct. Weakening the

silencing effect of this concern is vital to enhancing

integrity within an agency.

Officers learn to evaluate the

seriousness of various types

of misconduct by observing

their department’s behavior

in detecting and disciplining

it. If unwritten policy conflicts

with written policy, the resulting confusion undermines an

agency’s overall integrityenhancing efforts.

Through officers’ anonymous

responses to hypothetical

scenarios about misconduct,

managers can measure the

level of integrity within the

department and pinpoint

problems involving misconduct. Researchers identified

five steps police executives

can take to enhance line officer cooperation in reporting

misconduct.

What were the study’s

limitations?

The survey sample overselected municipal police agencies, excluded agencies from

the Western and Midwestern

parts of the Nation, and included no State police agencies, only one sheriff’s agency,

and only one county agency.

ii
ENHANCING POLICE INTEGRITY

Carl B. Klockars, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, and Maria R. Haberfeld

Enhancing Police Integrity

See also Klockars, C.B., 

S. Kutnjak Ivkovich, 

W.E. Harver, and M.R.

Haberfeld, The Measurement of Police Integrity,

NIJ Research in Brief,

Washington, DC: U.S.

Department of Justice,

National Institute of 

Justice, May 2000, 

NCJ 181465, available at

www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/

nij/181465.pdf.

About the Authors

The late Carl B. Klockars,

Ph.D., was professor of

sociology and criminal

justice at the University of

Delaware. Sanja Kutnjak

Ivkovich, S.J.D., Ph.D., 

is assistant professor of

criminology and criminal

justice at Florida State

University. Maria R.

Haberfeld, Ph.D., is associate professor of police

science and chair of the

Department of Law,

Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration

at John Jay College of

Criminal Justice.

To establish and maintain officer integrity, police administrators may want to look well

beyond recruiting persons of

good character. By establishing

certain integrity­enhancing

policies and rules in their

agencies, they may be able

to imbue their organizations

with a culture or environment

of integrity (see “How the

Researchers Defined Police

Integrity” for a discussion of

the components of a culture

of integrity).

This research is based on responses given by 3,235 officers from 30 law enforcement

agencies across the Nation to

questions about hypothetical

scenarios related to misconduct. Their responses helped

the researchers identify and

describe those characteristics

of a police agency culture that

encourage employees to resist or tolerate certain types

of misconduct.1

The officers were asked to respond anonymously to several

questions about the hypothetical scenarios. Analysis of their

responses indicated their understanding of agency rules

on misconduct, their views

about the seriousness of different types of misconduct,

their knowledge and opinions

about potential disciplinary

measures, and their willingness to report prohibited

behavior (see “Measuring

Police Integrity”).2

Managers who use the questions and scenarios and then

analyze the responses should

be able to answer the following key questions and take

action to develop appropriate

integrity­enhancing measures:

❋ Do officers in this agency

know the rules?

Action: If they do, fine.

Where they don’t, teach

them.

❋ How strongly do they

support those rules?

Action: If they support them,

fine. Where they don’t, teach

them why they should.

❋ Do they know what disciplinary threat this agency

makes for violation of

those rules?

Action: If they do, fine.

Where they don’t, teach

them.

❋ Do they think the discipline is fair?

Action: If they do, fine.

Where they don’t, adjust

discipline or correct their

perceptions.

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R ESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / DEC. 05

H RESEARCHERS DEFINED POLICE INTEGRITY

The concept of integrity can unite police and citizens into

discussion of police misconduct that might be difficult

organizations as well as individuals. Their broad definition,

tions to abuse the rights and privileges of their occupation,” became the basis for an organizational model of

and analysis.

The model had four dimensions of organizational integrity:

❋ Creation and communication of organizational rules.

❋ Detection, investigation, and discipline of rule violations.

❋ Circumspection of officer silence about rule violations.

❋ Managing the influence of public expectations and

OW THE

using other terminology. As the researchers defined it for

this study, “police integrity” can be an attribute of police

“the normative inclination among police to resist temptaintegrity. This model helped structure their observations

agency history.

❋ How willing are they to

report the misconduct?

Action: If they are willing,

fine. Where they are not,

find ways of getting them

to do so.

The researchers ranked the

30 responding agencies

according to their environments of integrity and chose

three highly ranked agencies

for indepth evaluation and

field observations.3 These

were designated “agencies

of integrity.”

Do officers know 

the rules?

Although the three agencies

of integrity invested considerable resources in developing

rules to guide officer conduct,

many officers were not clear

on some areas of official policy. For example, in all three

departments, more than 10

percent of officers were not

certain whether a supervisor

who exploited his authority

for personal gain would be

in violation of official policy.

Similarly, nearly 15 percent of

officers in two of the agencies of integrity and almost

one­third of officers in the

third were not aware that a

coverup by a police officer

of another officer’s DUI and

minor accident would violate

official policy.

In two of the agencies, more

than 10 percent of officers did

not know that it would be a

violation of official policy to

fail to arrest a friend on a felony warrant and instead warn

him of the warrant’s existence.

In the third, accepting halfprice meals and other small

gifts was prohibited on paper

but permitted in practice. Contradictions such as this may

promote confusion and make

it difficult for officers to determine proper policy in other,

more consequential areas.

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ENHANCING POLICE INTEGRITY

Study findings suggest that an

agency’s official policy can be

undermined by an informal,

unwritten version. To avoid

this, police managers need to follow the written policy in

practice and train officers who

are unclear on official policy.

Another option, of course, is

to change the official policy to

fit the practice.

Do officers support 

the rules?

Although all three departments

offered training on the acceptable and unacceptable ways

for officers to conduct themselves, researchers found frequent discrepancies between

agency values and employee

values. They also found minimal instruction on the seriousness of specific types of

misconduct.

Officers learned to gauge the

seriousness of various types

of misconduct by observing

their department’s diligence

in detecting it and disciplining

those who engaged in police

misconduct. If a department

welcomed complaints about

misconduct, thoroughly investigated those complaints, and

disciplined officers appropriately for the misbehavior, then

officers concluded that such

misconduct was serious. However, if an agency ignored or

discouraged complaints and

failed to investigate or punish

officers for such violations,

officers learned not to take

those violations seriously. 

Do officers know what

discipline they face for

violating the rules?

Discipline plays a central role

in conveying the gravity of

misconduct by demonstrating what the agency regards

as serious. One of the three

agencies studied had a strong

record of disclosing its disciplinary actions, perhaps because

State law

4 requires that the

full details of every disciplinary decision, including the

internal investigation, be

made available upon request.

On the other hand, laws that

try to keep disciplinary actions

private generally do not succeed. For example, although

the disciplinary system in one

agency operated under rules

supposedly designed to protect personnel decisions from

public scrutiny, within hours

the media had the full details

of any serious disciplinary

action. In another, an active

underground network spread

the details of virtually every

high­profile case. Departments

that are prohibited from commenting on disciplinary actions

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R ESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / DEC. 05

MEASURING POLICE INTEGRITY*

Below are the hypothetical cases of misconduct used in the research. They deal with corrupt

discretion, and use of excessive force.

Case 1. An officer runs his own private business in which he sells and installs security devices, such as alarms,

special locks, etc. He does this work during his off­duty hours.

Case 2. An officer stops a motorist for speeding. The officer agrees to accept a personal gift of half of the amount

of the fine in exchange for not issuing a citation.

Case 3.

Case 4. An officer discovers a burglary of a jewelry shop. The display cases are smashed and it is obvious that

many items have been taken. While searching the shop, he takes a watch worth about two days’ pay for

Case 5. An officer has a private arrangement with a local auto body shop to refer the owners of cars damaged in

accidents to the shop. In exchange for each referral, he receives a payment of 5 percent of the repair bill

Case 6. An officer who happens to be a very good auto mechanic is scheduled to work during coming holidays. A

Case 7. At 2 a.m., an officer who is on duty is driving his patrol car on a deserted road. He sees a vehicle that has

been driven off the road and is stuck in a ditch. He approaches the vehicle and observes that the driver is

the accident and offense, he transports the driver to his home.

Case 8. An officer finds a bar on his beat that is still serving drinks a half­hour past its legal closing time. Instead

Case 9.

They chase him for about two blocks before apprehending him by tackling him and wrestling him to the

ground. After he is under control, both officers punch him a couple of times in the stomach as punishment

for fleeing and resisting.

Case 10.

Case 11. An officer is aware that there is a felony warrant for a long­time friend of his. Although he sees his friend

frequently over a period of more than a week and warns his friend of its existence, he does not arrest him.

Case 12.

determined that the person was unarmed.

Case 13.

one of the male combatants. The man is arrested, handcuffed, and as he is led into the cells, the male

Case 14. An officer stops a motorist for speeding. As the officer approaches the vehicle, the driver yells, “What the

Case 15. An officer arrests two drug dealers involved in a street fight. One has a large quantity of heroin on his 

person. In order to charge them both with serious offenses, the officer falsely reports that the heroin was

found on both men.

Case 16.

behavior as well as common defects in integrity, such as discourtesy to civilians, abuse of arrest

Selected scenarios

An officer is widely liked in the community, and on holidays, local merchants and restaurant and bar owners show their appreciation for his attention by giving him gifts of food and liquor.

that officer. He reports that the watch had been stolen during the burglary.

from the shop owner.

supervisor offers to give him these days off if he agrees to tune up his supervisor’s personal car. Evaluate the

supervisor’s behavior.

not hurt but is obviously intoxicated. He also finds that the driver is a police officer. Instead of reporting

of reporting this violation, the officer agrees to accept a couple of free drinks from the owner.

Two officers on foot patrol surprise a man who is attempting to break into an automobile. The man flees.

An officer finds a wallet in a parking lot. It contains the amount of money equivalent to a full day’s pay for

that officer. He reports the wallet as lost property, but keeps the money for himself.

An officer who was severely beaten by a person resisting arrest has just returned to duty. On patrol, the

officer approaches a person standing in a dimly lit alley. Suddenly, the person throws a gym bag at the

officer and begins to run away. The officer fatally shoots the person, striking him in the back. It was later

In responding with her male partner to a fight in a bar, a young female officer receives a black eye from

member of the team punches him very hard in the kidney area saying, “Hurts, doesn’t it.”

hell are you stopping me for?” The officer replies, “Because today is ‘Arrest an Asshole Day.’”

A sergeant, without intervening, watches officers under his supervision repeatedly strike and kick a man

arrested for child abuse. The man has previous child abuse arrests. Evaluate the sergeant’s behavior.

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ENHANCING POLICE INTEGRITY

Please answer the following questions about each scenario:

you consider this behavior to be?

Not at all serious 

1 2 3 4 5 

most police officers in your agency consider this behavior to be?

Not at all serious 

1 2 3 4 5 

Definitely not  Definitely yes

1 2 3 4 5 

you

think should follow? 

1. None  4. Period of suspension without pay

5. Demotion in rank

6. Dismissal

you

think would follow?

1. None  4. Period of suspension without pay

5. Demotion in rank

6. Dismissal

you would report a fellow police officer who engaged in this behavior?

Definitely not  Definitely yes

1 2 3 4 5

most police officers in your agency would report a fellow police officer who engaged in this

behavior? 

Definitely not  Definitely yes

1 2 3 4 5 

MEASURING POLICE INTEGRITY (CONTINUED)

Case scenario assessment questions

1. How serious do 

Very serious

2.  How serious do 

Very serious

3. Would this behavior be regarded as a violation of official policy in your agency?

4. If an officer in your agency engaged in this behavior and was discovered doing so, what if any discipline do 

2. Verbal reprimand 

3. Written reprimand 

5.  If an officer in your agency engaged in this behavior and was discovered doing so, what if any discipline do 

2. Verbal reprimand 

3. Written reprimand

6. Do you think 

7. Do you think 

*Adapted from “Measuring Police Integrity,” ©Klockars, Kutnjak Ivkovic, and Haberfeld, 1998. Reprinted with permission.

or that refuse to do so, considering them to be protected

personnel matters, may create

suspicions outside and inside

the agency and thereby compromise police integrity.

In all three agencies, most

officers agreed on the expected and appropriate discipline,

particularly for serious offenses, and the researchers found

that after the discipline was

handed down, most officers

had correctly interpreted their

agency’s disciplinary threat.

Most of the official violations

on record, however, were

less serious. How do officers

form their opinions of the

expected and appropriate discipline for less serious offenses—those the department

rarely or never addresses?

5
R ESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / DEC. 05

The answer to that question

lies in two processes found to

be at work in these agencies—

how departments accept and

investigate complaints of misconduct and the severity with

which they address less serious misconduct.

Receiving citizen complaints.

All three departments welcomed citizen complaints,

often went to great lengths

to receive them, and seriously reviewed and investigated

them. Officers reported that

their agencies gave undue

attention to trivial complaints,

but none believed that their

department would allow a

complaint of officer misconduct to be ignored or go unpunished if sustained. The

seriousness with which the

three departments responded to minor violations left no

doubt in officers’ minds that

their departments would not

hesitate to take severe disciplinary action in response to

serious violations.

Disciplining less serious

misconduct. The survey of

30 police agencies revealed a consensus on the relative

rank ordering of the seriousness of various forms of misconduct. This consensus

implies that even when no

actual incidents are available

as examples, officers understand that: (1) more serious

offenses will be disciplined

more harshly; and (2) less

serious misconduct also will

be disciplined accordingly.

Lessons learned. The

researchers identified two

practices that they believe

enhance integrity. The first is

to consistently address relatively minor offenses with the

appropriate discipline. From

this, officers may infer that

major offenses, too, are likely

to be disciplined.

The second recommended

practice is to disclose the disciplinary process and resulting

discipline to public scrutiny.

Sunshine laws may be a

potent deterrent to both individual and organizational inclinations to conceal misconduct.5

Do officers think 

discipline is fair?

Disciplinary severity in 2 of

the 3 agencies was among the

highest of the 30 agencies

surveyed, yet most officers in

these agencies thought the

prescribed discipline was fair

(even though the actual discipline imposed differed somewhat from what was expected).

The degree of discipline each

organization could impose

sometimes was limited by

court decisions that overturned or reduced disciplinary

6
ENHANCING POLICE INTEGRITY

decisions on appeal. Administrators must carefully balance

passion for integrity with concern for morale, since every

appeal that reverses or reduces a disciplinary decision potentially alters officers’ views about

what is expected of them.

In all three agencies, officers

observed inconsistencies in

discipline.

How willing are 

officers to report 

misconduct?

The survey results suggest

that, more than any other factor, concern for the welfare of

their peers led officers to

refrain from reporting the

misconduct of other officers.

Officers shielded a colleague

willingly if the misconduct oc­

curred for what they perceived

to be good reasons, such as

sleeping on duty because a

sick spouse or child prevented

an officer from getting enough

sleep. On the other hand, officers reluctantly concealed misconduct they perceived to be

irresponsible, chronic, or exploitative, such as sleeping on

duty because of excessive

partying or off­duty employment. Only when another officer’s exploitation of their

support became unbearable,

chronic, or put their own position at risk, would officers alert a supervisor to the misconduct. Even then, they sought

to conceal their identities.

Although this concern for colleagues can explain officers

not reporting serious misconduct, this was not the case in

the three agencies studied.

The researchers believe that

the relative success these

agencies had in encouraging

officers to come forward derived from five strategies used

to weaken officers’ tendency

not to report misconduct: ❋ They made it explicit that

they would discipline either

an officer’s failure to report a colleague’s misconduct or a supervisor’s failure to discipline an errant officer.

❋

They fired any officer caught

lying during a misconduct

investigation, no matter how

minor the offense under

investigation. This action was highly valued because

of its dampening effect on

officers’ willingness to conceal a peer’s misconduct.

❋ One agency rewarded officers who reported their colleagues’ misconduct and,

to avoid repercussions and

possible antagonism from

fellow officers, kept these

rewards secret.

7
R ESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / DEC. 05

❋ They allowed anonymous

and confidential reporting.

❋ Because the loyalty and support that officers come to

expect from one another can

be a source of the failure to

report misconduct, the agencies sought to prevent the

bond among officers from

becoming too strong. To do

this, two agencies regularly

rotated new supervisors

between service areas,

patrol districts, and patrol

teams. One agency also

introduced racial, ethnic,

gender, educational, political,

cultural, religious, and generational diversity into the

department.

How can police 

managers enhance

integrity?

An organization cannot safely

presume that all employees

possess moral courage and

good character. Nor can it

presume that all of those

individuals who do possess

these qualities will be strong

enough to resist the temptation to break or bend the rules

or to disregard the bonds that

form between peers.

With this in mind, the researchers identified several

factors they believe foster

integrity within a police

department.

Integrity is driven by an

organization’s culture. To

encourage officer adherence

to rules of conduct, law enforcement agencies may find

adopting the view that

integrity is an organizational

or occupational responsibility

is more effective than emphasizing personal ethics or

morality. The researchers

believe that this places direct

responsibility for officer integrity on police administrators, obligating them to create

and sustain an organizational

culture of integrity.

The rules governing misconduct should be specified and officers trained in

their application. The researchers also believe that an

effective way to educate both

the police and the public is to

disclose the entire disciplinary

process to maximum public

scrutiny.

How police managers detect, investigate, and discipline misconduct will show

officers how serious they

consider the misconduct to

be. In choosing levels of discipline, police administrators

should understand the educational consequences of their

disciplinary acts.

8
ENHANCING POLICE INTEGRITY

Administrators should

expressly require all officers to report misconduct.

This will reduce the likelihood

that they will keep silent

about their peers’ misconduct.

Managers must clearly state

that any officer who lies during the course of an internal

investigation will be fired. A

guarantee of anonymity and

confidentiality as well as rewards to officers who come

forward to report the misconduct of their peers may cause

more of them to do so. By

encouraging diversity within

the force, rotating assignments, and changing officer

assignments following their

promotions, managers can

discourage the bonds that

lead to officers covering up

misconduct.

Notes

1 The types of misconduct identified

by the researchers are discussed in

“Measuring Police Integrity,” above.

Also see Klockars, C.B., S. Kutnjak

Ivkovich, W.E. Harver, and M.R.

Haberfeld, The Measurement of

Police Integrity, NIJ Research in

Brief, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of

Justice, May 2000, NCJ 181465.

2 For a detailed discussion of the

study’s methodology, see Klockars 

et al., The Measurement of Police

Integrity: 4–5.

3 Field observations included identifying how the three agencies defined,

detected, investigated, and disciplined misconduct and examining

how the agencies addressed officers’ reluctance to report other officers’ misconduct.

4 This refers to Florida’s Governmentin­the­Sunshine law. For more information, see www.myfloridalegal.com/

sunshine.

5 Sunshine laws tend to give greater

access to public records. Some

States prohibit or precisely describe

what can be released and when it

can be released.

Additional reading

Barker, T., and D.L. Carter,

Police Deviance, Cincinnati,

Ohio: Anderson Publishing

Company, 1986.

Bracey, D.H., “Police Corruption and Community Relations: Community Policing,”

Police Studies 15(4)(Winter

1992): 179–183.

Carter, D.L., “Drug­Related

Corruption of Police Officers:

A Contemporary Typology,”

Journal of Criminal Justice

18(1990): 85–98.

Goldstein, H., Police Corruption: A Perspective on Its

Nature and Control, Washington, DC: Police Foundation,

1975.

9
R ESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / DEC. 05

Kappeler, V.E., R.D. Sluder,

and G.P. Alpert, Forces of

Deviance: Understanding 

the Dark Side of Policing,

Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1994.

Klockars, C.B., S. Kutnjak

Ivkovich, and M.R. Haberfeld,

eds., Contours of Police

Integrity, Newbury Park, CA:

Sage Publications, 2003.

Marx, G.T., “When the

Guards Guard Themselves:

Undercover Tactics Turned

Inward,” Policing and Society

2(3)(1992): 151–172.

Marx, G.T., “Recent Developments in Undercover Policing,” in T.G. Blomberg and S.

Cohen, eds., Punishment 

and Social Control: Essays

in Honor of Sheldon L.

Messinger, New York: Aldine

de Gruyter Publishing, 1995.

McCormack, R., “An Update,”

in Managing Police Corruption:

International Perspectives,

R.H. Ward and R. McCormack,

eds., Chicago: Office of International Criminal Justice,

1987.

McCormack, R.J., “Police

Perceptions and the Norming

of Institutional Corruption,”

Policing and Society 6(1996):

239–246.

Morton, J., Bent Coppers: A

Survey of Police Corruption,

London: Little, Brown, and

Company, 1993.

Police Integrity, Fact Sheet,

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of

Community Oriented Policing

Services, October 2003, available at www.cops.usdoj.gov.

Punch, M., Conduct Unbecoming: The Social Construction of Police Deviance and

Control, New York: Methuen,

Inc., 1985.

Rooting Out Corruption:

Building Organizational

Integrity in the New York

Police Department—Police

Strategy No. 7, New York:

New York Police Department,

1995.

U.S. General Accounting

Office, Law Enforcement:

Information on Drug­Related

Police Corruption, Washington, DC: U.S. General

Accounting Office, May 1998,

GAO/GGD–98–111.

10
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research, development, and evaluation

agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

NIJ’s mission is to advance scientific research,

development, and evaluation to enhance the 

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NIJ is a component of the Office of Justice

Programs, which also includes the Bureau

of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice

Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice

and Delinquency Prevention, and the

Office for Victims of Crime.
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