At what price a “freebie"? The real cost of police gratuities

I Introduction Criminal justice has long struggled for acceptance and legitimacy in the larger academic community. Conceived in the bosom of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), criminal justice is still striving to break the academic shackles of "Handcuffs and Nightsticks 101." From those early years, teachers of criminal justice have often been retired practitioners from the fields of policing, law enforcement, courts, corrections, probation, and parole. The lead author of this article, a practitioner-turned-academic, was long protective of policing and, when questions were raised in the classroom, defended deviant behavior and minor corruption as either innocent and inconsequential or necessary to get the job done. As he has progressed through academia, however, he has come to believe that the deviant behavior he had once considered necessary, innocent, and inconsequential is, in fact, harmful and detrimental to policing and to the public that police are sworn to protect and serve. One of the police behaviors that he regularly took part in and defended was the acceptance of gratuities. It is now the opinion of both authors that the acceptance of gratuities is a harmful and degrading practice and should be actively discouraged. II Police as Professionals Police have long desired that their work be considered and classed a "profession." Although the professional status of policing is still debated, there is no doubt that police desire recognition as "professionals." This desire, however, sits awkwardly with the practice of accepting gratuities. Gratuities are not a feature of the classical professions, such as law, medicine, and education, which are--at least in theory--motivated by a service ideal rather than pecuniary gain. Although police desire recognition as professionals, officers frequently seek to retain the perks that ordinarily accompany service occupations that would not be generally regarded as professions: table servers, bellboys, door-men, hair stylists, cab drivers, parking attendants, sky caps at airports, and pizza delivery persons, just to name a few. The acceptance of gratuities by police deprofessionalizes their conduct by rewarding their service as supererogatory rather than as an internally-motivated responsibility. III Formal Responses to Gratuities Gratuities are benefits that take many forms: gifts, services, or cash. They can be large or small. Both their giving and receiving can be variously motivated. In a well-known account, Howard Cohen and Michael Feldberg state that "what makes a gift a gratuity is the reason it is given; what makes it corruption is the reason it is taken." (1) The nexus between the acceptance of gratuities and corruption is a major factor in the formal opposition to gratuities in almost all policing organizations. And so, August Vollmer, considered one of the fathers of police professionalism, argued against the acceptance of gratuities because of its corruptive rather than its unprofessional character. He believed that officers who accepted free coffee should be fired. (2) The following is a typical description of that nexus: Gratuities often lead to things like kickbacks (bribery) for referring business to towing companies, ambulances, or garages. Further up the scale comes pilfering, or stealing (any) company's supplies for personal use. At the extreme, opportunistic theft takes place, with police officers skimming items of value that won't be missed from crime scenes, property rooms, warehouses, or any place they have access to. Theft of items from stores while on patrol is sometimes called "shopping." (3) The acceptance of gratuities provides an opportunity for corrupt intent, whether the intent is initially that of the giver or the receiver. Once that opportunity has been grasped, officers will find themselves on a slippery slope of compromise and opportunism. Even so, not every policing organization adopts a zero tolerance policy toward the acceptance of gratuities. …