Character and Cops Ethics in Policing

Edwin J. Delattre has been teaching courses on ethics in policing for more than twenty-five years. As he designed the courses, he spent forty hours a week on the streets with police at night. He has taught law enforcement ethics to FBI agents, police chiefs, and other police and law enforcement personnel, and his work has taken him to the streets of almost every major city in the United States, the Caribbean, and England. By 1985, Mr. Delattre was receiving many requests from police to write a book on ethics in policing. Character and Cops is his response to those requests. In a time when fear of terrorism and violent crime is rising as fast as cynicism toward government officials, the fifth edition of Character and Cops asks how today’s cops can meet the ethical challenges of policing and still live up to heightened demands for better security. Delattre addresses the increased acceptance of lower standards of behavior by public officials, the need for careful selection of law enforcement recruits, and the deleterious effects of the victim culture of America today. bringing the widespread problems of drug abuse, gang violence, and police corruption under philosophical scrutiny. This seminal work on law enforcement ethics will appeal to all citizens concerned with the apparent moral decline in America. Although the author focuses specifically on the importance of character in law enforcement, the book has broader application to questions of individual character, public trust, corruption, moral training, and ethics education within society at large.