ABSTRACT
One of the most defining characteristics of the police occupation is the potential use of coercive force to impose the will of the state, especially deadly force (Bittner, 1970). Another defining yet less well understood characteristic is ethics. Just as medicine, law, engineering, or other professions are characterized by ethics which guide individual and group behavior, policing as an occupation contains its own values and value systems that provide a basis by which individual behaviors and attitudes can be measured. In contrast to other professions, however, learning ethics in policing is not entirely the product of education, socialization, and training. In fact, learning often predates formal education and socialization efforts as a result of individual, social, and historical factors. What is more, the process of on-the-job police socialization and culturalization may both (in)advertently threaten the positive ethical ideals and values brought to the police profession by new recruits where a strong and pervasive deviant subculture passively or actively teaches unethical behaviors.
