ABSTRACT
A widely accepted notion within police scholarship is that police are effective only to the extent that citizens perceive the police to be fair, impartial, and honest in discharging their duties. The reason that police must operate with high levels of transparency and accountability is that they are vested with the coercive power of the state, and hence carry a special burden to utilize the power granted to them in a responsible way. The broadest term designated for ideal police conduct is “integrity.” Webster’s defines integrity as “the quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity.” Although there is nothing wrong with this definition, for purposes of talking about police integrity per se, there is no better definition than the one provided by Klockars et al. (2006, p. 1). According to them, police integrity is “the normative inclination among police to resist temptations to abuse the rights and privileges of their occupation.”
