Promoting Ethical and Effective Leadership for Law Enforcement and Public Safety

Organizations
Reflection on Promoting Ethical and Effective Leadership for Law Enforcement and
Public Safety     Ethical and effective leadership is critical for law enforcement and public safety
organizations today. Law enforcement today is more critiqued and more watched than ever
before. Surveillance cameras and easy access to cell phones lead to high chances that officers
are being recorded almost all the time. Law enforcement officers are held to a higher standard
than most other professions. Police officers are also given the power to take other people’s
rights away by detaining and arresting them. Laws and the ways that law enforcement operates
are always changing and officers and administration leaders need to be able to notice and adapt
to these changes if they want to successfully succeed in this career. Throughout this program I
have taken numerous courses which will help me to have ethical and effective leadership.      
In LEPS 500, Issues in Law Enforcement, the course focused a lot on mindfulness and
how officers need to be aware of it. Chief Jennifer Tejada quoted that “mindfulness is being
aware of one’s presence, being aware of one’s thoughts, and being aware of the experiences that
we go through and our emotions towards those experiences”. This is extremely important in the
career of law enforcement. Law enforcement officers see dramatic things that most other people
do not. We experience death, blood, violence and much more on a routine basis. Being able to
evaluate your own mental health will not only help you live a better life, but it will help you be a
better and more ethical leader. 
In LEPS 510, Communications for Law Enforcement Leaders, we learned different
effective techniques for communication. A huge portion of law enforcement is listening.
Listening to the victim, listening to the witnesses, and trying to get a true grasp of what might
have occurred. This course allowed us to learn different communication techniques that could be
used with different people. Suspects and victims will be communicated to differently and this
course allowed us to gain the knowledge to effectively communicate to both.  This course started
by going over the IMPACT model, which most officers use without even knowing it. A huge
portion of law enforcement calls is maintaining the peace and trying to get both subjects to agree
on an outcome that makes them both feel like they win. This course provided new insight that
officers could use to de-escalate situations and improve communication skills. This will
ultimately allow officers to be better leaders to the community and those who work for them. 
In LEPS 530, Public Safety Law, we were taught how no one is free of having to make
ethical decisions. One of the biggest things that officers face when it comes to ethical decisions
are gratuities. Very commonly, officers will enter an establishment and the owner will tell the
officer to grab whatever they want and ask the officer to patrol the area a little bit more. This is a
gratuity and officers need to be able to make the ethical decision to increase their patrol of the
area, but still pay for the products they buy.  Today, it sometimes feels like the community would
rather see officers fail than succeed. One bad officer can severely damage law enforcement
reputation, which not only leads to a lack of trust, but could also lead to other officers getting
hurt. There are steps that officers can take, that I learned in this program to increase rapport with
the community and increase effective and ethical leadership.