| The issue of loyalty acts as a double-edged sword in policing. On one hand, officers must be loyal to the law, the profession, the people they serve and their fellows while on the other, misguided loyalty can operate as a license for particularly outrageous conduct. Utilizing a sample of police officers assigned to uniform patrol in a large metropolitan police agency ( n = 103), this research seeks to determine their opinion of a peer's conduct when faced with the ethical dilemma of (1) remaining loyal to the group by lying to senior officers and accepting sole responsibility for misconduct; or, (2) telling these senior officers the truth thus implicating their peers in misconduct. This ex-post facto design first establishes the ethical ideology of the officers with Forsyth's EPQ instrument and then what, if any, demographic factors play a significant role in the officers' placement to a particular ethical ideology. Second, the sample officers' opinions of the peer's actions are evaluated along two axes: social attraction (Scale A) and task attraction (Scale B) toward the peer.;The research found no significant differences in the manner in which the officers were allocated to each of Forsyth's four ethical ideologies of Situationist, Subjectivist, Exceptionist and Absolutist by departmental seniority, educational level or the number of disciplinary actions received. No significant differences were found between the answers of the Absolutists and Exceptionists and whether or not the actor lied or told the truth in the scenario. In the instruments wherein the actor told the truth, no significant relationships were found between the number of disciplinary actions the officers had received and Scales A or B. However, in those instruments in which the actor lied to administrative officers, significant and positive relationships were found between Scales A and B and the number of disciplinary actions claimed by the officer. |
