Scenario
Colonel Pat Bacon is the newly-appointed director of the department of state police. She has only been on the job 1 week when she receives reports of questionable conduct by some of her officer employees.
When she looks into the matter, she discovers a culture of noble cause corruption, including the following three major ethical lapses:
- Planting of evidence
- Lying in court
- Falsifying police reports.
The police officers justified their conduct by saying that they were convicting dangerous suspects.
Write a memorandum from Colonel Bacon to her employees. The memo should be crafted as if it really was written from the Colonel to her employees as an internal-office memo, but the memo should also, for the sake of the Assignment and its educational value, cite sources properly in APA format. The memo from Colonel to her employees must address the following issues:
- Define noble cause corruption.
- Identify at least three critical points at which her officers make ethically-informed (if questionable) decisions.
- Analyze the possible ethical breaches involved in this scenario in the context of what you learned about noble cause corruption.
- Compare and contrast possible alternative responses to each ethical dilemma. (What is an alternative, for example, to planting evidence?)
- Clearly set forth the Colonel's expectations for ethically-sound conduct by her employees.
The Final Project addresses the following course outcome:
Evaluate the various ethical obligations involved in public administration and ethical guidelines that help administrators navigate various cultures and political systems.