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ion. Supervisors are oftentimes uncomfortable interviewing officers, and they become apprehensive as it relates to confronting and challenging their own personnel. However, by understanding their responsibilities and following specific guidelines, supervisors can reduce their trepidation over conducting internal complaint investigations (Arnold, 1998).

Supervisors conducting internal affairs investigations play a critical role in maintaining ethical standards and professionalism in their organizations. Understanding this role and focusing on the necessity of generating quality investigations are the first steps in approaching these types of cases. The next step is to follow agency guidelines in order to initiate and complete a thorough, impartial investigation. Supervisors must remember that they have a duty to establish the facts and not to persecute or protect anyone (Arnold, 1998).

Once the facts are gathered, and police misconduct is identified, those officers involved must be counseled or disciplined accordingly. These actions must be conducted in a timely and consistent manner. Police administrators must delve out proper discipline while paying close attention to the subject officer's rights to due process. In doing so, administrators must carefully weigh the facts and circumstances, and determine fair discipline based on a myriad of factors, such as: the severity of the violation or offense, the level of discipline given to officers who previously committed similar offenses, the officers previous offense history (progressive discipline), and any other migrating or aggravating circumstances which arose during the investigation. Most importantly, as soon as these factors are considered it is incumbent upon administrators to proceed with the discipline process as indecision and/or delay causes disruption and sometimes even chaos in the organization. Finally, once an officer receives discipline (typically in serious matters), the Sheriff or Chief of Police should communicate (via memorandum or position paper) the circumstances surrounding the investigation and the reasons why the decisions were made to discipline the officer. This formal communication from the Sheriff or Chief will reduce the speculation about the incident by agency members, and it will send a clear message to the entire organization as to what behavior is considered unacceptable (Courtney, 1996).

Perhaps one of the most critical areas in fostering an ethical environment is identifying subversive agency subcultures. These subcultures exist, and catch phrases such as the 'code of silence' and the 'thin blue line' have been used to describe rogue and unethical police subcultures. Unfortunately, these negative subcultures can oftentimes lead to the downfall of individual officers, special teams, entire shifts, divisions, or, on a few occasions an entire department. It is equally important to know and study widespread organizational ethical failures, and it is just as critical to examine acts by single officers. The entire law enforcement profession must study and educate the lessons learned from these acts, not conceal them. All levels of the agency should be familiar with, and address the actions and failures that could convert a positive police subculture into a negative one. To attain accountability throughout the agency, members need to become more proactive in policing themselves internally (Bills, 2009本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。