While there does not appear to be any comprehensive studies on this, anecdotal stories in just about every organization will confirm that the majority of misconduct committed by employees who were later disciplined for such conduct, could have and should have been prevented by the organization and those in leadership positions. It is rarely a surprise when someone is terminated by their organization for misconduct. You always hear comments in the organization, such as: “You could see that coming,” “I’m surprised it took that long,” and “He’s been getting away with that for years,” and similar comments. Even with employees who have no prior major misconduct, often there were signs of trouble brewing. There were changes to observable behavior that a supervisor should have picked up on.

Every time an organization loses someone for misconduct, they should go back and look at the employee’s career in great detail to determine the logical chain of events (LCE) and the Root Cause that led to the misconduct. Departments spend almost all of their time trying to make sure that they have done a good investigation and that they got the discipline right and spend very little time - if any - trying to figure out what led up to the misconduct. Police organizations hire good people who are the best the very best the public has to offer. They go through an extensive background check, confirming that they are men and women of good character and virtue. They are well-trained about the ethical expectations of the job. So, somewhere in their life at home or work, something happened that allowed them or caused them to get off track. Was something missed in their background that should have been discovered if a better review was done? Was the organization’s training inadequate? Was there a failure of leadership? The reality is that in well over half of those officers disciplined by departments, there was a failure of leadership at some level - and most of the time, at many levels. Any time an officer is disciplined, there is also a failure of friendship as many of the officers who worked side by side with these officers failed to step in and stop behavior that they knew to be unacceptable.

There are some red flags that leaders should pay special attention to, as these life-changing events can create even greater stress for officers already working in a very stressful job. Any time an employee experiences a significant emotional event, it is impossible to predict how that employee might react. Every time an organization loses an employee for misconduct, there needs to be an ethical autopsy to determine how this occurred and how it might be prevented in the future with other officers. These are the major topics discussed throughout this lesson:

*Properly socializing new officers into the organization’s values and expectations.

*Embedding ethical expectations throughout an officer’s career and throughout the organization.

*Understanding that the perception of unfairness in promotional processes, transfers, and selections for special assignments and training creates many of our alienated followers.

*Identifying common mistakes made by FTO’s, supervisors and organizations that set new officers up for failure right from the beginning.

* Recognizing the major red flags that every leader needs to pay special attention to with their followers as they are the Root Causes in many cases of employee misconduct.

*Setting up written expectations for every employee in the department - the same expectations for every employee regardless of where they work.

*Conducting an Ethical Autopsy using actual case studies in order to identify problems that the organization needs to address in order to prevent similar discipline in the future.

TARGET AUDIENCE:  This one-day class involves a lot of student interaction and is recommended for every member of a police department – civilian and sworn.