This document summarizes research on police ethics and analyzes the killing of Laquan McDonald by the Chicago Police Department. It discusses how police work involves discretion that can enable ethical lapses if not balanced with oversight. Police culture and the "code of silence" can encourage unethical behavior by rationalizing violence and protecting officers from accountability. The McDonald case shows how these issues manifested in Chicago through a history of misconduct, lack of reform, and an apparent cover-up by police and city officials of the circumstances of the killing.

1. Ben Spies
Ethics and Public Policy
Final Paper
December 11, 2015
2919 Words
Managing Police Ethics: The Killing of Laquan McDonald
In some ways, the Chicago Police killing of seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald on October 20,
2014 was routine. From 2010 to 2014, Chicago led the nation in fatal police shootings with seventy
(Better Government Association 2015). The incident is currently under investigation by the city’s
Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), which determines whether such shootings are justified.
The IPRA has found nearly 400 shootings by Chicago police officers “justified” in its eight-year existence;
it made its first two “unjustified” judgments just this year (Mitchell 2015). What was not routine was a
judge’s order in November 2015 to make public the police cruiser dash-camera footage which captured
the shooting of McDonald, which was released on November 24. The video starkly contrasts with police
accounts of the killing, and suggests a murder and institutional cover-up reaching all the way to the
mayor’s office. The scandal has sparked weeks of protests, the firing of two top city officials, and
persistent calls for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s resignation.
The Laquan McDonald case raises questions about police misconduct in Chicago, and
particularly its ethical climate and ethics management structures. Cullen, Victor, and Bronson define
ethical climate as, “the ethical dimensions of organization culture that members perceive to be the
ethical norms and identity of organizations,” (1993). To be clear, the Chicago Police Department has a
long history with police corruption and brutality, not the least outcomes of which have been $500
million in settlements and legal fees for police misconduct cases and the recent establishment of a city
reparations fund for victims of police torture (Elinson 2015). Despite creating a new police review
authority in 2007 and the beginning of a new mayoral administration in 2011, little appears to have
been done to stem the tide of allegations of police misconduct and inadequate police oversight and
discipline.
Yet as this paper will explore, the McDonald case exemplifies the ethical culture not only of the
Chicago Police Department, but of City Hall. We will first examine the ethical considerations of policing,
with an eye to existing research on the subject. We will then explore organizational structures of ethics
management and consider how these apply in the Chicago context. Finally, we will present the details
of McDonald’s killing and its aftermath as a case study of police and municipal government ethics. It is
my hope that any insight gleaned from this example may be used to inform better ethics management
in these spheres.
The study of ethics in policing is longstanding, and rife with important policy ramifications
(Westley 1953). Officers unquestionably have a difficult and dangerous job, and one which fulfills an
essential function in society (Martin 2011; Westley 1953). Harmon (2008), in an assessment of legal
justifications of police violence, notes:
Police officers use force as an authorized form of state coercion, but they do so in tense and often
emotionally charged interpersonal encounters. An officer using force to arrest a subject is neither entirely
a neutral actor, detached and disinterested, charged with carrying out the will of the state, nor entirely an
individual acting in the heat of the moment, vulnerable and in harm's way, perhaps vengeful and afraid.
Strangely but inevitably, he is both.

2. Society asks much of police officers, whom we routinely send into uncertain situations without
the option of retreat (Harmon 2008). But we also expect much of them, particularly given the latitude
on violence that they are granted. To this end, Martin draws a distinction between on-the-job
performance and ethical conduct: “Anything less than perfect ethical conduct can be disastrous for a
department, a community, and an entire nation. While officers are only human and will continue to
make mistakes, ethical misconduct cannot be tolerated,” (2011). Though judgmental errors will happen
in the course of police work, as in any occupation, Martin argues that we can and should expect officers
to do what they believe is the “right” thing every time. Police powers represent considerable trust
placed into the state by the people, and in turn into officers by the state. Violations of that trust can
have lasting ramifications on the public’s faith in the police and the state alike: “Public and
authorit[arial] confidence in police units [are] affected by behavioral deviations of police members, and
that trust varies according to [the] police unit’s credibility as a whole,” writes Popa, advocating for codes
of conduct to govern Romanian police forces (2012). Yet the danger is that in the course of policing,
officers take personal ownership of these entrusted powers. Biggs notes that the discretionary nature
of police work in the field, in paradox with its hierarchical paramilitary structure, means that police
officers, “act primarily as their own supervisors as they perform their daily duties,” (2012). A monopoly
on violence, the discretion on when to use it, and lack of oversight in the field create a recipe for ethical
lapses.
When this happens, as in the case of an unjustified shooting, a reasonable question to ask is
whether this was the work of a rogue officer or “bad apple,” or was endemic of larger problems within
the department (Klockars 2000). Westley, in a dated but insightful review of police attitudes toward
violence, notes the reinforcement of the “colleague group” of fellow police who may rationalize and
even expect violence from individual officers in situations where it is not legally warranted (1953).
Westley writes of their conception of violence as a “property” given by the state to this colleague group,
where it is used at their discretion like any other possession (1953). Though policing has undoubtedly
evolved since the 1950s, this research provides an interesting notion that goes beyond the usual “code
of silence” theory of mutual protection among police officers (Klockars 2000). The implication is that
the culture or ethical climate among police departments is not merely one of sheepish, taciturn self-
preservation, but a willful perversion of authority. Martin (2011), in decrying the spread of corruption in
police subcultures, takes this further:
When this loyalty to the subculture becomes too strong, the solidarity that follows can adversely affect
the ethical values of the officers. The typical “us versus them” mentality creates an allegiance to the
members stronger than that to the mission of the department or even the profession. And, the “them”
may include not just nonpolice but also their [own] organization when officers feel a disconnect and
animosity between themselves and administrative policies.
Martin describes a vicious cycle in which the ethical culture among police necessitates alienation from
structures of accountability, and even from what it means to be a police officer at all, which leads to yet
more unethical behavior. The targets of police ethics reform are, therefore: first, the ethical
calculus officers employ to make split-second decisions in the field; and second, the ethical culture
within police departments, who not only cover for the ethical lapses of their fellows, but in some cases
actively encourage them. Policy-minded control methods therefore must include improved screening of
police officer candidates, and a concerted effort to dismantle the poisonous ethical culture pervading
some departments.
Dantzker highlights the importance of proper and standardized psychological screening of police
applicants, and states that most municipal police forces in the United States employ some form of
psychological evaluation (2011). The thought is that keeping out mediocre candidates, uncommitted to

3. the police mission or worse, seeking opportunities for control, power, and exploitation, will by degrees
improve police performance (Martin 2011). Klockars challenges the “bad apple” view, arguing that as
much as bad apple officers can give police departments a bad name, so too can endemic organizational
cultures corrupt good cops (2000). Klockars mostly investigates the “code of silence”, examining the
disconnect between officers’ attitudes toward misconduct and their willingness to report it. The
implication, however, is that the code of silence enables bad officers: Klockars does not seem to
demonstrate how bad officers are created from good ones.
We can revisit the question of ethical climate for clues. Martin (2011) and Popa (2012) argue
that ethical standards within departments begin to break down as officers look for shortcuts to make
their numbers, or achieve outcome quotas such as number of arrests or amount of contraband
recovered. Popa argues that numbers-oriented policing creates a temptation to take detours, leading
to, “deceit and fraud in achieving goals [and] handling and treating people as objects,” (2012). Martin
sees this as an institutional problem: “It is this push for results by administrators that some officers can
interpret as their agencies not caring or wanting to know how those results are obtained,” (2011).
Officers must comply with this volume-based approach to advance their careers, and in some cases to
justify their own employment. More experienced officers, taking rookies under their wings,
demonstrate which corners to cut to achieve the results they believe are expected of them (Martin
2011). Respect for the people they are policing erodes as they become little more than objects officers
use to make their numbers, and the use of violence against these “objects” begins to lose its gravity.
Corruption in the fiduciary sense is an outgrowth of these practices. The acceptance of “gratuities” is
seen as a test of loyalty to fellow officers, a kind of common complicity that assures mutual silence
(Martin 2011). While the code of silence reinforces the ability of officers to use illegal violence with
impunity, metrics-based policing is also at fault. Taking apart the administrative obsession with
numbers may be an important first step to improving the ethical climate of police departments.
Maesschalck’s grid-group theory of public management makes managing police ethics easier to
understand. On paper, police departments are structured as high-grid, high-group entities—meaning
they are bound into organized units and subject to a strict system of behavior-governing rules—in a
hierarchical, compliance-based approach to ethics management (Maesschalck 2005). As we have
established, however, the ways police operate on paper and in the field are quite different. Considering
the discretion afforded to officers in the field, the insulation from consequences that they enjoy, and the
competition generated by numbers-based police administration, it is perhaps more appropriate to
classify police departments as low-grid, low-group individualist entities. Maesschalck states that this
managerial style is always motivated by self-interest, which is only acceptable in the public management
setting if the public interest coincides with the interest of the actor (2005). Controversy is inevitable
when police act in a manner that serves their own interests but betrays the public interest, as appears to
have happened in the McDonald case.
Our understanding of police ethics can be supplemented with empirically-observed indicators
(Frederickson 1994). Police attitudes on the use of violence in their profession and other ethical issues
can be gauged by anonymous interviews and survey responses, though this is an underexplored area of
study (Klockars 2000). Many in Chicago call for better ethics training for police officers in the wake of
the McDonald scandal, and indeed Martin argues that American police departments do not devote
nearly enough training hours to ethics (2011). This is only worth pursuing as a policy if more or better
training produces empirically verifiable results, such as changing attitudes as reported by officers or an
actual reduction in controversially violent incidents. But as the McDonald case will illustrate, the latter
may be very difficult to judge given systems of incident review which, in many departments, are heavily
biased toward the police.

4. After thirteen months of inaction on the McDonald killing, State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez
announced murder charges against the shooting officer, Jason Van Dyke, immediately following the
judge’s order to release the video footage. This decision came as the result of a lawsuit filed by an
independent journalist, who claims the city unlawfully ignored his repeated Freedom of Information Act
requests for the footage in an attempt to hide its contents (Smith 2015). The court agreed. The video
clearly shows McDonald walking away from police before being shot sixteen times by Officer Van Dyke
within seconds of arriving on the scene, who continues to pump bullets into McDonald’s lifeless body
after he falls to the ground. This conflicts sharply with official accounts from several officers at the
scene, who claim McDonald lunged at them with a knife (Konkol 2015). Audio from the footage is
conspicuously missing, though all Chicago Police dash-cams are equipped with microphones and this
particular camera was not reported to be malfunctioning (Glawe 2015). Additionally, the manager of a
local restaurant whose security cameras had captured footage of the killing has accused police of
erasing that footage from their system that night (Marin 2015).
This incident appears, to some observers, to have been an extrajudicial execution, followed by a
coordinated cover-up involving several officers (Talbot 2015). The State Attorney’s thirteen-month
hesitation to prosecute—coming only after release of the video became inevitable—implies that her
office may have been involved in a cover-up as well. To further complicate the issue, emails recently
acquired by the press show that Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s staff knew of the existence of the video as early
as December of 2014, but blocked its release and any serious investigation of the shooting until after his
reelection in the spring of 2015 (Kass 2015). The incident ultimately led to the firings of Police
Superintendent Garry McCarthy and IPRA chief Scott Ando. Protests have rocked the city’s streets from
the time of the video’s release through the writing of this paper. Calls for Emanuel’s resignation
continue to come in from protestors, columnists, community and religious leaders, and even members
of the mayor’s own political party (Kass 2015).
There are clearly a lot of moving parts at work in the McDonald case, but they warrant analysis
from an ethical perspective, beginning with the shooting itself. Officers claim McDonald was wielding a
knife and acting erratically on the night of the shooting, and several police cruisers responded to a call
about car break-ins in the vicinity of where they found him. The arrival of Officer Van Dyke’s cruiser is
captured on the video, as are his initial shots, which strike McDonald in the back from several meters’
distance. First: why did Van Dyke shoot? It is clear from the video that McDonald, while perhaps
unpredictable, did not pose immediate life-threatening harm to Van Dyke or any of the officers on the
scene. An initial ethical lapse (Van Dyke’s own) precipitated the use of violence as a first resort, rather
than as a last resort as required by law.
Second: why did the video contradict the reports of the several other officers who witnessed the
shooting? Several of them claimed that McDonald moved to attack Van Dyke, yet this clearly did not
happen. If any of them objected to the shooting at the time, we have no way of knowing this due to the
missing audio. We can accept the “code of silence” hypothesis here, which also implies a protocol
among police officers for dealing with incidents of this type. This is the second ethical issue we
encounter, this one perpetrated by the colleague group. If it is proven that officers tampered with the
dash-cam audio or with the footage from the nearby restaurant’s security cameras, a third ethical issue
would go beyond mere silence into officers actively engaged in destroying evidence and obstruction of
justice. Additionally, officers in Chicago are given twenty-four hours from the time of a shooting
incident before they are interviewed by IPRA (CPD 2013)—enough time to corroborate stories
beforehand. This is the fourth ethical issue the McDonald case illustrates, and is institutional in nature.
If the city was serious about internal police investigations via IPRA, it would follow the same procedure
as any criminal investigation, and interview those involved immediately.
The fifth issue is the city’s nondisclosure of facts of the case, particularly the video footage,
which was the subject of numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. Transparency is essential to

5. police accountability, which in turn is key to good ethics management. City Hall handles FOIA requests,
and the mayor’s office would have had the power to make the video public at any time (Smith 2015). It
is for this reason, particularly in the face of an impending election, that many in Chicago believe Mayor
Emanuel was complicit in cover-up efforts (Kass 2015). This lapse then potentially goes all the way to
the top of city government. Lastly, the State’s Attorney’s decision not to file charges until the video’s
release suggests that she had no intention to do so at all, until the judge’s order forced her hand. This is
the sixth ethical issue the case presents: the State’s Attorney may have been protecting Van Dyke when
she should have brought criminal proceedings immediately.
This paper explored ethical considerations in policing, structures of ethics management, and
provided a case study in police ethics or, more appropriately, lack thereof. The Laquan McDonald case
illustrates a breakdown of ethics and ethics management at multiple levels of municipal government.
Inadequate oversight of police activities, the pervasive code of silence among officers, and institutional
protection of rogue officers all contributed to an exceptionally poor ethical climate. The takeaway from
this example is its awful consequence: poor ethical climates in police departments ultimately manifest
themselves in violence, in this case costing the life of a young man who did not deserve to die. The
incident’s aftermath continues, however, and could shift the balance of political power away from the
mayor and toward vocal community leaders. As the example illustrates, the cost of poor ethics in
governance can be dear for everyone.
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