AN ethics study of 30 police agencies across the country - including the RCMP and West Vancouver Police Department - has found half of the officers responding were unsure if their colleagues would report an ethical breach.
Most also felt the discipline handed out for unethical behaviour would be less severe than it should be.
Those were two of the findings of a national survey on police ethics conducted by Carleton University and released Tuesday in the Lower Mainland by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
Among the 10,000 officers who took part in the online survey, most felt their colleagues and supervisors demonstrated a high level of ethical behaviour.
But in questions depicting five scenarios - ranging from sharing confidential data with a former colleague who sells the information, to being lenient with a fellow officer involved in a domestic assault - more than half said they weren't sure if their colleagues would report the incident. Two-thirds of the officers said they would report such cases themselves. Supervisors were more likely to think both they and others would report an ethical breach than rank-and-file officers. Women were significantly less likely to believe their colleagues would report an ethical breach.
Additionally, "in each case, respondents felt that the discipline which would likely follow from the incident was less severe than the discipline which they felt should occur," said the study's authors.
Police who responded to the study felt their agencies have a mostly good relationship with their communities, although only 57 per cent felt police do a good job of serving "citizen groups who are our most outspoken critics."
Most thought their agencies dealt with complaints fairly and efficiently.
Only a quarter gave their police agencies high marks for support, with one-third of officers responding that their agencies were not supportive of their own members. Female officers saw their agencies as less supportive than men did.
The report's authors recommended that appropriate sanctions should be handed out to all breaches of ethical standards.
