Posted: October 8th, 2022

Vision and Mission

Vision and Mission
Instructions
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The following scenario will be used as the basis for this assignment. Carefully review it before beginning your work.

The assault on Rodney King by Los Angeles Police officers in 1991 raised many issues about the actions of officers and subsequent accountability. Rodney King was contacted by LAPD officers following a vehicle chase. King was removed from his car, handcuffed, and was subsequently beaten by four LAPD officers. Video of the traffic stop and ensuing events was captured by a witness. The officers in question were criminally charged and were acquitted of those state criminal charges. They were later found guilty of federal civil rights violations. Rodney King received a $3.8 million settlement.

For this assignment, you must evaluate the results of the Rodney King case from the perspective of this week’s readings.

Analyze the vision and mission of the Los Angeles Police Department and the role of that vision and mission in establishing guidelines for behavior that aid in the risk management function of the LAPD.
Evaluate the impact of tort law on the development and implementation of the vision and mission, and how the financial settlement awarded to Rodney King impacts current and future ethical leadership.
Provide at least two examples of how the vision and mission were upheld, or how they were violated by the officers in question.
Explain how the relevant employment laws and policies addressed the hiring, training, and retention of police officers.
Examine how employment law may have affected the ethical and leadership decision making at the time of the King case.
Determine if all applicable legal policies and constitutional mandates were in place and are being adhered to. In the case that all policies and mandates were satisfactorily addressed, describe how the situation could have occurred. If you identified issues with the policies and mandates, recommend strategies for implementation that would have addressed these problems.
Analyze and explain how risk management policies within the context of this case are intended to protect the organization – and the community – from negative behaviors and liabilities.
Analyze the relevant risk management concepts and applicable tort law and explain how the torts influence risk management policies.
Analyze the impact of financial settlements on the organization and on the community. Propose changes to the vision and mission statements and explain how those statements should be adhered to.

Vision and Mission
Mission vision statements are essential to any organization, be it large or small. The law enforcement department also encourages its agencies to uphold mission vision statements to guide their organization. It is very easy for an organization to violate ethical codes when they lack proper guidance on values and objectives. In 1991, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) assaulted Rodney King, and the whole nation questioned the ethical values of the police department. To settle the criminal charges against the officers, Rodney King received $3.8 million. Today, the LAPD has a strict ethical standards mission as they work towards safeguarding the lives and property of the people they serve. The role of their mission is to ensure they improve the quality of life for those communities. The mission and vision focus on honor and integrity to serve as a guideline for behavior that aids in the department’s risk management function.
The impact of tort law can bring about consequences on a department such that it can reshape current and future ethical leadership. When the officers assaulted Rodney King, they committed an intentional tort, which is where individuals are quite aware of their actions and the consequences to come (Gaines & Kappeler, 2011). Even though officers are granted authority to use coercive force, there is a limit to their actions. It is because of these limits that vision and mission development and implementation are necessary. Without direction, police officers are most likely to lose focus of what their objectives are as a department. Considering the $3.8 million settlement, the LAPD leaders realized that ethics were necessary to lead a department. More similar financial lawsuits and the department would have been crippled. Ethical leadership is essential and can be reflected through mission and vision to avoid tort law violations.
The LAPD violated its current mission vision in several ways during their interaction with Rodney King. The first example is where the officers in question went against the mandate of the LAPD to uphold the highest degree of ethical standards. Considering Rodney King was already handcuffed and not resisting arrest, it was unfair of the officers to rough him up (Andrews, 1993). Their actions portrayed bias against the individual in a community that was supposed to show equality. The second example involves safeguarding the lives and property of people. The life of Rodney King at the moment was not safeguarded, considering how the officers were mercilessly beating him. It is ironic how the same police officers that were supposed to make the community feel safe were the same people inflicting harm upon a helpless individual.
Based on the turn of events during the Rodney King incident, it is evident that there were issues with adherence to relevant employment laws and policies. These guidelines are supposed to address issues such as hiring, training, and retention of officers. Officers chosen by any law enforcement agency are supposed to be vetted to check whether they match up to the requirements criteria (Gaines & Kappeler, 2011). Furthermore, officers are supposed to undergo proper training before being released to the field. Officers have to portray ethical behavior through all their activities to maintain their retention at the firm. The officers in the Rodney King incident must have fallen short of the primary criterion that portrays ethical conduct, or rather, their moral leadership skills were wanting.
Let’s say, for example, that all the officers involved in the Rodney King assault met all the employment laws and policies. However, their peer group control lacked the ethical and leadership decision making during the interaction. Thomas Baker (2011), in his book Police Ethics: Crisis in Law Enforcement, discusses the issue of employment policies and the challenges of peer group influence. He claims that the socialization process during police employment stresses loyalty, mutual assistance, and danger. Peer groups are likely to rationalize ethical or unethical behavior when they are together. This explains the results of the officers in the incident mentioned above. If the witness had not recorded the turn of events, the Blue Code of Silence would have buried the misconduct.
The applicable legal policies and constitutional mandates were not adhered to hence violating the civil rights of Rodney King (Andrews, 1993). One may find fault with how the LAPD addressed the issue and its strategy to handle Rodney King. Scenarios like this may lead to law enforcers to become lawbreakers if they are not careful. The Fourth Amendment was violated since it is the legal policy that distinguishes between power and authority. The four LAPD officers did not exercise their power within the law. Their use of exercise force on a person who was lying in a submissive position violated their right. The fourth amendment is supposed to lead officers to act accordingly by setting specific parameters to constrain their reach. Some of the strategies necessary for such a problem would be setting clear ethical policies at work that would guide the officers to practice integrity and ensure that their actions reflect their intention for the greater good of the community. This would have made the officers reflect on their ethical policies before they act.
Risk is an everyday situation that every organization should be prepared to face. Law enforcement should be ready to identify, mitigate, and recover for potential threats that may occur. In this context, the issue of training and education is the most consistent risk management policy approach the LAPD could have taken. Ethical policies could have been a subject of focus to avoid lying-in-wait risks. These ethical policies could have rebuked negative behaviors that would have resulted in liabilities (Baker, 2011). Due to the inability of the LAPD to persist on ethical decision making, the department and the community were both at risk. The department bore the risk of litigation while the community faced harm from unethical officers. Risk management policies are meant to safeguard both the internal and external aspects of an organization. In this case, the people and the agency.
The concept of risk management, as aforementioned, is to identify, assess, and control threats. However, this may be difficult to locate at first if the case is an intentional tort, as was with the LAPD towards Rodney King. The deliberate tort, in this case, is proven by how the officers willingly used excess force on King. According to the context of Graham v. Connor 90 U.S. 386, 397 (1989), determining excessive force needs an evaluation of the events against the interests of the involved governmental agency. When the facts are taken into consideration, the officers portray criminal activity through their actions. An intentional tort can cripple a risk management policy since the officers violating the law are doing so accordingly. Hence, the reputation of the department is tarnished, which is another risk. Intentional torts are hard to manage since the doer is aware of the consequences. The firm then suffers from a damaged reputation and financial losses.
Financial settlements hurt the organizations that give them and the community that support such an organization. In the case of the LAPD, the reputation of the agency was destroyed due to the actions of its employees. To settle the disagreement, the LAPD had to pay off Rodney King. To add to the bad reputation the department already had, the community’s taxpayer’s money was used to make the settlement. It then became quite clear that the unethical actions of an organization could make the whole community pay. Employees must be aligned with the mission and vision of an organization through constant activities. These practices can be through climate surveys, decision making, regular meetings, engaging in difficult conversations, and giving rewards for good work.
In conclusion, the mission and vision of an organization are critical guidelines that can ensure their success or failure based on the objectives they need to attain. However, having proper ethical policies and finding ways to articulate them is critical if the officers are to abide by such policies. The LAPD is an example of a policing agency that suffered a tremendous financial settlement alongside a tarnished reputation due to the misconduct of its officers. It is necessary to insist on ethical leadership and decision making to oversee the achievement of missions and visions.

References
Andrews, J. (1993). US Justice is on Trial on Rodney King Case. Retrieved from https://www.csmonitor.com/1993/0315/15121.html
Barker, T. (2011). Police ethics: Crisis in law enforcement. Charles C Thomas Publisher.
Gaines, L. K., & Kappeler, V. E. (2011). Policing in America. Routledge.

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Tags: Vision and Mission