The accountability of individual police officers is a fundamental issue for police executives. This is fitting: police officers are the public officials society has authorized, even obliged, to use force. Ensuring that police officers use that warrant equitably, legally, and economically on behalf of citizens is at the core of police administration. The enduring concern of police executives to ensure accountability in American policing is a reflection of their professional commitment.
Not only is it fitting that a police executive give high priority to ensuring the accountability of police officers, it is essential to surviving as the leader of a police department. Police chiefs continually worry about abuse of authority: brutality; misuse of force, especially deadly force; over-enforcement of the law; bribery; manufacture of evidence in the name of efficiency or success; failure to apply the law because of personal interests; and discrimination against particular individuals or groups. These issues are grist for the mill of persistent and influential watchdog groups concerned about impartial enforcement under the law-the media, civil rights groups, and lawyers. Rising crime or fear of crime may be problematic for police administrators, but rarely does either threaten their survival. Scandals associated with abuse of " authority, however, do jeopardize organizational stability and continuity of leadership.
As a consequence, it is not surprising that police leaders have developed organizational mechanisms of control that seek to ensure police accountability to both the law and the policies and procedures of police departments. This paper reviews the ways police administrators try to control the accountability of individual police officers and examines the relationship between accountability procedures and community policing.
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http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/114211.pdf
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