Carleton adjunct research professor Stephen Maguire has recently developed a survey for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) ethics committee in order to determine how stress and other factors affect law enforcement agents.
“Their goal was to find ways they can shape organizations through informal programs, policies or practices which would influence police officers’ commitment to ethics,” Maguire said.
Deputy chief Norm Lipinski, chair of the CACP ethics committee in Edmonton, has been one of the driving forces in getting this project going, according to Maguire.
In order to complete this process, Maguire said he had to familiarize himself with policing literature to design a questioning procedure for different ranking officers on a wide range of issues.
The online survey will be released Sept. 13 and will be accessible to all 35 participating agencies across the country, Maguire said. The survey will run for six weeks and the data analysis is planned to be completed by next spring.
“A large focus is on police offers who are exposed to a great deal of stress on the job because it will impair judgment, speed up the heart rate and make it more difficult to make sound decisions in situations which are extremely stressful, such as those officers undercover for drugs, domestic abuse, organized gangs and canine,” said Maguire.
“The police agencies I’ve been working with are really committed to ethics and professionalism […] and are willing to join this project no matter what results they find,” said Maguire.