Perception Is Reality for Self-Governing Professions

Many employees nowadays belong to self-governing professions.  Lawyers, doctors, accountants, and engineers are just a few of the many.

The essence of a self-governing profession is that members of that profession create and enforce practice guidelines and codes of ethics.  The members’ behaviour is monitored from within the profession and misconduct results in disciplinary measures determined by a practitioner’s peers.

The key to an association which investigates and disciplines its own members is that the public must have faith that it is acting in the public’s interest (rather than that of its members).  Members of the profession must be perceived to be vigilant about rooting out misconduct and addressing it with genuine consequences.

Most such associations publish their practice guidelines and codes of ethics as well as summaries of discipline imposed upon their members.  Nowadays, most are easily accessible by way of the internet.  It is this transparency upon which many such associations rely to demonstrate their vigilance to the general public.

Maintaining public faith is a task which consumes countless hours and requires a watchful eye for rogue practitioners.  Losing the public faith in the legitimacy of the association’s internal system of controls can be destructive to the reputation of every member of that profession.

The most notorious example, presently, of a profession which seems to have lost the public faith over it’s handling of its own members is the police.  As a result of high-profile instances such as the taser strikes by police officers on Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver airport, the ability of police departments to investigate their own is under heavy fire.

Public trust in the police and in their ability to objectively judge the actions of their own members seems at low ebb.  Cases such as Dziekanski’s and those of Ian Bush and Kevin St. Arnaud (among others) have prompted loud, persistent calls for an independent, civilian, body to rigorously investigate police-involved deaths and other misconduct.

In a surprise departure from prior police reactions, the R.C.M.P. and the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police have now called on government to establish an independent unit to investigate such deaths.  However, there are indications that what the R.C.M.P. and the Association of Chiefs of Police are actually recommending is for police to retain the investigative role but to hand their findings to a civilian authority.  If that’s actually their proposal, it’s barely half the solution.

The problem facing the police is one of perception.  Many people don’t believe their version of events and feel that investigating officers go easy on their peers.  It is perhaps thanks only to the era of portable video cameras that we have tangible evidence of what did, and did not, occur in the Vancouver airport the night of Dziekanski’s tragic death.

It’s important to recognize that the police aren’t like doctors and lawyers and the numerous other self-governing professions.  They are the mechanism by which government most directly, sometimes violently, intrudes upon our day-to-day lives.  It is critical that their opportunities to exceed and abuse their authority be held in check.

The police also are not like accountants or engineers in the sense that a person can choose to change accountants or engineers if she feels she isn’t being treated properly.  One can’t simply decide to switch police forces when an individual officer seemingly exceeds the boundaries of his authority.  Accountants and engineers and members of most other self-governing professions also tend not to carry batons, tasers, and guns so (at least arguably) there is less at stake as a result of the actions of a rogue practioner.

Ultimately, the problem police forces face right now is the erosion of the public’s faith that officers are acting in the best interests of the public.  The way to regain that faith is to establish complete transparency in the investigation of, and response to, allegations of misconduct.