Rodriguez:
When police ethics is spelled with a Zzzz...
Tired? If you are a police officer, I’ll bet you are. Sit down, put your feet up. But don’t fall asleep; take your time and read this, for it just may do you some good. As police officers, we have come across numerous occasions when we wished we had just gotten that extra hour of sleep, or the feeling that if you just close your eyes for a few minutes you will feel much better. Yes, it’s a problem — police fatigue. There are numerous contributing factors that can cause police fatigue, along with numerous ways of combating it. In his book “Tired Cops” (Police Executive Research Forum, 2000) Bryan Vila offers a number of clues to the causes of police fatigue, statistics about police fatigue, and remedies that can be applied to curb fatigue. [See LEN, April 30, 2002; Jan. 15/31, 2001.] But let’s look at police fatigue in a different light. Look at it as a “sleeping cop.” When, if at all, does a fatigued police officer become an ethical issue? Is it an ethical issue when the officer next to you in that patrol car is sleeping? What burden does that put on you? On that sleeping officer?...
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