SOC 3750 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Moral Authority, Credibility Gap, Rodney King

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 3750
• Professor: Patrick Parnaby

Document Summary

Discriminatory acts: prejudicial treatment on basis of age, race, gender, etc. Noble cause corruption: use of illegitimate means to achieve noble ends. Self-interested corruption: using authority to exploit others for personal gain. General misbehaviour: anything that violates institutional codes of conduct. Serious physical/psychological harm with an emphasis on savagery or cruelty. Always the use of illegitimate means to achieve otherwise noble ends. Officer(s) were fundamentally dedicated to an objective at the time: opportunity to use illegitimate means. Skills, privacy, lack of supervision, etc: a guilty party, officer truly believes legitimate means are inadequate. Hide violations to get conviction: using threats to obtain information, perjury. Over time, after working on street, develop binary moral order (us vs. Offe(cid:374)de(cid:396)s of all ki(cid:374)ds (cid:374)o lo(cid:374)ge(cid:396) ha(cid:448)e (cid:272)lai(cid:373) to (cid:373)o(cid:396)al autho(cid:396)it(cid:455), do(cid:374)"t dese(cid:396)(cid:448)e respect or rights much easier to arrest them. Front level constables have tendency to develop this mentality, despite training against it: compounded in secrecy (cid:862)blue b(cid:396)othe(cid:396)hood(cid:863)