Hello again everyone and welcome back to my blog.  This week I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about an article that hit home with me.  Every couple of years I am required to completed re-certification for a variety of different topics.  The re-certification process is usually a mundane task that is accomplished by studying material and then answering relatively easy questions.  Just this past week I had to get re-certified on our criminal database.  The learning part of this process took over an hour while the test itself took six minutes.  Needless to say I got a 96% on the test and I will not need to worry about that topic for the next two years.  The reason I bring this up is because I recently saw an article that caught my eye.  The link to the article is located below.  Please take a couple of minutes and read the article.


http://www.officer.com/news/11320457/officer-quickfire-recap-fourth-week-of-february

As you can see from the article a large number of Pennsylvania State Troopers are at risk of losing their careers over their efforts aimed at cheating during an exam.  As the article states a fellow trooper, who had taken the exam on a previous day, used his cellphone to send answers to troopers who were taking the exam the following day.  What the trooper did not count on was the fact that the exam was formatted in many different versions.  This led to multiple officer missing a large number of questions because they did not check the authenticity of the answers that had been supplied to them.  This is yet another poor example that has been set by our nations law enforcement officers.  These officers risked their livelihoods by cheating on a test that they probably could have past without any help.  As I mentioned above I routinely take re-certification exams.  These processes usually involve topics that I am very familiar with and in twenty years I have yet to fail one.  I cannot imagine cheating on one of these tests and risking everything I have worked so hard for over the course of my career.  Unfortunately there are bad apples in every profession and these officers have tarnished a very noble profession.  

If we want to assign blame in this case I'm sure most of you would target the officer who sent the other officers what he thought were the answers.  While I would absolutely lay most of the blame at his feet, it seems to me that this was pre-planned and that the officers who received the answers surely knew that the officer who had taken the test the previous day would help them out.  These officers had the entire day to think about whether or not they would use the information and they certainly could have deleted the text message that contained the answers.  This is certainly a disturbing case, a case that brings in to question the integrity and ethical makeup of the officers involved.  Can these officers be trusted by the public after this fiasco?   Can the local prosecutor use their testimony in future cases without fear of their integrity being called in to question.  These are issues that will have to be answered.  These are issues that would not have become issues if not for the wayward acts of a couple dozen Pennsylvania State Troopers.  

I look forward to your comments regarding this article.  I also want to thank all of you for continuing to visit my blog.  Next week will be the last week of my Ethics class and thus will bring an end to this blog.  For my entry next week I will not focus on negative actions of officers, rather I will focus on what sacrifices officers make and how they face ethical and moral decisions everyday.  I will demonstrate just how difficult law enforcement is and how thin the blue line can be.  Please join me next week for the final installment of my Troy graduate blog.