The conclusion the researchers ultimately made was that public perceptions of police misconduct are more heavily influenced by the media, community factors, and direct or vicarious experiences of police-initiated contacts then public perceptions regarding effectiveness and responsiveness.  It is not surprising that the media has an influence on how citizen’s perceive police misconduct as their objective is to generate revenue so they publicize stories that will grab people’s attention and increase viewers.  While there are several factors that play when determining the public’s perceptions on police, it is important to also examine police ethics and its role in decreasing the likelihood of police deviance.
A police department’s ethics training is very important to ensure officer awareness and to promote professional, ethical policing. In recent decades, police departments have strayed away from hiring officers with low ethical standards and they have also been keeping tabs on those officers currently with the department who demonstrate potentially unethical behavior or compromise the department’s integrity.  Research has suggested new methods of psychological testing that help determine the propensity for one to act unethically.  This testing aids police departments in hiring.  Integrity and leadership are directly related to policing and are extremely important attributes for an officer to have.  
The work environment also has a large impact on ethics in policing, and if a department’s leadership and integrity levels are just mediocre, this can create a climate for misconduct.  When leaders of a department embrace a high degree of ethics, this will most definitely aid the department stifle the potential for misconduct.  Police subculture also has an impact on whether unethical behaviors are allowed into a department and oftentimes the subculture can be stronger than even the officer’s family ties.  Ultimately, to avoid misconduct and corruption, the hiring process is very important and proper screening to assist in hiring is critical.  This is so that the result is hiring the most conscientious applicants as they are the people most likely to have a high degree of integrity.  Continued ethics education is also an important element for a department so the atmosphere of ethics and integrity is always lingering as a reminder to officers.  It is important to note that while most police departments had ethics training for recruits in the academy, it is quite surprising that only 34.4% of police departments had ethics as a category on their field training reports for new police officers.  

	Police misconduct is a popular topic in today’s society and it comes as no surprise especially due to media influence.  After researching how police misconduct, police corruption, and police crime are related and the different theories used to explain its causation, it is clear why they are critical issues in law enforcement.  While there will always be a “bad apple,” police corruption and predatory policing are typically isolated incidents that do not pose an imminent threat to society.  Police deviance is a broad topic but one that ranks high in importance as it does affect the public’s opinions and perceptions on policing even though the perceptions may be biased due to media influences.  Lastly, it is crucial to a police department for its officers to execute effective leadership skills and ethical behavior to ensure the hiring of police officer’s that will learn and abide by the same proper police behavior and skills.  In recent years, more and more research has been done on the topic of police deviance, and hopefully the information contained within this research paper should more than exemplify the reasoning for it.
