KEY POINTS:
Who'd be a copper in this day and age? The job's tougher, more dangerous, and commands less respect than it did a generation ago and, to make it worse, modern cops have been forced to account for the sins of bad cops from 20 years ago.
And that
accounting continues with the announcement of morality training sessions to be conducted across all police districts. The half-day sessions aim to inculcate in cops a commitment to goodness, the capacity to recognise evil and the ability to confront evil more effectively.
Holy moral crusades, Batman! Better put out more chairs in the Batcave if we're all to spend the day debating how we can best confront evil!
Morality training sessions? Sounds more like a requirement for becoming a Destiny Church youth leader than a copper. Which, of course, is not to say a strong moral compass is not required for policing.
Becoming a police officer, upholding and enforcing the country's laws, making judgments about individuals that will affect them for the rest of their lives - all of these things require a police officer to be certain about the rightness of what he and she is doing.
But just like most human resources initiatives, these morality training sessions will be a complete waste of time and money. If police officers don't already have a strong sense of what is right and wrong, it is highly unlikely a half-day training session will make much difference.
Oh, I know Dame Margaret Bazley in her Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct recommended that all police staff received regular training in ethics, and the police bosses can't be seen to be ignoring those recommendations.
But what a phenomenal waste of time and manpower. Investigations come to a grinding halt as officers sit around the table debating the rights and wrongs of knocking off five minutes early and claiming for the full eight-hour day; tossing around the wisdom of visiting a brothel - in an unofficial capacity; deciding during role play how they would respond to off-duty incidents - dear me.
What a bile-inducing, bone-aching load of old cobblers!
The ability to discern between right and wrong is taught at a young age, and if police officers don't have it now, a half-day jaw fest with their colleagues is unlikely to instil it.
Besides, surely it's the job of the recruiters to ensure they weed out the sociopaths and the power crazed and the dweebs who are only attracted to the job for the uniforms and the fast cars.
Even Louise Nicholas, whose complaints ultimately resulted in the Commission of Inquiry being conducted, doesn't believe that the morality training sessions will make a blind bit of difference.
It reminds me of the compulsory attitude adjustment sessions we NewsTalkZB hosts had to endure in the wake of Paul Holmes' intemperate comments about Kofi Annan - which I won't repeat.
If you don't know what they were or you can't remember, phone a friend. As a result of Paul's verbal malfunction, the whole class had to stay in for an afternoon and be lectured by the Race Relations Conciliator.
It was a beautiful sunny day outside, it was an afternoon of our lives that we would never get back, and we festered with the unfairness of it all.
Just as I imagine young police officers will fester as they are forced to pay for the sins of their metaphorical fathers.
