Editor’s note: What Mom, Dad and the Academy Didn’t Teach You is a nine-part career survival series from Gordon Graham and Bruce “Coach Sok” Sokolove, two self-described “geezer cops” with more than seven decades of law enforcement experience between them. Drawing on what they’ve learned as officers, supervisors, trainers and observers of the profession, the series explores the everyday decisions that can protect — or quietly derail — a law enforcement career. Each installment tackles one lesson they believe officers should learn early, rather than the hard way.
Between the two of us, we have more than seven decades in this profession. We have been officers, supervisors, trainers and, in the later chapters of our careers, observers — watching good cops make entirely avoidable mistakes.
Not bad cops. Good ones.
The academy teaches you to do the job. Arrest techniques, firearms qualification, criminal law and first aid. What it does not teach — and what nobody seems to teach, at least not plainly and early enough — is the ecology of a law enforcement career: the legal, professional, social and personal environment in which that career will either survive or get quietly dismantled.
This series shares nine practical lessons that too many officers learn the hard way. In this installment, we look at how seemingly minor financial decisions can put an officer’s career and credibility at risk.
Lesson 5: Financial ethics
There is a persistent fiction in law enforcement culture that small gratuities — free coffee, a discounted meal — are automatically acceptable below some informal dollar threshold. In reality, there is no universal “safe” dollar amount. Whether a gratuity is permissible depends on state law, local ethics rules, and your department’s actual policy. Some agencies prohibit gratuities entirely; others may allow limited, nominal gifts under specific circumstances.
Know your department’s actual policy, follow it exactly, and understand the “free” coffee you enjoyed this morning could become part of the narrative the day your conduct is placed under a microscope. And even if your policy technically permits little “perks,” perception is reality. If someone from the outside might look at the situation and think you’re receiving special treatment, then, for all practical purposes, you are.
Found money and property require meticulous documentation. Civil asset forfeiture is a paper trail minefield; understand your agency’s specific procedures before you are anywhere near a forfeiture situation. Also, secondary employment typically requires prior disclosure and approval. Failing to disclose is a terminable offense at most agencies, even if the work itself would have been approved. Read the policy. File the paperwork. It takes 20 minutes.
Previous lessons
- Lesson 1: Your digital footprint can be a professional liability
- Lesson 2: Your free speech rights narrowed the day you were hired
- Lesson 3: Integrity is infrastructure, not aspiration
- Lesson 4: Write every report for a federal courtroom five years from now
Continue learning on Police1
- Ethical issues in law enforcement: Reviewing training and policy
- Off-duty employment programs: What agencies don’t know will hurt them
| Want more career lessons from Gordon and Bruce? Watch their on-demand webinar: 9 Career-Saving Lessons for Cops
