Pranks
Once you are hired as a police officer and begin working, you realize that in order to deal with the stress and difficult times on the job, it is important to have a sense of humour and ensure you has some fun on the job. Sometimes these situations can get out of hand, or negatively impact someone’s career. It all comes down to respect and it is important to make sure you don’t cross lines when making jokes.
Scenario:
Kevin has been working for about three weeks on the job and has been getting along well with the platoon. It is a pretty laid back platoon that socializes a lot, but works hard when there is work that needs to be done. One afternoon he comes across a couple of officers laughing as they are walking away from a computer terminal. Kevin hears them saying to themselves that Steve will never leave the terminal logged on again after today. You are required as a police officer to log off a computer terminal when you are not using it, as the terminal has access to very secure and private information such as criminal records.
About a week later Kevin is partnering with Steve for the day. Steve explains to Kevin that he was investigated by Internal Affairs, because he left his computer terminal logged in and someone attempted to do a criminal record check on Brian Mulroney and also sent an email to the chief calling him an idiot. Internal affairs believed him when he said he didn’t do it, but they did put a letter in his file reminding him to log out of the computers when not in use. This is a very minor discipline.
Steve wasn’t very upset, but kind of annoyed that this was done to him. He gets along well with the rest of the shift and wasn’t going to pursue it, but was telling people just because if it happened again, it could be serious. He always logs other officers off computers when they forget and he finds open computers in the station.
Is this a situation that would require any action on Kevin’s part? Would this be a situation to just leave alone?
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Kevin may find himself in what appears to be a tough position; however he can learn from this (remember to logg out); remind others do to the same, including Steve.
Joke pranksters are everywhere. Kevin happens to know of a couple in his platoon. No need to ‘rock the boat’….YET!
Every Station and Detachment in this country has their fair share of pranksters! I’m guilty too!
You have to pick your pranks wisely… Throwing insults like calling somebody an idiot who isn’t even an involved party as far as I’m concerned is never ideal!
Wortman’s right… he’s too much of a rookie to even know what the rules are… to know the ‘hidden’ rules of conduct too. He shouldn’t be making an attempt to break them just yet!!
I agree that pranksters are everywhere. They make life interesting and bring about a good laugh on a regular basis. However, there is a line they alot of pranksters seem to have trouble with. They need to know where to draw the line and if they cross it they need to deal with the consequences.
In my opinion he should confront the pranksters right away, this is a situation where he could easily lose his reputation, his job, and his lively-hood. If anyone should have received a letter in their file or been fired it should have been the pranksters. They called the chief an idiot, that is way over the line.
I’m with Michelle on the comment about understanding the culture of the detachment before trying to upset it and create a very bad working situation for himself for the next few years. Should the pranksters have gone that far? No, however why were they able to? Breach of security protocol.
I bet Steve will double check his computer now before he leaves.
I did similar things in the last Gov dept I working that was high security. When I saw someones PC open and they were gone I would open a word doc and type something like “One of your confidential files was emailed to an unknown address” then I would lock the PC like it should have been. What was most amazing to me was to add to their breach of security they then never reported their PC was used by an unknown 3rd party, another security breach. However I never found the same PC open twice again lol.