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?