By Louise Westmarland, author of Police Ethics: Cop Culture, Corruption and the Blue Code of Silence

In 2025 7th September is the UN International Day of Police Cooperation and for the past two years, at around this time, the organisation has celebrated with an announcement about their mission. In 2024 for example, Secretary-General António Guterres issued a highly positive message, beginning with the statement that ‘Police Forces are the guardians of public safety’ (Guterres 2024). To date, the UN’s annual message seems to be about taking the opportunity to highlight any current aims and objectives. Specifically, in 2024, Guterres talked about the need for law enforcement officers to maintain the highest standards of integrity, conduct and professionalism in their work, going on to talk about human rights and dignity. He also highlighted the need for gender equality, publishing a picture of himself awarding a plaque the United Nations Female Police Office of the Year, in 2019, Major Saynabou Diouf. He concludes his message with an encouragement to  ‘…renew our dedication to integrity, accountability and oversight in policing as we strive towards a safer and more just future for all’.

Extremely laudable, but to what extent is integrity, accountability and oversight possible across international policing? What evidence is there of international police cooperation and how has his claim to high standards of ethics and integrity held up in the past year? In the past, for example, international studies of police integrity have shown that ethical standards vary significantly across different international jurisdictions. In their comparative study of 14 different countries across the world, in 2004, Klockars et al found that different misdemeanours, presented as scenarios facing front line cops, elicited various responses when asked how ‘serious’ they viewed the behaviour. Examples included differences of opinion relating to accepting drinks on duty, the use of excessive force and taking bribes from speeding motorists to evade a ticket. Klockars et al concluded that although seriousness is linked to potential punishment for a particular offence in that jurisdiction, they said that the most dramatic finding that emerges from examining the contours of integrity concerns the worldwide prevalence of the code of silence.

I have to agree with Klockars as my own research over the past 20 years, (Westmarland 2004, 2005) has also shown a strong adherence by cops to the ‘blue code’ of silence. Data that I have collected with colleagues (Westmarland and Rowe 2016 and Westmarland and Conway, 2020 for example) confirms that even where unethical or downright illegal practices are evident, group loyalty and a reluctance to report other’s misbehaviour, prevents them being discovered or prevented in the future (see Westmarland 2025 for a fuller discussion). This lack of transparency does not help the fight against international crime or aid international police cooperation which Guterres espouses in his statement. There are, of course, many challenges that international policing faces in the light of the proliferation of organised crime groups operating across Europe and beyond, such as the trafficking of illegal migrants. Even stemming the flow of refugees across the sea crossing between England and France in small inflatable dinghies seems to defeat the best efforts of UK and French forces. Despite numerous initiatives, political pronouncements and eye watering amounts of taxes spent on joint international operations, the number of people risking their lives in small inflatable dinghies seems to keep on increasing whilst organised crime groups keep on profiting.

Of course, there are also notable successes for international police cooperation. Most recently this includes the cracking of the EncroChat messaging service that was being used by serious organised crime groups across the world to organise distribution of drugs and weapons, money laundering and plots to kill. Operation Ventetic took down the encrypted instant messaging system that the crime groups thought was impenetrable by law enforcement agencies. The organised crime groups were using the system to coordinate and control their activities across international borders. This often meant that high level criminals were operating far from the locus of the criminal activities, using EncroChat to deliver their instructions, believing themselves to be out of the jurisdiction of individual countries’ laws and police. The system was intercepted due to international cooperation between the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), France and the Netherlands infiltrating the system via Europol. This meant that for a significant period of time law enforcement could see the conversations, plans and people involved in high level criminal activities. According the NCA’s website, this has led to 746 arrests and £54m in cash, 77 firearms and over two tonnes of drugs being seized (NCA, 2020). This operation has been praised by police and political actors, as Nikki Holland, the NCA Director of Investigations, stating in 2020 that, ‘the NCA is proud to have led this part of the operation… And it’s all been possible because of superb work with our international partners’.

Returning to Secretary Guterres’s pronouncement on the ethics of the guardians of public safety and international police cooperation, his dedication to principles of integrity, accountability and oversight, are admirable. Well publicised successes such as Operation Venetic are to be welcomed and congratulated, as a sign that international police cooperation is an operational reality. But confidence that international policing is adhering to Guterres’s fine words and the UN’s annual celebration of police cooperation, also need to be continually reviewed, supported by ongoing research. The imperative for evidence of integrity, accountability and oversight of policing remind us that however heinous the crime, law enforcement agencies rely on legitimacy to maintain public trust and must work within national jurisdictions, laws and regulations. By this I mean that the role they carry out, and the successes they achieve, must be within the bounds of the Secretary General’s stated principles. As these principles and their interpretation might vary, across international policing jurisdictions, as past research has shown, we’re reminded of the old saying, who guards the guards? Or to echo Guterres’s mission statement, who guards the guardians of public safety?

Louise Westmarland is Professor of Criminology in the Social Policy and Criminology Department at The Open University, UK. Her research interests include gender and policing, police ethics and integrity and the role of police culture. She has conducted numerous surveys on police ethics and integrity, some with colleagues and several ethnographies, observing police behaviour. 

References

Guterres, A., 2024  International Day of Police Cooperation | United Nations.

Klockars, C.B., M. Haberfeld, and S. Kutjnak Ivkovich. 2004. The Contours of Police Integrity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

National Crime Agency (NCA) NCA and police smash thousands of criminal conspiracies after infiltration of encrypted communication platform in UK’s biggest ever law enforcement operation. NCA and police smash thousands of criminal conspiracies after infiltration of encrypted communication platform in UK’s biggest ever law enforcement operation - National Crime Agency. 

Westmarland, L., and M. Rowe. 2018. Police Ethics and Integrity: Can a New Code Overturn the Blue Code? Policing and Society: an International Journal of Research and Policy 28 (7): 854–870.2016

Westmarland, L., and S. Conway. 2020. Police Ethics and Integrity: Keeping the ‘Blue Code’ of Silence’. International Journal of Police Science & Management 22 (4): 378–392.

Westmarland, L. 2004. Policing Integrity Britain’s Thin Blue Line. In The Contours of Police Integrity, ed. C.B. Klockars, I.S. Kutnjak, and M. Haberfeld, (eds) The Contours of Police Integrity, Sage, Thousand Oaks CA/ London.

Westmarland, L., 2005. Police ethics and integrity. Breaking the blue code of silence. Policing and Society. An International Journal of Research and Policy, 15 (2), 145–165

Westmarland, L. 2025 Police Ethics Cop Culture, Corruption and the Blue Code of Silence. Palgrave Macmillan, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.