Our community should be able to trust and be proud of the work of the Minneapolis Police Officers and what they do on a daily basis. We expect them to be honest, hard-working, and motivated to protect the community. But, too often we notice an abundance of police officers at one gas station or one particular restaurant at a given time. This leads the community to believe that that gas station or restaurant is providing the Minneapolis police officers with some type of gratuity or discount.
In the Minneapolis police policy and procedural manual section 5-102.02 under Minnesota Law Enforcement code of ethics, it states that a Minneapolis police officer may “never accept gratuities” when an officer starts accepting gratuities from a gas station or restaurant it becomes a big ethical problem. A gratuity is a “gift” of something, usually a discount or free product or goods based solely on the officer’s occupation.
Free coffee or discounted food for law enforcement comes with an “insurance policy” for the establishment that provided the gratuity. A law enforcement officer that receives a gratuity from an establishment will likely be expected to provide extra service or priority to that establishment should a situation arise where the establishment
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The giving of gratuities to a police officer will create a presence of police officers at the establishment, this can have both a positive impact on the public, some may think that the establishment is a safer place to be, because of all the police presence and all of the squad cars in the parking lot. But others may see it as the police officers not doing their job and sitting at the local gas station for a long period of time, and in that time that the officers are spending in the store there could be crime going on that could be prevented if they were not at the