A Police Misconduct Case On Rodney King - Assignment Example

In addition, this paper focuses on the negative effects of unethical decision making while evaluating the effects violence caused acts of police brutality. Moreover, this research focuses on various moral and ethical concepts that are utilized in explaining how ethical dilemmas affected decision-making in this incidence. Introduction In the process of enforcing the law, various moral and ethical concepts determine an individual’s decision-making tendency. However, in some cases interpretation of moral and ethical concepts involved poses a challenge hence resulting to poor application of these concepts.

Misinterpretation of these concepts introduces various unwanted results in the society. In this study, focus is placed on various moral and ethical concepts involved in the case of Rodney King. Question one Moral and ethical concepts play a crucial role in determining suitable decision-making (Zerbe, Ha?rtel and Ashkanasy, 2008).However, in some cases poor interpretation of the code of ethics results to its violation. For instance, in 1991 some traffic police officers brutally attacked an individual named Rodney king for violating traffic regulation in a Los Angeles suburb.

Evidence in this case reveals that police officers used buttons to beat the complainant after the shocks they had used failed to incapacitate the individual. According to the defendants, the use of force was meant to ease the arrest of Rodney King who was drunk at the time he violated the traffic rules (Pollock, 2012). The acquittal of these officers in court worsened this case by causing the eruption of violence in the streets of Los Angeles where a large number of people were injured and property worth a lot of money was destroyed.

In this case, a number of ethical dilemmas faced the parties that were involved. First, in the process of law enforcement officers are supposed to abide by the ethical code of conduct. However, in case of danger the officers were required to utilize considerable force hence protecting themselves from injuries. In the case on Rodney king, the officers faced the dilemma of whether to abide by the code of conduct for the police officers or to protect each other from the probable injuries that might have been caused by Rodney (Kleinig, 2006).

According to utilitarian ethics a decision is ethical if it results to a higher number of positive outcomes. In this case, concepts in utilitarian ethics would have required that the police officers to protect themselves from an attack by Rodney. However, virtue ethics requires that an individual’s actions should be judged based on the extent to which they employ suitable characters in decision-making. In this instance, the police officers ought to have employed virtues such as mercy and compassion thus using minimal force in arresting the culprit (Ferrell, Fraedrich and Ferrell, 2013).

According to virtue ethics the actions taken by police officers in this case were unethical since they showed the use of force for selfish reasons. These selfish reasons may have included punishing individuals of the black American race or relieving stress among the officers. The ethical dilemma posed by the two concepts may have resulted to the violation of Rodney King’s rights. According to Zerbe, Ha?rtel and Ashkanasy (2008), ethical dilemmas in this case also emerged in the courtroom. In the process of determining whether the defendants were guilty or