The Ethical Dogma of Police Officers - Research Paper Example

The Ethical Dogma of Police Officers Introduction Police force is an organization of people who have the power in d by the to maintain law and order, ensure protection of public property and control civil disorder. They have the authority to enforce power in a legitimized manner. The police personnel of a state usually use their power in their territorial area of responsibility. The role of police in society cannot be overstated and is shaped by the economic and political system of a country. Police force can be used both for civil protection and political protection. Civil force is that aspect of policing that is concerned with enforcing criminal law to curb crime, maintaining law and order, and protecting the lives and properties of citizens. This is the most common element of police service that is acknowledged by general public as they believe that the principle responsibility of police is to catch criminals. Then there is political policing which includes maintaining order when there are political disputes. Police force plays an important role in controlling strikes, public demonstrations and internal unrests that are results of racism, political rivalry and social differences. The modern police force is often used in the political arena as an instrument to serve the interests of certain parties. To maintain ethics is a very important responsibility of the police and it is considered that no other profession carries more ethical expectations than the police. Police officers are aware that they are scrutinized by the public for every action they take for tackling criminal activities. Police misdemeanors are extremely common like excessive use of force, taking advantage of their authority and accepting bribes or gratuities. All these are unethical behavior of the police on whom the government has entrusted protection of civil rights and properties. Like any other field, it is the corrupt police who make the headlines in the media thus overshadowing the works and ethics of good, honest and hard working police officers. Many police officers differentiate between accepting gratuities with no conditions and taking bribes to compromise their ethical duties. However, gratuities more often than not carry unspoken conditions thereby influencing police to exert extra focus and attention on an establishment to protect it from potential robbers. Thus the concept of gratuities exerts doubt on police ethics since all citizens have the right to equal police services. This paper explores the ethical dogma of police officers in the backdrop of discussion about morality and legality. Personal ethics It is believed that everything people do, they do so for their personal benefits. According to many reputed psychologists, “even at our best, we are only out for ourselves” (Andre & Velasquez, n.d.). Even when people do courageous acts there are personal gains attached, sometimes apparent like public glory and sometimes subtle. For instance, when people see accidents on the road and victims crying for help, they go forward to rescue the victims. Apparently, they are doing this to relieve the victims from their state of distress. However, from psychological perspective when people see others in pain or agony, they feel same level of shock, insecurity and fear. From these feelings people feel the desire to enhance their well being and one way to achieve this is to reduce the suffering of others. Hence, providing a helping hand to others only means reducing own distress. Therefore, the acts that appear as altruistic are most of the times done to serve self interest. This belief that people act only for selfish reasons is long embedded in Western thoughts and psychology. If this is true that people act to fulfill their egoistic motives, then it becomes difficult to ascertain personal ethics. Ethics is traditionally believed to be acts that are performed without thinking of self interests. If there is moral obligation to do something, then people ought to do it even if there are no personal gains from those acts. Moral acts means when people cease thinking about self interest and gives value to interests of others. Although egoism is a strong motivator for people to act in certain ways, ethics are traditionally concerned with capability of acting for serving interests of others without caring about own welfare. According to research conducted by psychologist Dr. C. Daniel Bateson, it is the manner in which people go to any extent to help others that determines whether a person is performing such act to serve self interest or to genuinely help another person in distress. Bateson hypothesized that if people were motivated to help others only for serving personal ego, then they would help only if the process of helping is easy and convenient. If there would be ways to avoid the situation then they would do so. However when people go to any length to help others even when own self interests remain at stake, that indicates that people are acting genuinely out of concern for alleviating the distress of the other person. From experiments it was derived that seeing others in need of help there are two kinds of emotions that arise in the minds of the witness – personal distress like worry or grief and empathy like compassion and sympathy. The reasons that exist behind people helping others depend on the underlying emotions that guide people to act in a helpful manner. Bateson claims that “feelings of empathy arouse a genuinely altruistic motivation to help that is not derived from self interest” (Andre & Velasquez, n.d.). Batson et al. (1981, p.291) have differentiated the behavioral patterns arising from egoistic and altruistic motivations. When people perform acts of kindness towards others with the desire to achieve public recognition, bravery awards etc or to avoid personal humiliations like criticism and punishment, then people are motivated by their personal ego. This means although apparently a person is helping others in distress, in reality he is doing the same to increase his welfare. On the other hand, people are being altruistic when they are helping others only with the reason of increasing the others’ welfare. There are three characteristics attached to differentiation between egoism and altruism – a) whether the behavior of one person to the other is guided by the former’s egoistic need or altruism is determined by the final achievement, b) people are motivated to help others both from altruism and egoism and are often not motivated solely by one of them, and c) in order to fulfill the condition of altruism, it is necessary that the welfare of the other person is enhanced. Social context of justice In the social context, criminal justice professionals have the basic responsibility of maintaining law and order in the society. This refers to the fact that every society requires a certain level of stability that will ensure peace so that the society can function in an efficient manner to fulfill the needs and desires of the common people. A society that lacks force to sustain order, like the police force, will crumble and cease to exist. In general, order in society is maintained by power and culture. Culture of an individual structures his or her identity and defines motivations and expectations. From this cultural definition of expectations and identities, people follow a certain pattern of behavior that distinguishes between ethical and unethical behaviors. This means a person born within a certain culture has definite identity in the society and his sense of right and wrong is defined by the rules of his culture. From this sense of right and wrong, the concerned individual gains motivations as to what he wants in his life and accordingly others expect him to behave in appropriate manner. Power is defined as regulations that are enforced when people break the conventional cultural rules. Positive sanctions are motivators like rewards or social approval that induce people to abide by social and cultural laws. Most of the times people are guided by both positive sanctions and socialization like cultural motivations and expectations. Then there are deviant acts that disturb the social peace and order. If detected, these acts can call for negative sanctions that act as punishments and deterrents. Small scale deviant acts call upon informal negative sanctions like rebukes and criticisms. More serious offenses or crime lead to formal negative sanctions like calling the authority like the police and doling out specific punishments (Smith & Natalier, 2005, pp.9-10). In the social context, justice means to ensure a fair world where “people will get what they deserve and deserve what they get” (Batson, 2002, p.91), and a world where evil things will not happen to good people. According to traditional beliefs, the justice motive arises from seeing innocent people suffering for no apparent reason which challenges one’s trust on a just world. If there is availability of low cost and convenient way of removing social injustice, then people motivated by restoring justice will take advantage of this opportunity to eliminate injustice, unfairness and crime. This is the moral aspect of justice since people are motivated to remove injustice and reduce the suffering of innocent people. However, such acts of justice also brings with them social recognitions, felicitations and rewards for doing a good deed. Therefore self-interest is also served in the process of bringing social justice. Without the availability of such opportunities, the desire to ensure justice can induce one to eliminate the threat by putting the blame on or disparaging the sufferer. Therefore, justice motive can be a two-edged sword: “depending on the options available, and the costs associated with each, the motive can lead one to redress injustice or to perpetuate it, even to exacerbate it” (Batson, 2002, p.92). This is because the final desire of people is not to behave in a just manner but to see fairness and justice in the world, and behaving in a just manner is just one of the options on how to fulfill that desire. Ethics and morals of police Police officials on a daily basis act under immense pressure. Their way of making decision and taking prompt actions depend on how they balance values and interests that both compete and conflict with each other. The police most often have to work in emotionally charged and dynamic circumstances to ascertain the underlying truth of events based on abridged or erroneous information. Police officers are expected to maintain high ethical standards in their behavior and profession since they are the protectors of public trust and are given the responsibility to apply force when necessary and they can also take away fundamental rights of a citizen if lawfully justified. The police are required to take an oath of office and are expected to abide by the professional code of ethics, and their activities and diligence are guided by laws, rules and regulations. A police officer hones his moral awareness skills and develops his character and integrity by “interacting with other people and studying ethics” (Gleason, 2006). A police officer gets ethical training which helps them on various aspects. Firstly, they can easily identify the ethical elements of a problem and concerned dilemma. Secondly, for every problem there are multiple options available and the office is trained to recognize all those available choices for solving the problem. Thirdly, among the options the police officer learns to choose the most logical and ethical option. Fourthly, the officer is trained to take instant action based on the choice that he has made. Finally, the police officer remains prepared to take responsibility for any outcome. One basic requirement of a police officer is not only to think in an ethical manner but also to act in an ethical manner. With the help of ethical training police officer learns to address ethical problems, but the officer must have the courage and endurance to act accordingly. In any situation there are two components which are reaction like emotions and thought, and action. In legal framework, the focus is on action since as long as action is done by complying with the legal codes, the reason is generally not worth considering (Gleason, 2006). Ethical training of law enforcement officers is of utmost importance since they are accountable for their actions to the society. Since police officers are essentially public servants their job includes protection of the lives and properties of citizens, therefore if officers behave in an unethical manner then it means they are betraying the trust of the public and disparaging the reputation of law enforcement agencies in the eyes of the public. In America, a number of civil law suits have been filed against the police force for unethical attitude of the officers. According to the U.S. Supreme Court’s verdict in City of Canton, Ohio v. Harris, U.S. 378 (1978), “cities can be liable when it is demonstrated that failure to provide training is a factor that resulted in the violation of a citizen’s constitutional rights” (Wyatt-Nichol & Franks, 2010, p.40). As per the beliefs of many law enforcement agencies and personnel, efficient ethical training can diminish the gap between written policies and real action by the police by launching and reinstating behavioral expectations and codes. It was in the mid-1990s that ethical training to law enforcement officers gained attention to ensure that police officers do not feel the pressure of their profession. Ethical training has gained so much importance more because modern police force is constantly subject to public scrutiny, increased lawsuits, and excessive expectations leading to increasing suicides among officers (Wyatt-Nichol & Franks, 2010, p.40). Moral and illegal and legal but immoral acts There is a clear distinction between morality and legality. Legality is easier to comprehend since any actions that do not abide by the legal rules and regulations are illegal. In short, any actions permitted by law are legal and any actions not permitted by law are illegal. However an act becomes immoral if it defies moral standards of a society. Legality is something that is defined by human beings and in most countries courts, judges, parliaments and legislators decide what is legal and what is illegal. However, morality is distinguished from legality in three ways – 1) unlike legality morality is not defined by any organization or individual, 2) while some aspects of morality can be taught, there are other aspects that are inherent in human beings unlike legality, and 3) like legal rules, moral codes cannot be altered at one’s discretion. It is a matter of controversy whether legal restrictions are applicable on acts based on their morality apart from the fact that such acts can be harmful to other people or to the society. There is no clear argument regarding this issue. For instance, acts of homosexuality have varying perspectives. Some people who consider such acts as immoral also believe that practicing homosexuality can be psychologically harmful. There are others who hold a religious view like God condemns those people who commit acts of sodomy, and these people believe that such acts are more morally harmful than psychological. There are still others who sympathize with those who are gay or homosexuals since they have to lead a miserable life, but still such people do not give moral support to homosexual acts. In this case, people can see that homosexuals suffer if they are refrained from doing such acts but still question their morality. Since moral perspectives have different dimensions, therefore “the magnitude of moral wrong may seem greater than any harm” (Greenawalt, 2010, p.476). Thus, there are supportive views on legal restrictions on acts that are morally wrong. Regarding morality and legality a question often arises whether law represents “the moral judgement of the majority and its sense of justice” (Greenawalt, 1987, p.272). Leaving aside the legal technicalities, it is not always true that legal rules and restrictions comply with the moral perspectives of common people. It should be mentioned here that even if majority of citizens advocate a certain law, it does not imply that every one of them will disapprove all kinds of violations of the same law. General people believe that law is necessary to bind acts in moral and legal framework and also law provides incentive to people to act on moral grounds; however people also believe that under unavoidable circumstances certain degree of non-compliance of law is justified. For instance, many people believe that breaking speed limits to save a life is not illegal, or blocking traffic to protest failure of traffic lights is justifiable. Under such conditions, acts even though break legal rules should not be punished on moral grounds. Morally justified acts generally do not harm anyone’s legitimate interests, and therefore people performing such acts should not be discouraged from doing same acts in future by enforcing punishments on them in the name of law (Greenawalt, 1987, p.272). Pertaining to the above discussion, let me bring here the issue of police officers accepting gratuities with certain explicit or subtle conditions attached. This matter is given a moral angle since acceptance of gratuities by police officers violate the democratic dogma of legal services. Bribes are often considered same as gratuities since both are “rewards to the officer for his or her willingness to perform – or not perform – duties according to the wishes of the payer” (Del Pozo, 2005, p.25). For instance, restaurant owners in crime prone areas may pay certain sums to patrolling officers with the expectation that the officers will exert extra focus on the restaurants to protect them from criminals. Such favors may not be explicitly requested by the payers but the same are essentially implied as soon as the officer accepts the gratuity. Such acts of acceptance are immoral since they violate the democratic dogma of legal services since all citizens have rights to equal access to police services. It is not morally justified that people should procure additional services from the police just because they have the ability to pay gratuities to police officer either in cash or kind (Del Pozo, 2005, p.25). When gratuity is accepted, it gives opportunity to the police officer to act in unethical manner even if the unethical intention initiated from the payer or the receiver. Such police officers are often confronted with the dilemma of compromise and ethics (Ruiz & Bono, 2004, p.45). Justice and liberty Whether a certain act is moral or immoral can only be judged by its lasting consequences. For instance using physical violence on other people is immoral act. However, the acts become illegal only if such violence cause injuries or leave long lasting scars on the victim’s body. In other words, parents slapping a child for the latter’s insolence is not illegal act if the slap does not cause more than a little pain to the child. Therefore legal judgements on certain acts depends on their positive or negative effects. Conclusion The police most often have to work in emotionally charged and dynamic circumstances to ascertain the underlying truth of events based on abridged or erroneous information. Police officers are expected to maintain high ethical standards in their behavior and profession since they are the protectors of public trust and are given the responsibility to apply force when necessary and they can also take away fundamental rights of a citizen if lawfully justified. Accepting bribes or gratuities are unethical behaviors of police since providing special services to payers of the same violates the fundamental rights of other citizens who have equal access to police services. Police officers who deviate from their ethical duties generally follow a progressive pattern. Just like potential criminals start their career by small offences, most police officers become corrupt after finding themselves on a “slippery slope of compromise and opportunism” (Ruiz & Bono, 2004, p.45). When businessmen offer gratuities that form a substantial percentage of a police officer’s legal earnings, then even after knowing the ulterior motive of the payer the officer may end up accepting the gratuity. Under such circumstances, sense of ethics get overshadowed by basic financial needs. References Andre, C. & Velasquez, M. (n.d.), Unmasking the motives of a good Samaritan, SCU, retrieved on February 24, 2014 from: https://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v2n1/samaritan.html Batson, C.D. et al. (1981). Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(2), 290-302 Batson, C.D. (2002), Justice motivation and moral motivation, pp.91-108, In Ross, M. & D.T. Miller (eds) The Justice Motive in Everyday Life, Cambridge Univ. Press Del Pozo, B. (2005). One Dogma of Police Ethics: Gratuities and the “Democratic Ethos” of Policing. Criminal Justice Ethics, 24(2), 25-46 Gleason, T. (2006). Ethics Training for Police. Police Chief Magazine, 73(11) Greenawalt, K. (2010), Legal enforcement of morality, pp.467-478, In D. Patterson (ed) A companion to philosophy of law and legal theory, John Wiley & Sons Greenwalt, K. (1987) Conflicts of law and morality, Oxford Univ. Press Ruiz, J. & Bono, C. (2004). At What Price a “Freebie”? The Real Cost of Police Gratuities. Criminal Justice Ethics, 23(1), 44-54 Smith, P.D. & Natalier, K. (2005) Understanding criminal justice: sociological perspectives, London: SAGE Wyatt-Nichol, H. & Franks, G. (2010). Ethics training in law enforcement agencies. Public Integrity, 12(1), 39-50 Read More