Ethical Decisions: The Making Of A Police Officer

In life, adults are faced every day with decisions making. Since birth, parents teach their children right from wrong. Throughout the years, we continue to learn and apply everything we have been taught to our everyday lives. We further take those things and apply them to our careers. However, there is one career that as citizens we hold accountable heavily every day for their actions. That is the one of a police officer. Every day on a daily basis law enforcement officers are faced with difficult decisions on the job. It is without a doubt that even at times they are faced with split second decision, and it is crucial that the best decision are made. However, that is not always the case and unethical decisions are made which can result in

Kevin Gilmartin, who is a behavioral scientist specializing in law enforcement related issues, stated that although the responsibility for behaving ethically lies with the individual officer, management share some responsibility (Gilmartin, 1998). He states that not taking care of minor things can ultimately lead to devastation to the individual officers and the organization as well. As an agency it is important that they reduce risk and liability as the agency can be held liable as well. It important that they prevent and reduce injury to the public, property and that they protect their reputation (The Police Chief, 2015). Civil liability caused by the police department can be due to negligent hiring, failure to supervise, failure to train, failure to discipline, false arrest and many other various reasons (The Police Chief, 2015). Many department now have code of ethics in which officers are expected to follow. Schafer states that “ethic codes and guidelines protect professionals from themselves, as well as from those who, they perceive, abuse the power of their profession.” (Schafer, n.d.). These Code of Ethics set guidelines for ideal behavior for officers to follow and is expected to be

But when an officer is involved in unethical behavior discipline is expected. For example, some department may consider it to be unethical to accept free meal from a restaurant and therefore, discipline the officer. Schafer, however, states that one can avoid “the ethical trap”. He states that by living an ethical life, it can help reduce the various ethical dilemmas that an individual may face (Schafer, n.d.). Furthermore, living an ethical lifestyle may influence another person’s behavior. This is due to the fact that unethical individual are more likely to stay away from inappropriate behavior when they are surrounded by ethical individuals. Timothy Roufa, a criminology careers expert, advices that for those situations that may prove difficult for police officer, tests can be applied to help in the ethical decision process (Roufa, n.d.). Roufa additionally states that in a critical thinking test a series of yes or no question must be asked in order to determine whether or not the officer should continue with whatever action they are doing. The questions are asked to guide the officer towards making right decisions. Some of these questions can be such as; is my action legal? Will the end result be good? Is there a better, less harmful way to achieve the same goal? Can my decision be justified if it is made public?, along with a variety of other questions (Roufa, n.d.).

However,