Ethical dilemmas always cause sharp confrontation between someones core values. Such cases of clashes may have a negative impact on police officers attitude to his job or colleagues and subsequently, be the first reason to lower the quality of police service in a certain area. Each police officer should define a universal strategy of behaviour to avoid opposition with colleagues and simultaneously minimize harming effect it may cause.
Ethical issues usually involve inner struggle before making a decision or performing actions. The character of the decision made depends on the object of loyalty, which has the greatest authority over a police officer. Naturally, faithfulness to self is more powerful than faithfulness to colleagues, though a selfish person will not gain popularity among colleagues and superiors. Nevertheless, neither loyalty to self nor loyalty to other officers should be the force giving a person an impetus to make a decision. It is the success of the institution in protecting the law that must be the highest motivation for a police officer to regulate his actions. Jocelyn Pollock gives a classic example of the confrontation between moral and professional beliefs when an officer becomes a witness of his fellows wrongdoing (Pollock, 2013). He is facing a controversial choice between his friendship and duties. Not reporting about colleagues misbehaving matches personal moral principles but creates serious discrepancies between the ideal concept of police officer protecting the law and his factual neglecting it. This abstract officer refuses to prevent his colleague from an offense and becomes a lawbreaker himself. Such decision satisfies ones principles and loyalty but makes a legislative institution fail to protect the law.
On the other hand, sometimes the moral concept of right doing faces another typical element of personality, which forces a person to seek material benefit. Souryal (2011) claims that “some police tasks, especially those in specialized units such as vice, narcotics, and internal affairs, may reward lying” (p. 229). Indeed, corruption is the biggest enemy of legality as it creates an absurd image of a police officer violating the law instead of being the first person to obey it. The roots of this phenomenon lie even deeper than in trivial desire of enrichment. The main reason for an officer being corrupted is his ambitions. He suddenly recognizes that gaining authority among colleagues by lying for money and keeping their intrigues in secret will provide him with solid connections and open the easiest way to the top of the power.
However, the experience of many corrupted police officers shows that any black activity is doomed to failure in the long run. The consequences of disclosure cause critical troubles for an officer as he would lose his job and freedom. Moreover, such outcome harms the reputation of police among citizens strongly because notorious trials always make national headlines while getting into the public space. Therefore, the best possible way for an officer to cope with moral decisions is regulating his ambitions by directing them into the legal stream. In any case, the authority gained with conscientious service holds on for a long time and makes a police officer the real protector of the law and his city.
All in all, alleviating the pressures police officers are confronted with in their daily life is a very complicated issue. It is impossible to distinguish a reliable and universal pattern of behaviour because every situation requires a specific approach to finding the best possible solution. However, the strategy of a police officer must include the ideas of following the original goal of legislative institutions and keeping his own ambitions in the legal direction. These basic rules will help an officer to solve ethical dilemmas and find the proper balance between the loyalty to himself and his colleagues.
References
Pollock, J. (2013). Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in Criminal Justice (8th ed.). Belmont, USA: Wadsworth Publishing.
Souryal, S. (2011). Ethics in Criminal Justice: In Search of the Truth (5th ed.). Burlington, USA: Anderson Publishing.