It is 2 pm on a weekday, and a trainee officer doing fieldwork with a more experienced officer is on duty in a vehicle stationary at a traffic light. While they are at the traffic light their training officer (the superior) is in the back seat having a heated argument with his girlfriend and drinking a beer. They were told to keep an eye on things and let (the superior) know if they saw anything that was problematic. The trainee notices two cars approaching. Both drivers appear to be using a mobile phone. The lights are about to change and both drivers are continuing to use their phones. Consequently, it is evident that the superior who overlooks the training is violating the Police Act and employee act due to drinking while on duty. Depending on the state and age of the two drivers, they might be violating traffic laws concerning driving while using a mobile phone.
Dilemma and Developments
The dilemma is to whom the trainee officer should report and what actions they can commit. If the trainee reports to the superior about the two men possibly violating laws with a chance of causing an accident, they might experience several consequences. First, due to the heated argument of the superior on duty, they might take out their anger on the trainee, in which case the trainee might be told to either resolve the issue personally or to stop disturbing the superior. Second, they might handle the situation without resorting to the superior, but there is a small chance of mishandling the situation due to the low experience.
If the drivers are not violating any traffic laws, the problem of the officer on duty persists as they are focusing on personal issues without prior notification and on duty drinking in the middle of the day. In this case, the dilemma lies within the need to report the misconduct. In this case, another scenario with negative consequences may persist. The first is the scenario of broken trust, as the policing is based on the value of loyalty and comradery. If this trust is violated, working in the same department may be disturbing or extremely uncomfortable, as other officers may avoid contact. This violation may result from the attempt to report to the superior employee. The other scenario involves personal talk with the training officer and asking him to go off-duty and return tomorrow after resolving their issues and being sober.
Values
The values at stake mainly represent ethical integrity, loyalty, and comradery. There are various consequences that may violate these virtues and result in unethical or unlawful behavior. Ignoring the ongoing violations would be an action that will completely disrupt each of the values as looking away from the truth does not resolve the problem but rather allow it to propagate even further.
Ethical systems
It is possible to analyze the situation from the perspective of utilitarianism. This ethical system argues that morality is based on the propagation of virtue and the diminishment of suffering (Hegde et al., 2020). In this case, turning a blind eye will result in the propagation of suffering, as the whole legal system is dependent on the actions of individuals. If one individual violates the law while representing them, they may incur complete disregard of the government authority and spread suffering while propagating unlawful acts and possibly causing deaths if the drivers would cause an accident due to low concentration on the road. Similar consequences hold if the behavior of the superior officer is not reformed, as the trust in policing will diminish.
In addition, virtue ethics could be used to determine the possible course of action. This ethical system is focused on the progression of virtuous character of individuals as moral compass (Hegde et al., 2020). The trainee officer may violate the virtue of integrity by forsaking their duty and not reporting the misconduct of drivers and superiors. At the same time, virtuous traits such as wisdom, loyalty, and courage would be disregarded because the trainee may not report the misconduct in fear of social exclusion or dismissal, loyalty to the government would be forsaken due to the non-prosecution of unlawful acts, and wisdom forgotten as no action is taken to resolve the situation.
Resolve The Dilemma
In light of the given facts, the best course of action would be the one to promote the most happiness and protect the personal virtues of the trainee officer. Therefore, they might report to the superior that their training officer was called home due to personal issues, and he forgot to report them being off duty. This way, the honor of both officers would be protected. Simultaneously, to resolve the dangerous driving issues, it is enough to use the police signal and lights to return the attention of the upcoming drivers and tell them to pull off in order to check their documents. This way, the virtues of loyalty towards the government and police department will be preserved. Wisdom will be displayed as the issues will be peacefully resolved. Honesty will remain as there is no lie that the training officer is not on duty and should have headed home immediately upon intoxication.
Reference
Hegde, A., Agarwal, V., & Rao, S. (2020). Ethics, prosperity, and society: Moral evaluation using virtue ethics and utilitarianism. In 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2020). doi (Vol. 10), Web.