Ethics

Posted: September 6th, 2013

Ethics

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Ethics

In every organization and line of duty, there are rules and regulations determining the behavior of the employee. Ethics are the critically analyzed values of morality or moral factors that guide people’s conduct during their interaction with others in a particular practice or profession. Thus, even law enforcement officers need to have ethics that guide their conduct. The chief of police is supposed to interact with people and other police officers everyday. Thus, having good ethics is important. One of the main reasons that police chiefs need ethics is the nature of his work. Policing requires people of high morals since it entails serving the public at large. In addition, enforcing the law means stopping those who engage in unethical behaviors and morals, which amounts to breaking of law. In many cases, police chiefs will need their moral and ethical judgment when making decisions about law that was broken

Ethics has become a major and complex issue in the modern society today. People in the United States have sets of values and standards they expect the law enforcement officers to meet. They expect the officers to serve them with dignity and high standards. In order to achieve this, police officers including police chiefs need to have a code of ethics that guides them in serving those they took oath to serve. Law enforcement is a skilled profession like many others, whose purpose is serving the public. According to Grant (2002), “Because law enforcement is a profession, ethics and ethical conduct play an important role,” (p.11).Thus, ethical character for police chiefs in order to do this is necessary.

Another reason for having ethics and integrity for police chiefs is the need for leadership. Police chiefs head several operations and police departments. In order to ensure that law is followed, they have to lead by example to other police officers too. Leaders need integrity in order to lead others through being a role model. This ensures that the police department is trusted by the public, to enable cooperation between the served and those serving to make their service better and beneficial to the public. Grant (2002) further cites one of the ethical standard of police chiefs as, “…to serve the community; safeguard lives and property; protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation …,” (12) among other duties.

It is hard to make a differentiation between morality and ethics since they are related. However, one seems to be broader while the other is narrowly fitted to a profession, organization, certain society or a group of people. Morality is the accepted human norm by all people governing our decision making and interacting with others. This is not specific to one profession or a certain organization or even group of people. These are based on our understanding of what stands as right or wrong. On the other hand, ethics are structures morals or morality designed to guide decision making for a certain group of people, an organization, or certain profession. For instance, there is a code of ethics for the law enforcement profession. This governs the conduct of law enforcement officers, and does not have to be followed by the whole community. It states what is right or wrong within the law enforcement profession specifically. While morality will apply to all people including law enforcement officer and the community as a whole, ethics in the law enforcement profession will only apply to the police officers (Stephens, 2006).

On the other hand, law is a bit different from morality and ethics. Law is the set rules and regulations abiding to all citizens and is enforceable. This is what law enforcement officers seek to maintain, and apply to all people within a country. Morality and ethics help officer in making their daily decisions and acting diligently while they abide to law as other citizens as well as ensure they enforce it (Stephens, 2006). Thus, the primary focus of law enforcement officers is ensuring that all citizens within a country abide to the law. This involves bringing those who break the law to justice and protecting others. To carry out their primary focus duty of ensuring enforcement of the law, they require a set of rules that govern how they go about conducting their duties. Thus, a code of ethics comes in to govern the way police chief carry out their task of enforcing the law in order to ensure benefit to all the people within the community.

A code of ethics for law enforcement officers exists to help them in making decision in their duties. It acts as a point of reference, where officers can refer when they need to make a decision on any issue that might arise even within the police department. The code of ethics for law enforcement is used in several ways as well as for several purposes. Its first use is during graduation ceremony of the police, where it is used as an oath of office. The code of ethics states how officer are supposed to serve the public. The code of conduct does almost the same thing, but generally states the behavior of officers during their service in the law enforcement (Kardasz, 2008).

Thus, police chief can use the code of ethics and code of conduct in making decisions in several ways on important matters. For instance, when an officer of the law violates the code of ethics or conduct, it is upon the police chief to take some action. In order to make any decision, it would be important to refer to the code of ethics to ascertain what has been violated, as well as what the code of ethics states about such a violation. Thus, police chiefs or county sheriffs can use the code of ethics as a reference before making a decision on important matters. In other scenario, the code of ethics should help in determining the right or wrongfulness of the actions about to be taken. Before taking and decisions, police chiefs ought to recognize the event happening, whether it is an ethical violation or not. This can be done through the code of ethics that states some of the issues a law enforcement officer should not engage in.

Another way that police chiefs can use a code of ethics is for deciding the course of action to take. This can be done by using the code to determine their responsibilities. With their responsibilities known, they are in a position to know the limitation of their decision. The code can help them in reviewing of any relevant information about a certain scenario as well as what could be done. It also helps in selecting a cause of action that would best suit each scenario through establishing what duties are supposed to be performed. Thus, police chiefs can also use the code of ethics in deciding on the best cause of action to take.

References

Grant, J. K. (2002). Ethics and Law Enforcement. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 71 (12): 11-14.

Kardasz, F. (2008). Law Enforcement Codes of Ethics as Training Tools. Retrieved from http://www.kardasz.org/Codes_of_Ethics.html

Stephens, N. (2006). Law Enforcement Ethics do not Begin when you Pin on the Badge. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 75 (11):22-23.