Colleges Ask Their Students to Take Courses

¶ … colleges ask their students to take courses in ethics is because they believe that an ethics course can impact someone's personal value system and ethical context reasoning, not simply to introduce students to various ethical approaches. I agree with this position, as I feel that exposure to various potential ethical dilemmas and how to solve them will help prepare me for some of the ethical challenges that I will face as a police officer. I do not anticipate that the course will cover every ethical dilemma that I am likely to face as a police officer, but that it will give me the background I need when faced with various dilemmas in my personal, educational, and professional life.

One of the areas that I believe ignore when looking at ethical challenges is personal life. However, police officers have the opportunity to wield a significant amount of power, and, with that power comes the opportunity to do both very positive and very negative things. I believe that corruption is a very significant problem on a personal level. Police officers are almost expected by their friends and loved ones to intervene when someone is faced with a legal problem. However, is that intervention ethical? Is there a difference between helping a friend's teenage child avoid a citation for minor in possession and helping a sibling avoid a drunken driving charge? These are questions that I will need to address in my personal life. Even more alarming than people asking me to exercise power on their behalf is the concern that I would abuse my power for my own personal gain. For example, I am aware that police officers have higher-than-average rates of domestic violence and substance abuse and that, because of their jobs, they can frequently evade detection or punishment.

In my educational life, I think one of the challenges I face is dealing with cultural diversity. Obviously, as someone who has chosen to be a police officer, I have a strong anti-crime mentality. Moreover, I am aware that there are significant differences in conviction rates when looked at by race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Therefore, I really need to consider issues of cultural diversity and take the opportunity to study about cultural diversity during my education. I believe that taking this opportunity while I am seeking my education will help prevent me from forming racial or cultural stereotypes. I also think it will help me look at cultural solutions for criminal issues.

In my professional life, I think that having a formal background in ethics will be important. One of the most pressing ethical issues a police officer can face is the temptation to do something that is legally wrong, but seems morally right. Police officers who plant evidence, fudge information for search warrants, or arrest people despite a lack of probable cause are generally not doing those things because they consider themselves unethical, but because they think they are doing things that are morally right even if they are legally wrong. I hope that an ethics course will help me reconcile those times when I feel that there is a conflict between my duty and what I think is morally correct.