Ethical Decision Making in Law Enforcement

The life of a law enforcement agent is surrounded by many duties. Duties which they are often trained to carry out over several months. Unfortunately, the curriculum designed to train law enforcement agents does not capture the challenges of ethical dilemmas and how to deal with them. This put the officers in a precarious position leading to inability to cope up with a challenging career.

According to the objectives of the article, it talks about the best possible ways to get out of an ethical dilemma. First, getting out of an ethical dilemma situation is to initially recognize that it exists and appreciating that such situations demand critical decision making. Thereafter, the officer needs to select his alternative to action. The choice is made based on the most appropriate way to handle the ethical situation at hand. This can be best achieved by making a list of choices in order of priority from the most likely. The last dictum is the application of the psychological backing to follow through a decision taken.

The experience of ethical dilemmas is an obvious situation in the law enforcement departments. Moreover, there is no single way of maneuvering the situations in ethical dilemmas. However, there is a model designed to give the applicable method to make sure that the moral character of officers is intact. It is advisable that officers prepare for dilemmas as opposed to being reactionary. This finds them much prepared to tackle the situation.

Ethical issues can be faced by anyone and to act according to the prescribed code of conduct and beyond moral reproach, the application of the OPT model is necessary.