Portrayals of Police Ethics Because

Portrayals of Police Ethics

Because they are charged with enforcing the law, police officers are held by society to a high moral standard. Unfortunately, police officers sometimes commit serious errors in judgment and their actions fail to meet that standard. Such ethical lapses are regularly portrayed in communications products, such as feature films, and in the news media. One prominent example of an ethical dilemma faced by a police officer in a feature film involves the character of Officer Jim Malone in the Untouchables. Malone is working as a cop in a corrupt police force during Prohibition-era Chicago. However, before meeting with Eliot Ness, Malone largely turns a blind eye to his fellow officers' corruption and the crimes of the most significant gangster of the time, Al Capone.

A prominent example of a media portrayal of ethical lapses among police officers involves the investigation of police officers in Los Angeles' elite Rampart division. An investigation discovered that police officers regularly fabricated evidence, and even shot an unarmed man and subsequently planted a gun on him, in their pursuit of gang members. In the cases of Malone and the Rampart division officers, we can see how police officers tried to morally justify their actions. Ultimately, however, because their job requires a high moral standard, the police officers in both instances committed ethical breeches by failing to pursue crime wherever it took them and ignoring their responsibility to fairly and consistently apply the law.

The Untouchables

In the classic 1987 film the Untouchables, Officer Jim Malone, played by Sean Connery, faces a difficult ethical dilemma regarding how to deal with Al Capone's criminal syndicate. When we first meet Malone's character, he makes clear to Eliot Ness that he is well aware of where Capone is running some of his illegal businesses. In fact, it is Malone who leads Ness to the site of the first raid.

While Malone is portrayed as a hero in the film, and dies heroically fighting Capone's hit men, we are left to wonder whether he would have enforced the law against Capone and his men at all if Ness had not encouraged him to join the fight. He was, in essence, a police officer who was doing nothing about crimes he was aware of until Ness appeared on the scene.

There are a few different reasons Malone made the choice, before meeting Ness, not to enforce the law against Capone, but each of those reasons presents ethical shortfalls. First, Malone knew other police officers and city officials were on the Capone payroll, and he felt it would be pointless to intervene. He makes clear to Ness that finding a cop who had not been corrupted would prove nearly impossible in Chicago, which is what leads the men to recruit a team member from the police academy. But the fact that Malone knew about his fellow officers' corruption makes his inactivity even worse. As an honest officer, Malone had an ethical responsibility to play a part in rooting out the corrupt elements of the Chicago police force, enlisting the help of an outside agency, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations, if the situation required it. Turning a blind eye, as Malone initially did, was unacceptable.

Given the corruption of Malone's fellow officers, and the strength of Capone's outfit, Malone may have reasonably figured that he was incapable of accomplishing anything on his own. This presents a unique moral dilemma. On one hand, Malone likely should not be making judgments about what battles he thinks he can win. His job is to enforce the law, which will require certain risks. Ignoring, a speak-easy on his beat is corrupt in its own right, as Malone is essentially transferring the risk of his own injury or death onto the next police officer who may have to deal with the situation (Fuller, 2001). And yet, in practical application, we regularly see policies that encourage police officers to make assessments about whether stopping a crime presents unreasonable risks of bodily injury.

For example, police officers often are discouraged from participating in high-speed chases that could prove dangerous to other motorists, and are encouraged to seek backup when they are in potentially hazardous situations. By pursuing Capone on his own and choosing to raid a speak-easy along his beat, for example, Malone would arguably be placing himself in a dangerous situation during which he could not necessarily count on backup. While we can have a moral debate on whether Malone should have more aggressively pursued Capone's enterprise prior to meeting Ness, his decision not to has some precedent in police operations.

The final possible defense for Malone's inactivity is that many people disagreed with Prohibition and thought that banning alcohol was foolish. Even Ness, at the end of the movie, says he will likely have a drink once Prohibition is repealed. However, whether a police officer disagrees with a law should be completely irrelevant in his or her enforcement activities. Under the separation of powers set forth in the U.S. Constitution, police are part of the executive branch, not the legislative branch. According to the code of ethics espoused by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the primary role of the police officer is to enforce the "legally expressed will" of the community, and in this case the Prohibition laws were legally expressed (Cannons of, No date). As long as the sale of alcohol is banned, it is a police officer's moral responsibility to enforce that ban, whether he or she agrees with it or not.

Fighting LA gangs: Police gone wild

In 2005, Los Angeles agreed to pay $70 million to settle lawsuits stemming from widespread corruption in the police department's Rampart division, an elite anti-gang unit (LA to, 2005). The officers in Rampart were accused of a variety of ethical breeches in their fight against LA gangs, including fabricating evidence and covering up for other police officers' abuses. In the end, 82 incidents involving 50 police officers were investigated, resulting in more than 100 criminal convictions being overturned. While the end result was clearly bad, it is worth investigating whether the officers had any moral defense for what they were trying to do.

The Rampart investigation revealed that police officers had fabricated evidence in order to ensure convictions against known gang members and other undesirables. It is easy to understand the mentality that would lead to such conduct. Gangs are a terrible fact of life in LA and are responsible for homicides, robberies, and a good portion of the city's drug and weapons trafficking problems. It is easy to see how a police officer would reason that by taking shortcuts to quickly get a gang member off the streets, that police officer may be preventing other serious crimes that could even involve the loss of lives. In fact, this presents a great moral question: if a police officer strongly suspects a gang member is about to commit murder, is it morally permissible for that police officer to take that gang member off the street using fabricated evidence?

While it may be interesting to ponder such hypothetical scenarios, the answer must be a clear no. First of all, preemptive detention and the fabrication of evidence would both be clear violations of the suspect's constitutional rights. Aside from exposing the suspect to unreasonable search and seizure - and it is unreasonable, as the suspect has not committed a crime yet - the police also are laying the groundwork to violate the suspect's right to a fair trial by introducing fabricated evidence. and, of course, permitting such police behavior would put our justice system on a very slippery slope. How strong a suspicion of a future crime would a police officer have to have in order to make a preemptive arrest and fabricate evidence? And how serious a crime would it have to be? Opening the door to such practices would have disastrous results. In short, there can be no shortcuts in police work. According to the IACP code of ethics, evidence must be presented "impartially and without malice," and "the employment of illegal means, no matter how worthy the end, is certain to encourage disrespect for the law and its officers (Canons of, No date)."