Ethics
Mark30eastlake!Case 6 ♦ Life on the Streets
Maria Martinez is a rookie officer in the Metro Police Department. Fresh out of the law-enforcement training academy, Officer Martinez has been on the job for only a few weeks. As part of the department’s standard training procedures, she will be assigned to work with more experienced officers while she learns the job. The more experienced officers are called Field Training Officers (FTOs). Maria will be assigned to several different trainers while she completes her training. If any of these supervisors gives her a failing evaluation, her future career in law enforcement will be in jeopardy.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
—Aristotle
Maria’s first assigned FTO was Officer Thompson, a 12-year veteran of the department. While not exactly warm and friendly, he seemed to treat Maria with respect and fairness. He patiently answered her questions and was not overly harsh when she made mistakes. Maria felt fortunate to be working with him. Some of the veterans seemed less welcoming toward new women officers, but her initial impression was that Officer Thompson would give her fair evaluations.
Page 562During their second week together, an odd situation occurred. The pair was patrolling a quiet city street when Officer Thompson saw a young man walking on the sidewalk. The trainer told Maria to pull over and stop. He got out of the car and told her to wait for him there. Officer Thompson approached the man, and the two began to talk. The discussion grew more animated, and to Maria’s amazement, her supervisor threw the man up against a brick wall, causing a cut on his forehead. The FTO searched the citizen, pulled something out of the man’s pocket, and put it into his own. From her vantage point, Maria could not be sure what the officer took, but it looked like money.
Officer Thompson slapped the young man across the face and then released him. The man quickly ran off down the street. The trainer returned to the patrol car and told Maria to drive on. When she looked at him curiously, he said, “Let’s just say that was an old friend of mine who owed me some money. That’s all you need to know, and you’d better not tell anyone what you just saw!”
The rest of the day was uneventful, but Maria went home that night very troubled about what had happened. She knew that a few of the department’s veterans had reputations for ethics abuses and excessive force. Her instructors at the training academy had made it clear that the chief of police was determined to stop these abuses. In fact, department policy required that all situations involving questions of ethics violations or excessive force be reported to a superior officer. But this was her superior officer! Maria had no doubt that he had used excessive force, but it looked like it could have been robbery, too.
Still unsure of what she should do, Maria went to work the next day. Officer Thompson had brought coffee and donuts to share, a first for him. As they were driving, he commented on the events of the day before. “Martinez, I know the academy teachers filled your head with all kinds of idealistic notions about what this job would be like. My job is to teach you how things really are. Nothing matters out here except loyalty to your fellow officers. That’s our only ethics code. I watch your back, and you watch mine. Breaking that code can be downright dangerous because there might not be anyone to watch your back when you need it. Cops have gotten killed that way. I’ve done some things in my career that I’m not very proud of. We all do, and you will, too. But we stay loyal to each other, no matter what. A big part of your evaluation involves how you work with other officers. If your loyalty is in question, you can’t work with the rest of us. And I can give an evaluation that will make sure you don’t.”
Officer Maria Martinez went home again that evening unsure of what she should do. The next day everyone in the department received a memo from the chief. The memo praised the officers and staff for “making great strides” toward creating a more ethical police department. It also mentioned that reports of officer misconduct were down significantly from the year before.
Reference
SAMPLE FORMAT
Rose Charpentier
Dr. Hopkins
Ethics Applied
15 August 2017
Identification
The main ethical issue:
What should ______ do about ________________________?
Research
Three areas of research would include:
1. ________________ to discover ________________________________________________________________
2. ________________ to discover ________________________________________________________________
3. ________________ to discover ________________________________________________________________
Analysis (use at least 4 different options and 4 different stakeholders)
All of the options begin with the same name as the person with the ethical issue. See chart in chapter 4
Options → |
_____ could _____ _____
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_____ could _____ _____
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_____ could _____ _____
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_____ could _____ _____
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Stakeholders ↓ |
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Stakeholder 1
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Briefly describe how each stakeholder will be impacted by each option. |
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____________ ____________ ____________ |
____________ ____________ ____________ |
Stakeholder 2
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____________ ____________ ____________ |
____________ ____________ ____________ |
____________ ____________ ____________ |
____________ ____________ ____________ |
Stakeholder 3
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____________ ____________ ____________ |
____________ ____________ ____________ |
____________ ____________ ____________ |
____________ ____________ ____________ |
Stakeholder 4
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____________ ____________ ____________ |
____________ ____________ ____________ |
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Works Cited
Manias, Nicholas and Dave Monroe. The Moral Compass: An Introductory Guide to Critical Thinking and Applied Ethics. 1st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2020.