Unconstitutional policing leads to the misuse of authority and power by law enforcers. Although the law demands that law enforcers abide by the laws and constitutions, law enforcers sometimes engage in unconstitutional deeds and unethical behaviors in enforcing law and order. The engagement in unconstitutional and unethical deeds and behaviors is referred to as noble cause corruption. Martinelli (2006) defined noble cause corruption in policing as some form of corruption or unethical policing practices that the law enforcers engage in, believing that the outcome will be good. Some of the noble cause corruption practices include shortcuts in investigations and police procedures, fabrication or planting evidence, disregarding the law during law enforcement, and falsifying reports. Although some actions result in good outcomes, sometimes police engage in actions that cannot have any noble causes or results. In several videos, police officers have been caught engaging in unethical behaviors, and this essay will analyze three of such videos.
The first video is a video by ABC News that was uploaded on YouTube. The video centers on the stop and frisk program, which requires law enforcers to stop and frisk individuals. Frisking by police offices is a noble cause of action that aims to reduce the number of criminals in the streets; however, sometimes, the law enforcers use excess forces and do not uphold any dignity while frisking individuals. That makes the whole process to be unethical. In addition, according to ABC News (2013), out of the thousands of daily searches in New York City, only six percent lead to arrests, and only two percent lead to the discovery of weapons. The low outcomes of the programs are an indication that the program is not very effective. Hence, it is not justified for officers to deprive the citizens of their privacy with the searches, with such low outcomes. Therefore, the stop and frisk program is unethical and does not qualify as a noble cause of corruption.
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In the second video, the law enforcers were caught on camera spending past state troopers. The video shows that they were not enforcing any laws or chasing after criminals but were rather going to a class, and one of the officers was getting coffee and donuts (ABC News, 2014). In this case, the behavior of the police officers is unethical and totally unacceptable. Law enforcers are allowed sometimes to disregard the law, including traffic laws under the noble cause corruption, but only during actions that involve crime-solving directly. For example, when chasing a criminal. In this case, there are no reasons to justify why the police officers were overspeeding. The officers should lead by example and respect the laws that they enforce. However, in this case, they acted with total disregard of the law, and also, the overspeeding endangered the lives of the other motorists whom the police should have been protecting.
The third video shows a confrontation between two Austin police offices and a black motorist. In the video, Ms. King was pulled over for exceeding the speed limit by over fifty miles, a felony in most states (Vivian, 2016). It is the duty of the police officers to pull over speeding drivers, and pulling over Ms. King was following the law. However, the actions in the video that were unethical were in how the arrest was made. From the video, Ms. King was already out of her vehicle, and the officer told her to get back into the vehicle. While in the vehicle, she was not fully cooperative, and the officer used physical action and handcuffed her (Viviani, 2016). It also appears that the officer was not giving her enough time to comply with the orders. The conversations inside the car had some aspects of racial discrimination as there is mention of people being afraid of the violence of black people. The actions were unethical and hard to justify.
In the three videos, the actions of the law enforcers were unjustified. The ethical theory that should be applied to the unethical approaches by the officers in the situations is virtue ethics, which part of the normative ethical theories. The virtue ethics idea suggests that if you are a good person, you will do good things to be good, and you must be good (McCartney & Parent, 2015). In these cases, the police officers need to act good and be good in all cases, irrespective of the situation. If the officers are good and purpose to do good, they would have respected the law rather than speeding without a call for speeding, would execute the stop and frisk with dignity, and would have shown respect in the way they handled Ms. King during the pullover. Hence, the police need to apply ethical virtues in situations similar to those shown in the videos as it would ensure their actions are compliant with the laws.
In conclusion, police are faced with ethical dilemmas in executing their duties and responsibilities, which sometimes forces them to disregard some laws. The noble cause of corruption, in a way, permits the policing authorities to act with disregard to the laws in a situation where they believe that the disregard of the laws would result in good outcomes that overshadow the contravening of law. However, to stay on the positive side of the public eye, the officers must always uphold the virtue ethics even as it will ensure that their actions are out of goodwill for the society.
References
ABC News (2013). NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk: Racial Profiling or ‘Proactive Policing? [Video File] YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jqXeW5C324
ABC News (2014). Washington Police Caught Speeding Past State Troopers. [Video File] YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmVVZRtrY5g
Martinelli, T. J. (2006). Unconstitutional policing: The ethical challenges in dealing with noble cause corruption. Police Chief , 73 (10), 1 - 5.
McCartney, S., & Parent, R. (2015). Ethics in Law Enforcement . BCcampus.
Viviani, N. (2016). Dashcam Video Shows White Cop in Violent Confrontation with Black Motorists. 13 WIBW. https://www.wibw.com/content/news/Video-shows-white-cop-in-violent-confrontation-with-black-motorist-387979432.html
