Ethical dilemma is a situation that often involves an apparent mental conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another. As a police officer you are held to a much higher standard. The public will view you differently because you are now wearing a badge and they will expect you to hold yourself to a higher standard also. So, if you do anything that maybe questionable while performing your duties everything has to match up with what you say happened. The 4 ethical dilemmas a police officer would face are discretion, duty, loyalty, and honesty. The first category discretion is the guide lines for how a police officers should and shouldn’t act. When following these guide lines, they help an officer decide will handle a call when in contact with an individual.
A police officer has the option to either cite someone or not and this really depends on what offense was committed and your attitude toward the officer during the encounter. The next category is duty. When you become a police officer you now have a duty to protect and server your community to the best of your ability. You have now been entrusted to enforce all the laws that pertain to you. If you see a crime occurring, you are obligated to intervene and do what you can to stop the crime as you are a sworn officer even when you off duty.
The next category is honesty. A police officer must be 100% honest when performing their duties on and off duty. If there is any time that a question comes up about you are going to be drilled about every detail. The first time you are dishonest every investigation you were involved and every time you had to take the stand in court to put someone away will be called into question. If you lie once you will have to be able provide evidence about any previous cases you were involved in, you were honest then. I have been told as a police officer it is a good idea to keep all your note books no matter what your Sgt or Lt tells you so if there are any questions about your honest in cases you can provide them and have them show all your original notes and information from anything being brought into question.
The final category is loyalty. Loyalty is a hard one because you must think about what side you’re going to take if any when something comes into question. If your partner or yourself are involved in anything unethical or illegal, you must decide if you’re going to do the right thing or not. I have always been told your loyalty is really tested when you are asked to snitch on or testify against another cop. Something like that is hard for some people because the police officer you are being asked to snitch on you have grown up with them and graduated the academy together, so you have the friendship between the two of you also. The essential point is though you have to put aside friendship and put your loyalty with your department.
