Police Ethical Issues cont'

 It is unethical for a police officer to threaten, assault or badger an offender to get a confession or to make an arrest. A police officer has an ethical responsibility to make non-biased, non-discriminatory, law-abiding and justifiable judgment calls to protect innocent citizens. (Tucker, 2016). So police officers are faced with ethical issues on a daily basis in all their interactions with the public. And so it is especially important for them to know or can relate to what is ethically right or wrong. Any action that is consider wrong is referred to as police misconduct.

Police brutality is a form of police misconduct in which officers engage in an excessive use of force. In Jamaica this form of misconduct is of major concern. Police officers are to use force only when necessary and only to the extent required for the performance of their duty. However, it includes, unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal choking, and overall rough treatment (Human Rights Watch 1998; Article 3 of the U.N. Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officers). The most obvious form of police brutality is physical which involves the use of pain holds, batons, pepper spray and guns but it can also take the form of verbal abuse or forms of psychological intimidation.

Almost every night on the news in Jamaica, I have seen reports of shooting by the police under questionable circumstances. In these reports it is always expected that there will be two opposing narratives, one given by the police that says the incident was a shootout and the other by the residents claiming it to be murder in cold blood as the person killed was innocent of any form of wrongdoing. Nothing seems to grip the attention of the public more than the accounts of police officers overextending their legal authority by using excessive force to either effect an arrest of or to coerce information from individuals they interact with during the course of their duties. (Introduction to Policing, Police Misconduct chap 9) For this reason it is rather important for police officers to behave in an ethical manner to live up to the expectations of the citizens they serve.

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