Ethical Leadership Challenges in Law Enforcement

Ethical Leadership Challenges in Law Enforcement
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Ethical Leadership Challenges in Law Enforcement
Men and women serving in law enforcement are held to high leadership and ethical standards bearing the nature of their jobs. Law enforcement is characterized by swift decision-making while fostering leadership to achieve positive outcomes. In law enforcement, officials are likely to face challenges based on cultural diversity while executing their duty. However, as communities evolve socially and technologies emerge, law enforcement officers are engrained in new leadership and ethical challenges. The continuous dynamism in ethics and leadership have triggered the need to standardize moral and ethical issues facing policing to ease decision making. In this analysis, the focus is on the ethical and leadership challenges in law enforcement. Those findings should steer the standardization of ethical and leadership paradigms in law enforcement for better outcomes in a dynamic operational environment.
Law enforcement is subject to ethical principles both globally and locally. The International Association of Chiefs of Police is a renowned institution aiming to steer ethical law enforcement globally. The institution developed a code of ethics in 1957, which has been used as the threshold to understand the ethical dilemmas or issues that law enforcers face in their line of duty (Papazoglou, and Schlosser, 2020). Locally, law enforcement has been anchored on the necessity to enforce the law with adherence to provisions such as never accepting gratitude, never employing violence or unnecessary force, never using ill will or malice to execute the duties, and enforcing the law appropriately courteously without fear or favor. With such standards set, law enforcement ethical observance has become a center for criticism in multiple paradigms.
Upholding the law and individual rights is among the ethical challenges faced in law enforcement. While analyzing ethical policies in law enforcement, Blumberg, Papazoglou, and Schlosser (2020) noted that each officer is supposed to swear an oath to defend the constitutional rights of individuals while also upholding the law. Upholding the seemingly contradictory oaths is an ethical issue in law enforcement—for instance, the issue of drug laws and the ensuing drug wars. The law abandons the right to life and liberty when one is faced with a drug charge. For instance, when an individual is caught with a gram of cocaine, he/she risks losing her rights and liberty accompanied by loss of children, loss of social reputation, fines, loss of jobs, and imprisonment (eJournal USA, 2011b). Officers are always faced with the ethical dilemma of gauging the individual rights that can be overlooked at the expense of ridding the community of drug abuse.
The other ethical challenge that law enforcement faces is the use of necessary force. The contemporary Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) has triggered different debates on the ethical considerations within law enforcement. There are suggestions that law enforcement officers use unnecessary force to handle various criminal situations. The movements have been motivated to hold law enforcement officers accountable for the amount of force they can use while executing their duties. All the officers bear the legal obligation of using the necessary force to uphold the law. While suggesting the scope of the moral risks that such officers face, Blumberg, Papazoglou, and Schlosser (2020) noted that the lack of clarity of the force threshold is among officers’ concerns. Non-compliance to police officer demands is becoming commonplace, especially with limited clarity on the amount of force officers can employ. Stanley Milgram conducted a study to prove that people who are likely to lose their rights and freedom will highly fail to comply with arresting officers. Such officers can be forced to make split-second decisions on what is right to execute. Amidst the decisions on the necessary force, both law enforcement officers and civilians have incurred injuries or even deaths. Additionally, the continuously piling pressures on officers to make the right decisions on necessary force can instill poor decisions as opposed to if the ethical boundaries are clear and officers are faced with only right or wrong decisions.
Profiling is another ethical concern that law enforcement must address in its daily inputs. Since the early days of policing, profiling has been a key component of identifying and assessing criminals. It remains vital for police officers to employ their judgment and discretion to ascertain the best course of action on a case-by-case basis (McNamara, 2011). Presently, society is accustomed to stereotypes and incorrect assumptions that lead to ethnic and racial profiling of cases. Unlike society with long durations to assess situations, law enforcement officers have only a few minutes or fewer to determine if one should be held liable for legal violations. Breaking down the belief systems remains a function of societies that have shown impartiality in profiling cases. Law enforcement ethics require officers to exist in a world that holds their behaviors to a higher standard than the general public. Such inputs make it critical for citizens to comprehend the ethical issues police office...