Boston Police Ethical Dilemmas

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Ethical Dilemma for Boston P.D. turns Deadly Abstract In the late 1980’s into the 1990’s Boston Police where under large amounts of pressure by political leaders and the public to crack down on the drug problem in the city. Unfortunately this turn deadly in February of 1988 when a member of Boston P.D. was gunned down where he and other officers had illegal obtained a search warrant. The ethical dilemma they where faced with was should they do everything by the book and not get the job done, or do things a little off the record and get the job done? Ethical Dilemma for Boston P.D. turns Deadly A Boston Police Officer was shot and killed in February of 1988 the thing was that with this particular case the police officers has illegally…show more content…
Ethical formalism that is a deontological system because its determinant is motive or intent and not consequence. This is the system that the cops chose because they believed their motive was in fact good and they weren’t worried about getting caught. All the police officers where worried about in this situation was getting drugs off the street and taking off some of the pressure they were being put under by society. I believe that if Detective Griffiths would have not gotten shot and killed and this was a normal raid and drug but this situation never blows up like it did. It was a very unfortunate accident where everything that could go wrong went wrong and it ended up with a dead officer and a criminal that got to walk away with no punishment at all. However, in order to have a solution to this situation the police officers should have in my option the ethics of virtue. Ethics of virtue really focuses on character and doing the right thing. In saying that, if the police officers would have had ethics of virtue and been honest they would have gotten a legitimate warrant and even though it might not of saved the detectives life it would have put the drug dealer and killer in jail for a really long time and off the streets of…show more content…
They lied about getting a warrant and in turn let a killer walk away from the situation with no punishment. Like I said previously if they would have used the ethics of virtue system they would have went about things in an honest manner and even though it might not have saved the life of Detective Griffiths it would have put his killer in jail. Ethics training for our officers is very important to maintain order (Papenfuhs,2011). However, when really spending some time and thinking about this situation I wish our legal system could in some way take into account the pressure we put on cops and when we know for an absolute fact a serious crime as been committed that the criminal could still be punished regardless of the mistakes of cops. I don’t think the people should be able to get off that easy simply because of a legal mishap and in fact disgusts me that his has happens numerous times every year. If we could change this I believe it would have an extremely positive impact on our society and make it even more difficult for criminals to get off unpunished. References Tankebe, J. (2009). Policing, procedural fairness and public behavior: a review and critique. International Journal of Police Science and Management, Vol. 11, p8-19. D.O.I. 10.1350/ijps.2009.11.1.105 Travis, Jeremy. “Policing in Transition”. Fourth Biennial Conference. Budapest,
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