Does the Fantasy Follow the Rules?

Does the Fantasy Follow the Rules?

Bill Piersol

I have a common fantasy that I am driving an unmarked police car on the highway and there is a car coming up behind me weaving in and out of traffic at a fast rate of speed.  The car then pulls behind me, about two inches from my bumper, and I see in the mirror the driver making obscene gestures and the flashing of his headlights into my side mirror.  I pull to the right, let him pass me and quickly see him speed up to 81 mph in a 60 mph zone.   I speed up, turn on my blue lights, and take glee in his expression as I give him a reckless driving ticket with a fine of $3,000.00.   I usually have this fantasy after I am driving on the highway and there is some idiot driving recklessly in and around me.

I am not a police officer but I do have a desire that someone who is annoying me on the road gets punished.  According to Lammers and Stapel (2009), it could be said I am looking for an outcome that is outside my power- in this case the other driver getting punished.  Since I do not have the power, I have a "consequentialist" ethical perspective - an outcome based approach.  For people who do have power, Lammers and Stapel (2009) say they generally take a deontological, or rule based approach. 

We can leave the highway and think about police work in general and the ethical issues of a rule-based versus outcome based approach.  Having seen my fair share of police drama on television, I've observed that police officers are happy when they get a bad guy for breaking the rules straight up, that is the way it is supposed to be.  But on the other hand, some police on these shows have fudged the rules and evidence, or withheld exculpatory evidence, in order to get what they felt to be the deserved outcome.  This type of behavior though also takes place with some real police on the streets, as born out in real court cases,  (Bhave, 2011).

The law is based on rules; a police officer is on much more solid ground when laws are enforced based on the facts that laws were violated. When they stray from that and start thinking the ends (putting a bad person in jail) justifies the means (fudging evidence), they have put themselves, and the case, in a perilous situation.

So, stay tuned for our upcoming class court case to see if the jury thinks that Officer Cult was enforcing the law in accordance with law, or fudging things based on what he thought would be the deserved outcome for Bart James - and did he go too far?

References

Bhave, S. (2011). The innocent have rights too: Expanding Brady v. Maryland to provide the criminally innocent with a cause of action against police officers who withhold exculpatory evidence. Creighton Law Review, 45(1), 1-31.

Lammers, J.,& Stapel, D. A. (2009). How power influences moral thinking. Journal Of Personality & Social Psychology, 97(2), 279-289.