Can the police change their ethics?
For over a year, “Yellow Vest” protests and social movements have been taking place one after another in France, leading to recurring clashes between protesters and law enforcement.
Stéphane Lemercier, University of Montpellier
The protest on Thursday, January 9, has also led to the release of new videos calling into question the way in which police officers—who appear to be overwhelmed—use violence and engage in “illegal practices” that are now casting doubt on their profession.
How can we put a stop to this escalation of violence? How can we return to a police force that acts with integrity and serves the public? One might be tempted to say that police officers need to be taught professional ethics and better supervised. But they already know full well that they must respect the laws of the Republic and the code of ethics. They also know that they are often filmed in public, yet this does not prevent them from occasionally engaging in violent behavior, as evidenced by the numerous videos and tweets following the recent protests.
Police Abuses
Michel Foucault defined “illegalities” as the set of illicit practices, each associated with distinct social groups.
He pointed out that illegality entails the possibility of respecting the law depending on the circumstances. This may seem paradoxical, but experts know that:
“Clearly, and as the classics of police sociology demonstrate, an attitude of strict compliance with the rules would inevitably lead to paralysis throughout the entire organization.”
The judges themselves are complicit in this situation, as criminal procedure has become so complex that it is difficult to carry out a police investigation while strictly adhering to laws and regulations without risking a procedural flaw. Jean-Paul Brodeur, a leading expert on law enforcement, even stated that
“The ever-present possibility of breaking the laws to which other citizens are subject with impunity is an essential part of the concept of the police.”
Mimicry and Anomie
Mimicry, for example, plays a significant role in police misconduct. It refers to the behavior adopted by police officers to carry out their duties: driving at high speeds to catch a fleeing driver, using force to subdue a violent individual, or using a weapon to neutralize a terrorist.
This may be considered legal and legitimate under certain circumstances, but it contributes to a loss of restraint among police officers in their day-to-day work.
Anomie also plays a role. Here, it is understood as the absence of clear rules. This concept may seem contradictory, but since illegal acts are tolerated depending on the circumstances, we can speak of police anomie when certain rules are no longer clearly established.
Take identity checks, for example: these are strictly regulated by law, but police officers in the field frequently disregard these regulations. And when they act “outside the rules,” if they discover an offense, they then find a valid reason for the check retroactively to justify their initial action.
Finally, habitus are the dispositions internalized during socialization within a given environment, and they serve as a framework for perceiving and evaluating that environment. Thus, from their very first days on the job, veteran officers encourage new recruits to forget what they learned at the police academy and teach them what to do based on their own criteria…
In the field, young police officers tend to want to explain the reasons for their stops or interventions to the public, but their senior colleagues discourage them from doing so, arguing that “people don’t need to know” and/or “can’t understand,” and that “we don’t have to justify ourselves.”
A Step Toward Ethics
There is sometimes a fine line between tolerated irregularities and illegal conduct by certain police officers. This leads us to believe that strengthening police ethics does not seem relevant, since it would involve enforcing existing laws—which are not always followed as it is. We therefore suggest that it might be more effective to train officers in deontics, which is fundamentally different from ethics.
Deontology is the science that studies the formal relationships between normative concepts such as obligations, permissions, and prohibitions. There is even a concept known as deontic logic, which, to be effective, articulates time, the agent, the law, and the addressees by relying on the exercise of informed judgment (which is of interest to us because we will see traces of it later in the code of ethics).
When faced with an emergency, a police officer must respond quickly while balancing compliance with applicable laws, his rights, and his duties. He rarely considers the potential consequences of his actions but focuses solely on what he can do within the time allotted to him.
Next, drawing on virtue ethics, we could encourage police officers to reflect on their personal conduct—so that officers would no longer ask themselves merely, “How can I do the right thing?” but rather, “How should I be in order to do the right thing?” For, as John Stuart Mill noted, “it is the consequences for others that allow us to morally evaluate our actions,” and even though most police officers claim to act in good faith and with a clear conscience, André Comte-Sponville points out that:
“Goodwill is no guarantee, nor is a clear conscience an excuse: for morality alone is not enough for virtue; it also requires intelligence and clarity.”
Reflective Practices
And this is precisely one of the new provisions included in the latest code of ethics for the police and the gendarmerie (2014):
“Police officers and gendarmes, in the performance of their duties, exercise sound judgment: they take into account, in all circumstances, the nature of the risks and threats in each situation they face, as well as the time available to them to act, in order to choose the best course of action.”
We are no longer talking about laws that must be enforced at all costs; rather, we are talking about the need for personal ethical reflection. But this would require a reevaluation of police training, since the goal is no longer to impose a rigid interpretation of rights but to encourage officers to reflect on the consequences of their actions by implementing reflective practices.
Currently, operational debriefings are held after operations or events, but these take place in groups, and officers are not encouraged to reflect individually on their practices, express their feelings, and/or consider the consequences of their actions. Introducing more in-depth reflective practices would help change mindsets and operating procedures.
Indeed, it must be understood that the end does not justify the means, and that force may be used to enforce the law only if it is absolutely necessary and legitimate.
The key challenge for everyday safety is to return to virtuous personal conduct on the part of police officers, based on a consequentialist ethic—that is, one rooted in a moral analysis of the consequences of individual or collective actions—so that the police serve the public and are respected because they are worthy of respect, not because they are feared.
The author recently published *A Handbook on Ethics and Professional Conduct in Law Enforcement* (Editions du Prévôt, 455 pages, 2019)..
Stéphane Lemercier, Lecturer – Member of the Montpellier Criminal Law Team (EDPM), University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.