Police Officer Mistakes
Police Officers Make Mistakes Too Everyone makes mistakes, even police officers. Police officers must make life changing decisions in a split second. Sometimes, these decisions are not the right decision based on the law. The Supreme Court recognized that police officers will make mistakes. Even the Fourth Amendment permits an officer to make mistakes and when an officer makes a mistake, the Court has ruled that the violation may not have a civil liability. Many times, the evidence discovered by the officer can still be used under “good faith”, exception for the exclusionary rules still applies (Henning, 2016). My agency puts newly hired officers through a rigorous 24-week academy where they are supposed to learn everything about being
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I remember the first day I went solo (working without a senior officer) like it was yesterday. After almost a year of training, I was free to make my own choices and arrest. The first thing I did was go show off to one of my buddies how I was “all grown up” now. He had encouraged me as I went through the academy and so I wanted to show him my new police …show more content…
I do not recall if the suspect served any jail time or not, but I doubt he served any time due to the relaxed nature of the court system in my county. The victim was made whole and I felt great about the work I had done. Let’s look at this scenario using Jeremy Bentham’s felicity calculus. According to Williams and Bruce (2012), Bentham felt that everything reverted back to Hedonism, which suggests that pleasure and pain are the only things we can say are naturally good or naturally bad. Looking at the notion of happiness and pleasure, Bentham argued that moral decisions can be made if consider the amount of pleasure or pain that the action brings us. I will use Bentham’s felicity calculus to assist in looking at my moral decision. Bentham stated that pleasure can be measured in seven dimensions. According to Williams and Bruce (2012), the first dimension is the intensity of pleasure. In my situation, I was very pleased with what I thought was “good police work.” I have always had a strong work ethic so this was important to me. The second dimension is the duration of pleasure. The feeling of giving the victim justice was important to me. There are two things I cannot stand. The first is a thief and the second is a liar. The moment of being able to call the victim and tell her I recovered her property lasted a long time for me. The conviction
I remember the first day I went solo (working without a senior officer) like it was yesterday. After almost a year of training, I was free to make my own choices and arrest. The first thing I did was go show off to one of my buddies how I was “all grown up” now. He had encouraged me as I went through the academy and so I wanted to show him my new police …show more content…
I do not recall if the suspect served any jail time or not, but I doubt he served any time due to the relaxed nature of the court system in my county. The victim was made whole and I felt great about the work I had done. Let’s look at this scenario using Jeremy Bentham’s felicity calculus. According to Williams and Bruce (2012), Bentham felt that everything reverted back to Hedonism, which suggests that pleasure and pain are the only things we can say are naturally good or naturally bad. Looking at the notion of happiness and pleasure, Bentham argued that moral decisions can be made if consider the amount of pleasure or pain that the action brings us. I will use Bentham’s felicity calculus to assist in looking at my moral decision. Bentham stated that pleasure can be measured in seven dimensions. According to Williams and Bruce (2012), the first dimension is the intensity of pleasure. In my situation, I was very pleased with what I thought was “good police work.” I have always had a strong work ethic so this was important to me. The second dimension is the duration of pleasure. The feeling of giving the victim justice was important to me. There are two things I cannot stand. The first is a thief and the second is a liar. The moment of being able to call the victim and tell her I recovered her property lasted a long time for me. The conviction