fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2176 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2176 ⌋

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Notes:

Sorry for late, busy day.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm aiming to join the police.

Now to do this I'm currently serving in a volunteer capacity, and as part of this have a status of competence to meet.

You get this my being marked off for doing various tasks - arrests, fixed penalty notices, usage of radio and so on.

Well one of these is giving out a cannabis warning.

I have no problems with low level drug usage, find out current drug laws to be problematic, and a relative is highlighting the ethical issue there is supporting what I perceive to be an immoral law.

My response was about changing the system from within and being a better representative of the common good then the alternatives, the difficulty of living a wholly moral life without making questionable choices in any job, and such, but even I felt the arguments weren't wholly convincing.

Thoughts?

If you're more interested in changing the law than upholding it, police is not the line of work you are looking for.

That was really entirely an honest point on my part.

I'd like to change the laws sure, but I don't see that as reasonably within my grasp in any way, whether it be through the police, or other avenues.

Mostly I'm interested in the job because I like a lot of the work. I'm very good at investigation, and have the capability, and competencies to be running operations further down my career.

However, I think you are ignoring the extent to which police have a huge amount of digression available in executing their duties, and that even if something is politically tenable, it may well effectively be defacto ignored by the local force.

Despite that though, it's true that there will be an element of enforcing questionable laws for the first couple years of my career until I could get a transfer to a specialist division.

Discretion.

Cops don't write the laws, they just enforce them. That's what they're paid to do. The question is in how you enforce them, and whether it's worth it. Ask yourself, is it worth dragging in the weekend weed warrior and doing a mountain of paperwork and spending taxpayer money to put him through trial and all that? Because what about that dude on the corner selling shitty heroin to kids? Who's more of a danger to society? Who do you put priority on?

Edited 2012-12-18 01:24 (UTC)

You won't "change the system from within." If you want to change the law, being a police officer is not the way to do it, and you need to look at other avenues. If you want to be a cop, you have to enforce the laws as they are, whether you agree with them or not.

And I don't know of anyone that' "wholly moral." We all have breaking points. We all have exceptions to our rules. And that's okay, because the world is not black and white.

If you're not willing to uphold the law in your professional capacity then you shouldn't be a cop. If you didn't uphold it you wouldn't be doing your job, and yeah. eventually that *would* get you in trouble.

However, if you'd be willing to do it while you're on the clock and want to campaign to/support/whatever changing those laws while you aren't, I don't see it as being a problem.

Key thing though is what you'd do while on the job.

as others said, the police force is meant to enforce laws, not create or change them! if you want to change the laws your best bet is to make nice with a legislator or become one yourself. as an officer you need to do your job and part of that job is enforcing drug laws, even if you don't like them. i know a lot of cops who have done drugs before, or gotten drunk in public, or done something illegal of some sort. so it's not like you're the only person in/thinking of getting into law enforcement that may have an issue with some kind of law. but remember what the line of work is - law enforcement. it's that simple, do it or don't. you don't get to cherry pick which ones to enforce.

Not anon.

Interesting.

In practical terms you sorta do, at least in the UK.

That's a big part of why they're 'officers'. A constable isn't going to be expected to stop every single person without a seatbelt for example. Hell turning a possible reported crime into a civil dispute is an art form in some cases. The lack of targets which is imposed for obvious reasons, also makes it difficult to deal with all but the most egregious laziness, or lack of action.

Yeah if some officer is walking past a serious assault or something, and doesn't do anything they'll be in a world of shit, but simply going up to a prostitute soliciting, or a guy with a spliff - and telling them to knock that shit off whilst taking no further action? Nah.

Perhaps things are widely different in the US. I would be surprised though.

i never said officers don't give warnings and nothing else. but that's part of enforcing the law. they're not always obligated by their badge to give out tickets or arrest people who are breaking petty laws. most officers here give warnings unless you piss them off.

but if you have an actual moral problem with a law then i doubt you'd be the type to give out warnings too, hence my comment. there's a difference between an officer having bigger fish to fry at the moment and an officer consciously opting out of warning or ticketing a person for an offense solely because the officer doesn't ~like that law.

Not really, or rather I don't think the difference is as great as you're suggesting, and that in real terms it happens all the time anyway.

are you in law enforcement/law/lawmaking, or have you had experience in any of these things, or are you just assuming? because i am speaking from experience, and in principle there is actually a noticeable difference between those two things. it's all about the whys.

The former.

Can't really expand for obvious reasons unfortunately.

(less something that would affect me, more colleagues tho)

then surely we can agree that it's about the whys, and that, officer depending, there is a noticeable difference between turning the other cheek when you have more important things to do and turning the other cheek because you never intend to enforce a law you vowed to enforce when you went into law enforcement.

At the same time, there's clearly a point at which it is no longer morally acceptable to enforce laws, even as a police officers. There are some laws which it is clearly morally wrong to enforce. I don't believe that there is any moral or legal obligation to obey an unjust law or order.

So I disagree with you in principle, but I do agree with you that, in this case, giving a cannabis warning is probably not the hill you want to die on, especially as long as its just a warning and not an actual arrest. If it was an arrest, you could (in the United States) make an argument that it would be unjust to arrest the person for cannabis use, but a warning is different.

There's also the point that ill_omened makes that it's partly a matter of discretion and choice - and the other point to make, I think, is that OP is being encouraged to do this (as far as I can tell) as a part of attempting to get promoted in the course of their attempt to join the police force. So there's a combination of the questions that OP has to ask his or herself - "Am I only doing this for my career? Is my career important enough to me to suck it up and do this?" Etc. So I think that complicates things.

You should be a lawyer or a political activist instead if you want to reinterpret or change laws. Law ENFORCEMENT is not the profession for you.

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