The images of the Rodney King beating are indelibly imprinted in the psyche of not just the American public but other countries and will forever shade the image of law enforcement. In St. Kitts-Nevis, some people described coercion and use of force by the Police as “Police Brutality”, “Unethical” or “Immoral” behaviour.
Klockars (1983) describes the inevitability of certain unethical or immoral police behaviours as the “Dirty Harry problem”, after the movie character who did not let the law get in his way when pursuing criminals. In Klockars’s view, using immoral means to reach a desired moral end in an irresolvable problem because there are situations where one knows the “dirty act” will result in a good end, there are no other means to achieve the good end and the “dirty act” will not be in vain.
I believe that Klockars’s example of this type of problem, taken from a movie, is a situation where a captured criminal refuses to tell the location of a kidnapped victim. Because the victim is sure to die without help, the Police Officer (played by Clint Eastwood) tortures the criminal by stepping on his injured leg until he admits the location. Obviously, this is an immoral act, but Klockars’s point is that there is no solution to the situation. If the Police Officer behaved in a professional manner, the victim would surely die; if he behaved in an immoral manner, there would be a chance he could save a life. Academic literature does not generally present this dilemma, but in detective work and fiction, it is a dominant theme.
Klockars’s conclusion is that by engaging in the “dirty act” means for the good ends, the officer has tainted his innocence and must be punished because there is always a danger that dirty means will be redefined by those who use them as neutral or even good. Some persons in St. Kitts-Nevis may believed that Police in our force may lose their sense of moral proportion if the action is not punished, even though the individual Police Officer involved may have had no other way out of the moral dilemma.
In a conversation with a friend about the use of coercive power, he disagrees with Klockars, that the officer must inevitably be tainted in the Dirty Harry situation. He pointed out that if one chooses physical coercion, regardless of temptation, this leads to perjury and lying about the activity and perhaps other tactics to ensure the offender does not go free due to the illegal behaviour of the Police Officer. However, he also excuses the actions of those who succumb to temptation in extreme situations and perform an illegal act.
I think that if Police Officers commit an illegal and unethical act it is hard for their character not to be affected or their honour tainted. To understand an action is not to excuse it. One understands that anger or frustration may lead to violence, but that is not to excuse it.
Up to this point I have been discussing in this article about the use of instrumental force, which is force used to achieve an end. The use of force by the Los Angeles Police against Rodney King mentioned in my opening paragraph is an example of force used for instrumental or expressive ends, depending on who you believe. This case represents a situation where policy, law and ethics present different answers to the question: “Did the officers do anything wrong?” The legal question of unlawful use of force is contingent on whether the Los Angeles Police Department’s use-of -force policy was legal and whether the officers conformed to departmental policy.
Fortunately, the use of unlawful force by Police is not a pervasive problem in St. Kitts-Nevis, or is corruption, abuse of authority, or other illegal practices. For every Police Officers involved in such episode there are many others who risk their lives daily, saving hostages, help motorists, reassure frightened homeowners after a break-in, find lost children and adults, and in a number of other ways dramatic and mundane, epitomise the best of law enforcement in our country.
These men and women usually don’t appear on the front page of newspapers, SKNVibes or ZIZ evening news and they often pay the price for the few who do decreased public confidence and even public scorn. It is important to know that the majority of Police Officers in the Royal St. Christopher & Nevis Police Force are honest and ethical and spend their careers simply trying to do a good job everyday by keeping the streets safe for both citizens and visitors alike.
