The death of George Floyd in police custody shocked the world. The more recent killing of Breonna Taylor during a drug raid added further concern about police behavior. Passionate pleas to tackle racism within law enforcement and wider society have ensued, as well as heartfelt concerns expressed over police abuse of power.
The vast majority of police officers (I used to be one) are honest, decent people doing a noble job, and worthy of our respect. Nevertheless, Tim Newburn of the London School of Economics & Political Science alerts us to “the simple and uncomfortable fact that complex ethical problems are an inherent part of policing.” Why then have Catholic ethicists paid so little attention to police ethics? Catholic police officers need support.
There will always be a few rotten apples in any barrel, whether it be law enforcement, politics, the Church, or society in general. However, the few bad apples theory, adds Newburn, “fails to identify all those likely to be implicated in the ‘wrongdoing’ (often failing to hold supervisors or managers to account for example) and also fails to confront the structural problems or issues that tend to underpin the misconduct at the center of the scandal.”
It is good that there is a strong bond of loyalty amongst police officers. However, such loyalty becomes misplaced when it demands from officers conduct that is illegal and/or immoral. Ethicist Seumas Miller notes, “Numerous inquiries into police corruption have noted that police officers typically expect other police officers not to report them, even when they have engaged in criminal acts and notwithstanding the legal requirement that they do so.”
How should police officers respond to the unacceptable behavior of other police officers? For evil to triumph, it is only necessary that good men do nothing. In addition to challenging and reporting improper conduct in a spirit of fraternal correction, by understanding the Catholic distinction between material and formal cooperation, a police officer can better learn how to avoid participating in or ignoring any unjust actions of his colleagues.
What, then, makes for a virtuous police officer? A virtue, according to the Catechism, “is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good” (1803). To start, we have the four cardinal human virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, and the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity (love). The latter underpin the former and “are the foundation of Christian moral activity” (CCC 1813). Catholic police officers, fundamentally, are Christians in uniform.
The virtue of justice enables a person to respect the right of both neighbor and God (CCC 1807). Fortitude (courage) ensures we are firm and constant in doing good, resisting temptation, overcoming fear and able to withstand “trials and persecutions” (CCC 1808). Finding the moral courage to resist corruption can be a significant challenge for police officers if they are working within a culture where such corruption has become the norm.
In facing up to the difficult challenges of their work, police officers are in great need of the virtue of prudence to “discern [the] true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it.” Furthermore, prudence “guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure . . . guides the judgement of conscience . . . [and helps] apply moral principles to particular cases without error” (CCC 1806).
Furthermore, in respect of the virtue of hope, the Catechism says it involves “placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (1817); powerful words for a Catholic police officer struggling to live his faith while wearing the badge.
Loyalty amongst police officers, as we have noted, is highly valued. It is a virtue when used correctly. The deficiency of loyalty is unfaithfulness—its excess, misplaced loyalty. So, an officer who does not support his colleagues in their good work is a liability to himself and others, and his unfaithfulness is destructive to successful policing. The same virtue also helps guard against the temptation to succumb to peer pressure that expects support for unacceptable police practices.
We live in a time of moral relativism; ends are used to justify the means—including acts we Catholics deem intrinsically evil. In their work on police ethics, former police officer Michael A. Caldero and his co-author John P. Crank assert that “police work is too ‘ends’-focused. Our police sense of identity is bound up in the achievement of law and order. We tend to believe that there are ends so noble, so right, that sometimes it’s okay to bend the rules a bit. Sometimes we end up bending the rules a lot.”
To challenge society’s “dictatorship of relativism,” police officers (like anyone else) can benefit from following Catholic teaching on the sources of morality: object, intention, and circumstances. The object (what you do) fundamentally determines the moral worth of human acts; good intention and difficult circumstances can never justify an act that is evil in itself. Intrinsically evil behavior includes “whatever is hostile to life . . . whatever violates the integrity of the human person . . . whatever is offensive to human dignity” (Veritatis Splendor 80).
The following three simple points are a helpful guide for law enforcement officers:
- The Golden Rule: “In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12).
- For those up to no good, St. Ignatius of Loyola’s thirteenth rule of discernment applies: the devil behaves like a “licentious lover,” wanting secrecy, not transparency.
- Law enforcement officers are answerable to the public and ultimately to God.
Police officers can learn a great deal within the Catholic moral and ethical tradition about how to best face up to the challenges of their essential role in society. In his homily to the Gendarmerie Corps (the Vatican police), Pope Francis gave this advice:
In your work, you have a somewhat difficult task, because there is always opposition and you must put things right and you often need to avoid offenses or crimes. Pray often so that, with the intercession of St Michael the Archangel, the Lord may safeguard you from giving in to every temptation, from every temptation to corruption for money, for riches, from vanity and arrogance. And, like Jesus, the more humble your service is, the more fruitful and the more useful it will be for us all.
St. Michael the Archangel, patron saint of police officers, pray for us!
For further reading on the subject of Catholicism and police ethics, see the author’s new book, Police Ethics and Catholic Christianity: Lying and Related Ethical Issues within Policing, ISBN 978-1916204614.