Is this Legal/Ethical?
- Thread starter Poofs
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Well he was in the wrong as it was three minutes after midnight but seriously three minutes? and he loses his license till he is eighteen? Did that Police Officer really have nothing better or more important to do than follow around a 16 year old? Wait... Can't your neighbor sue the guy for stalking him in particular? Though it does beg the question where he was driving home from.
Harsh? Yes. Legal? Yes.
Maybe your neighbour should have planned his night better, of course it could have been something reasonable that stopped him from getting home on time. It is very harsh, and if I was him then I would go to court to try and get my license back or at the very least get the suspension lowered to a more fitting time.
This cop was obviously just a dick, and was angry at the time. Or maybe he just likes doing stupid things like that. I guess the law is the law but this is sort of overkill isn't it.
Maybe your neighbour should have planned his night better, of course it could have been something reasonable that stopped him from getting home on time. It is very harsh, and if I was him then I would go to court to try and get my license back or at the very least get the suspension lowered to a more fitting time.
This cop was obviously just a dick, and was angry at the time. Or maybe he just likes doing stupid things like that. I guess the law is the law but this is sort of overkill isn't it.
Okay, first off, there are a lot of misunderstandings of what constitutes the ethical in this thread. It's a common misconception that ethics and morality are one and the same.
Ethics = Having to do with freedom and responsibility in the choices and actions we make, especially when said choices potentially affect others.
Morality = Any value system used to distinguish good from bad. (relative to society, individual)
Now, I have a feeling there is more to the situation than we can know from what information is provided but:
If the law indeed allows the police officer to make the call he did, then it is not illegal. Whether it SHOULD be the law is irrelevant to this discussion.
Since the police officer chose that course of action and followed through with it (and most likely filed a report, etc - all the legal proceedings needed to take responsibility for his own actions), then there is nothing unethical about his actions. If anything, the neighbor might be in the ethically questionable situation if he tried to get out of the punishment, since he knew that the possibility of this happening existed when he did what he did (though he is of course just fine contesting it in court if he wants).
Is it moral? Well, that depends. In the police officer's eyes, probably. In society's eyes: maybe not. If democratic society finds that law unfair, they should contest it to put the law more in line with their moral values. However, regardless, there is no legal nor ethical violation in this case based on the information presented. Any problems with it are purely moral/social, and the police officer cannot be held accountable in that way for legal purposes.
Ethics = Having to do with freedom and responsibility in the choices and actions we make, especially when said choices potentially affect others.
Morality = Any value system used to distinguish good from bad. (relative to society, individual)
Now, I have a feeling there is more to the situation than we can know from what information is provided but:
If the law indeed allows the police officer to make the call he did, then it is not illegal. Whether it SHOULD be the law is irrelevant to this discussion.
Since the police officer chose that course of action and followed through with it (and most likely filed a report, etc - all the legal proceedings needed to take responsibility for his own actions), then there is nothing unethical about his actions. If anything, the neighbor might be in the ethically questionable situation if he tried to get out of the punishment, since he knew that the possibility of this happening existed when he did what he did (though he is of course just fine contesting it in court if he wants).
Is it moral? Well, that depends. In the police officer's eyes, probably. In society's eyes: maybe not. If democratic society finds that law unfair, they should contest it to put the law more in line with their moral values. However, regardless, there is no legal nor ethical violation in this case based on the information presented. Any problems with it are purely moral/social, and the police officer cannot be held accountable in that way for legal purposes.
I'd suggest the cop had quotas to meet, in which case it's not entirely him to blame ,it's the stupidity of making police try to hit targets when there's no way of knowing if crime will happen in a certain week.
I know traffic wardens are a private business in the UK and are employed to hit quotas, and it means they'll stand by your car, with ticket already written, the second you're past your parking time, they'll slap the ticket on your screen, no arguments, no excuses.
Trouble is, it's not about punishing the criminals as much as it is about making revenue from drivers. Sure, you should leave your parking space a few minutes before your time expires, but before the wardens were driven by either bonuses or the threat of losing their jobs, some of them would be far more likely to let things slide over a few minutes.
In so many things in this world, it's rarely the guy at the bottom of the food chain to blame, he's following orders passed down by a bunch of dicks who don't live in the real world.
I know traffic wardens are a private business in the UK and are employed to hit quotas, and it means they'll stand by your car, with ticket already written, the second you're past your parking time, they'll slap the ticket on your screen, no arguments, no excuses.
Trouble is, it's not about punishing the criminals as much as it is about making revenue from drivers. Sure, you should leave your parking space a few minutes before your time expires, but before the wardens were driven by either bonuses or the threat of losing their jobs, some of them would be far more likely to let things slide over a few minutes.
In so many things in this world, it's rarely the guy at the bottom of the food chain to blame, he's following orders passed down by a bunch of dicks who don't live in the real world.
Apologies if this has been mentioned already but there is one thing about this bugging me. Road conditions are NEVER entirely predictable (it was a traffic cop taught me that when I did a driver training programme with the local force) It is entirely possible this guy left with plenty of time but was delayed by unpredictable conditions.Poofs said:
Given that as a fact, surely there should be some leeway given. In the same way that being a couple MPH over the limit can be put down to a slightly inaccurate speedometer (There is no such thing as a truly accurate speedometer - again another lesson)
Personally I would have urged him to fight it, then again I'm not sure on how your legal system (American?) works. Its always a sad day when a legal technically overrules common bloody sense.
Edit:
To everyone saying
It really isn't, it is continually changed and revised to suit the changing world we live in. Some rules need to be bent or even broken occasionally and if you can't accept that then you are not much more use than a robot. (I don't mean this in an offensive way, I just hate when people blindly follow. In my mind most of our problems as a species stem from that.)
Anyway, IMHO the problem is that the penalties are bound to a certain timeframe, where there is no "just a bit late" or "really late", just "too late". There should either be a specific timeframe for every single interpretation of "too late", or they should go for some kind of fuzzy logic attempt, e.g. you're 15% into the restricted time, you get 15% the punishment.
I don't like it when something like that happens (like, I run out of the restaurant to refill my parking meter, am 2 minutes late and get a ticket), but if they were less strict, where would the "definitive" end be? If five minutes late is ok, why not 6 minutes, it's no big difference right?
Either adjust the penalty system or give the officer the liberty to decide the intensity of the violation, and I bet that the latter will lead to quite a lot more outrage than the current situation.
To be honest I agree with you that this was law breaking on the drivers part but the police officer should NOT put 2 years over such a trivial time, more appropriate would be to either give a warning or just suspend for a smaller time (personally 3 min over curfew I would suspend his licence for a maximum of 2 weeks, 5 if this weren't his first time or if he argued a lot about my judgement). 2 years is just so ridiculously long for such a small breach of the lawPirate Kitty said:
Law isn't always good. Sure it's there for a reason and I'm not saying that everyone should do as they please but sometimes even a good law is stupid. I hate it how sometimes people just blindly follow it without even questioning it. Yes, he was driving past midnight but what difference would it have made, if he had arrived shortly before midnight? Nothing, it would have been the same. I think sometimes a cop should use his own brain and make a decision based on the situation. Cops should help and protect the people and not harass them.
Most bluntly correct statement you'll find in this topic.Pirate Kitty said:
How much of a prick the cop has been doesn´t matter, because in theory he did the right call.