THE SCOPE OF PROFESSIONAL COURTESIES
How far such courtesies extend is not altogether clear. Both with respect to the class of beneficiaries and the nature of the courtesies, there is variation and vagueness. On-and off-duty officers from oneâs own jurisdiction will almost always have such courtesies extended to them. But then there is also a potentially larger class of people to whom such courtesies are frequently extended: officers from other jurisdictions,4 retired officers, the immediate and not so immediate families of officers, and so on, extending sometimes to members of other groups whose affiliations are generally of a work-related kind.5 With respect to the kinds of courtesies involved, officers with whom we have spoken sometimes draw an informal distinction between administrative and criminal violations. Speeding, parking, and drunk-driving offenses are seen as administrative breaches; burglary and armed robbery would almost certainly be viewed as criminal.6 Disorderly conduct, domestic, and some sexual assaults frequently occupy a gray area.7
Professional courtesies are not, of course, the exclusive preserve of police. As the name indicates, they are endemic to professional life, and their analogues are no doubt found in other occupations and contexts. Doctors and lawyers quite often assist each otherâand their familiesâwithout or at reduced charge, or provide them with speedier service than they might otherwise have received.8
The case of what are termed police âcourtesies,â however, might appear to be different. In part, this may be because police are seen as public servants and not as private entrepreneurs. Even if it is allowable for others, as private service providers, it is not for the police to show this kind of favoritism. Thus, police who pledge allegiance to the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics vow never to âpermit personal feelings ⌠or friendships to influence [their] decision ⌠[and to] enforce the law courteously and appropriately without fear or favor.â As beneficiaries of a public payroll, they owe impartial treatment, making distinctions only where relevant distinctions can be drawn. Whereas impartiality may be optional for private professionals, it is mandatory for police officers.
There is, however, another more important reason why we might want to distinguish police courtesies. Police are pledged to enforce the law, and failure to do that just because an offender is a fellow officer is a violation of one of the central requirements of their office. Discretion is one thing; favoritism another.
Notwithstanding these apparent differences, one is hard put to find police officers willing to advocate the ticketing of fellow officers in situations in which a ticket would have been issued had the violator been an ordinary citizen.9 Quite the contrary. In one of the few âpublicâ statements on the issue, Phil Caruso, the New York City president of the Patrolmenâs Benevolent Association, is on record as telling his membership âYou Donât Summons Another Cop.â10 On the surface, at least, this looks patently unfair. So what makes for the difference? Does whatever it is justify such partiality? And if so, what limits ought to be observed?
We have heard or can think of several possible arguments11:
(1) Not just police: Police often become self-defensive about the breaks they give each other, and one strategy of defense is to claim that they are not the exclusive beneficiaries of such practices. Clergy, doctors, judges, and sometimes political figures are accorded similarly privileged treatment by police officers. Presumably, this is meant to show that there is nothing specially self-serving about the courtesies, and, thereforeâwhatever else one might sayâthat they carry no moral taint.
But this is surely too quick a conclusion to draw, for it presumes that the practice of âforgivingâ clergy, doctors, and others is itself defensible. Moreover, it assumes that the reasons for going easy on clergy, doctors, and others shows that police are not acting self-interestedly.
In the case of clergy and doctors, it is quite likely that there exists a certain affinity or fellow feeling. Police officers have to work with clergy and doctors, particularly in crisis situations, and in some cases at least, there are fairly deep ties between the church and police. In departments in which there are appreciable numbers of Irish and Italian police, as is the case in a number of large U.S. cities, the connections may be quite substantial, and the courtesies extended may be very considerable.12 Police and doctors both understand and have to deal with the messy end of human life, and so, despite the enormous social differences,13 an empathy exists, such that a warning is more likely to result than a ticket.14
At best, the affinities between police, clergy, and doctors show why courtesies extended to one group might also be extended to another. They do not show that they are justifiably extended to any group. Later we will see how the group cohesion argument [see (3) below] might be employed to accommodate all three.
The situation of judges and political representatives is probably different.15 Police have to work with judges, and alienating them may create problems in the courtroom. In the case of politicians, there is probably little love lost between them and the police. That is probably because of what police often see as political interference with their work. Politicians, whether through the legislative process or through personal influence, can and do affect the working conditions, prospects, and lives of police officers, and extending âcourtesiesâ to them might seem the prudent or expedient thing to do.16
Expediency is not a very good reason for making an exception in favor of judges or the politically influential. It is more like bowing to a veiled threat or acceding to what is âpoliticâ than making a wise judgment about what would be the most appropriate thing to do. We must, however, recognize that a great deal of public life is conducted under constraints of these kinds, and, as a matter of social fact, it is hardly surprising that police respond as they do.
(2)The exercise of allowable discretion: That police are not rigidly bound to enforce all the laws all the time, and that they have some discretion about how to enforce them need not be argued here.17 Whatever the public relations face of police work, we all know the reality is one that requires and, indeed, accepts that police exercise some discretion about how they fulfill their social tasks.
Police do not ticket every violator of traffic regulations. Sometimes they ignore, sometimes they warn, sometimes they ticket, and sometimes they may even arrest. And so the exercise of a discretion that refrains from ticketing a fellow officer need not automatically violate any reasonable expectation we may have of police. Indeed, provided that they issue enough tickets to give substance to the traffic regulations, there may be few constraints on the considerations that ought to influence the decision not to ticket. Ergo, it might be argued, the nonticketing of fellow officers remains within the boundaries of allowable discretion.
But acceptable discretion is not an arbitrary power, even though it may sometimes need no powerful basis. Granted, police may exercise discretion. But why in this way in these cases? If scarce police resources make it a bad investment to focus on certain kinds of traffic violations or on traffic violations in certain situations, that may well be a reason for going easy on certain violators or even for not enforcing the law at all. If someone is speeding because he is trying to get emergency medical assistance or because he is on a deserted country road, that may be a reason for not issuing a ticket. The exercise of favorable discretion may be justified here.18
However, what is it about a fellow officer that makes it appropriate to exercise favorable discretion in his case? Does it not constitute the same kind of favoritism that one finds in nepotism, bias, and partisanship, the very partiality that police vow to avoid in their role as law enforcers?
Sometimes police do endeavor to show why, in the case of a fellow officer, they feel justified in exercising favorable discretion. It may be said, for example, that police know how to handle a car at high speeds. Or that if they have had a few too many drinks, that is understandable and excusableâgiven the stresses of the job. A compassionate response is called for, and another officer is able to give it.
We do not wish to deny that considerations like these are sometimes relevant. We doubt, however, whether they are overriding.19 And they are hardly sufficient to justify the steady practice of letting fellow officers off. Courteous âdiscretionâ is not grounded in some contingent circumstance of a case but simply in the identity of the violator. Some police officers can handle cars better than others, and though some stresses may come from the job, others do not. Something more needs to be said than the discretionary argument appears able to provide. What we need to find is not some situational factor that enables one to say âI wonât ticket you âŚâ on a particular occasion, but a different kind of factor, associated with a personâs identity as a police officer, that will explain and justify a general practice of favorable discretion. The discretionary argument, in other words, does not explainâor justifyâthe refusal to ticket as a âprofessional courtesy.â
There is, however, one group-related factor that might be adduced in favor of the discretionary argument. Were it arguable that police violators would suffer more or disproportionately if summonsed or formally dealt with, this could be taken into consideration in deciding whether a summons or arrest was warranted. It is not uncommon for violators of traffic rules to plead that a summons will cause them excessive hardship (they will lose their license, their job depends on having a license, etc.), and it could well be the case that police who are convicted of certain traffic violations (say, of driving under the influence or of breaching the lawâwithout good reasonâwhile on duty20) will experience some form of dep...
