Ethical Issue In Business Paper

Submitted By jaypark024
Words: 573
Pages: 3

Ethical Issue in Business Paper
Jeremy Shur, Lori Fello, Michelle Hernandez
PHL/323
November 10, 2014
University of Phoenix
On August 9, 2014 Michael Brown was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Repeating an all too common pattern, Michael Brown was unarmed when he was shot and killed. While some claim the shooting was justified because Brown was attacking the officer. Others claim that Brown was murdered in cold blood. While this might hit some as unbelievable, unarmed people do attack police officers and, though this might seem crazy to some, an officer can be morally justified in using lethal force against an unarmed attacker. As reading articles and watching the news, the facts of the matter have not been established so I do not know whether Brown was shot down in cold blood or in a legitimate use of force. Obviously enough, if the officer used force legitimately, then he acted in a morally acceptable manner. If Brown was not a danger or if Brown was a threat but could have been subdued without killing him, then the shooting would be immoral. This is, of course, a matter of the ethics of the incident taken in separation. That is, was the officer morally justified in shooting Brown or not. Settling this will require knowing the facts of the situation. In discussing this matter, I have found that some people consider this aspect of the incident the most important one. That is, the critical issue is whether or not the officer was justified in shooting Brown or not. This view is clearly reasonable, but has an obvious defect, it does not consider the broader context. Roughly put, it could be the case that the officer was morally justified in shooting Brown in what could be regarded as the individual context of one person facing off against another. However, there is also the broader context that involves the social roles of the officer, the social context, the history of race in America. The incident is not just a matter of two men who confronted each other. It is also a confrontation of class and race with the weight of history. These considerations lead to the bigger moral