Article: Cops Who Kill & the Limits of Self-Regulation
By: Chris MacDonald, Ph. D

Recently in the United States, there has been several high profile cases in which the public has gotten involved. Chris MacDonald introduces the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. Those two trials failed to indict the officers involved in these cases. MacDonald goes in to detail about why these officers were not indicted, ethics that are tied into it, and self-regulation. First, Chris goes to explain that grand juries are reluctant to indicting officers. MacDonald stated, “Not just reluctant overall, but comparatively reluctant. Because generally, grand juries do indict the people brought before them.” In the statistics provided in the article it stated that it was uncommon for grand juries not to indict. MacDonald explains that police officers have a tough job and that it is hard for people not in that field to fully understand what they go through and experience. Therefore, how can judge something that we do not understand. He says there are sitautions in which people should or should not be reluctant to judge. Chris stated, “Courts are generally quite reluctant, for example, to second-guess the work of licensed professionals.” This is where self-regulation comes in. “Professions like medicine, nursing, and engineering are effectively given monopolies over fields of practice because (or so the story goes) their work is so complex, and requires such nuanced judgment, that only the members of the profession itself are qualified to set standards and to adjudicate violations,” MacDonald explains. Basically, in these select professions, it is up to us to make sure watching each other’s