In this You Decide assignment, I am on patrol at two in the morning and I observe a car driving erratically. I decide to pull the car over and determine that the person has been drinking. I get the identification card and discover that this person is a fellow police officer. In a situation like this, you cannot just let the fellow officer off without doing anything. If you were to let the officer go without doing anything about it, this officer would think she is above the law. If this officer thought she was above the law in this situation, she would most likely do it again at some point in her life. No one should feel like they are above the law because it causes people to do stupid illegal things. A fellow police officer especially should be following the law because they are the ones who actually protect it. If the media or department were to find out about this incident, it would cause so many different problems for not only the two officers but the department that they actually work for too.
With the job of policing comes many different types of stress and with stress sometimes comes substance abuse problems. If I were to arrest this fellow police officer for drunk driving, I would do so in the hopes of them fixing their substance abuse habits. It brings a very bad image onto many different aspects of the policing force if someone is caught drunk driving while being a police officer. If a police officer were to make a decision like this, I would want to try and help them make better decisions for themselves and try to help them become a better person in the process and not drink and drive.
I looked up online what would happen to officers who were to commit a DUI offense and it had a couple good points. First off the circumstances of the situation are the biggest part in the type of punishment they will receive. The severity of the problem and the officers driving record are also taken into account. If an officer is caught drinking while on duty, this would almost always result in termination of the officer from that department. If an officer was caught off duty with a DUI, the first offense is usually not as strict. The officer will most likely keep their job depending on the