A WISE POLICEMAN

My daughter Sophia was recently bitten by a monkey in Akagera Park. The bite was much deeper than I first suspected. Our vehicle was soon filled with her splattered blood. After we were able to stop the bleeding I drove as fast as possible back to Kigali to get stitches. Along the way, a policeman stopped my vehicle. I was obviously guilty of flagrantly violating the traffic laws. I was also a frantic and panicked father. I did not even bother to produce my license and registration. All I did was point to my daughter’s wound and beg forgiveness. The policeman’s response was a simply, “Please slow down so you don’t cause another accident and proceed to the hospital.”

Sophia received her stitches a few hours later. Our trauma ended, but our wise policeman provided me with a wonderful case study for Ethic’s lectures. He obviously was able to quickly reason based on principle. He knew that the purpose of traffic laws were to protect life. He saw that a child’s health was threatened and in a split second decided the life preserving principle of the law was of greater weight than detailed compliance.

I’ve been asking my students what a policeman should do when he catches a man violating traffic laws who is transporting a sick child to the hospital. (To not distort their answer, I’ve neglected to tell them that the guilty party is me.) The worst answer I’ve heard has been that he should cane the driver and then allow him to proceed to the hospital. I guess this was the most gracious answer our young legalist could find to allow the enforcement of law details that would allow the driver to proceed. The best answer I’ve heard has been a young man who thought the policeman should help with first aid, escort the family to the hospital, and then when the child is safe escort the guilty driver to the police station to face the authorities.

As I probed, our student’s model answer showed a greater depth of thought than mine. Truly, the best students are the ones who never quite believe their teacher has it all discovered. Instead their inquiring minds lead us to places we have never been before. In the probes our model answer mentioned concepts such as uncompromising principle, compassion, creativity, community, and authority. All are vital components in sound ethical reasoning.

Our world is full of contradictions and ambiguities. Life does not follow the rules we create for it. Instead it pushes our simplistic paradigms. The danger of this discovery is turning ethics into a negotiable discipline. Human history is full of tragedies when the majority of a society turned its back on uncompromising principle. The accommodations of situation ethics are a stain on the humanity’s honor.

The first step in sound ethical reasoning is to know one’s uncompromising principles. For our model student one of his uncompromising principles was the preservation of life stood above the details of law. Thus he was able to set aside detailed law enforcement for the greater good of preserving a child’s health. From this uncompromising principle compassion was stirred. A sick child makes one actually feel physical pain. It calls us to ask what we would feel if it was our child that was sick. From this painful position, we treat others as we too want to be treated.

The next step is creativity. It allows us to assess the situation, and see the future possibilities for both good and harm. The consequence of not allowing the driver to proceed would adversely affect the child. Thus a new solution must be found. This solution must be one of participation. Ethics is not a spectator sport. Thus the model answer involved escorting the family.

But life is about more than just one sick child. Life can only be sustained within community. Thus our wise policeman recognized that even in crisis, the driver must slow down. A family’s tragedy could easily become a community’s tragedy if the violation of law led to a severe accident. My kizungu mind has a hard time conceptualizing all the implications of community. All I can see is the pain of a child and her family. Yet the fundamental communal principle of ethics is one that my Rwandan students will not let me negotiate. Over and over again in this case study, they keep asking what will happen to community. Truly, in this case study the students become the teacher.

Finally, an authority is needed to bring closure to the situation. There must be a leader who with compassion and uncompromising principle leads the community. Without such a leader life will degenerate into complete chaos. To undermine his authority is to destroy the community. Our model student saw that without the policeman finding an authority above him to finally judge the case it would be too easy to pander to social obligations and sentiment. The framework could easily be laid for an act of compassion to degenerate into an opportunity for corruption. Thus the wise seeks with transparency to lay the situation before the authority.

I suspect my model student hoped for the driver to be acquitted, but he never mentioned that. Instead, I sensed that he was willing to entrust the ambiguities of life to powers beyond himself. In the end, that is all we can do.