In everyday life, lying is the deliberate transmission of factual and emotional information in order to create in another person a belief that the transmitter himself believes to be inconsistent with the truth. People lie every day because many of them lie even about little things. Some people believe that in certain domestic situations, it is acceptable to lie in order to prevent the situation from getting worse. However, those same people would also oppose police officers lying in order to arrest or search for a potential criminal. It is believed that police work should be built solely on honesty, no matter the cost (Mills et al., 2021). However, some life-threatening situations require immediate action, even including deception. Nevertheless, there are times when lying is not necessary and is left to the discretion of police officers. This paper will discuss situations where police officers may misuse lying when dealing with mentally ill people or people in crisis.
First, it is worth bearing in mind that police work with mentally unstable people can be extremely life-threatening. Usually, such criminals commit atrocities for the sake of the crime itself, not for profit (Gholami et al., 2018). Accordingly, they do not hesitate to threaten the police and to carry out their threats. In addition, they can also threaten hostages, if there are any. In such cases, the police are justified in using deception to arrest the attackers (Bratina et al., 2020). Sometimes, however, police officers use unreasonable pressure on mentally unstable criminals. For example, in a situation where a police officer threatens a person in crisis with a psychiatric hospital. In this way, he puts pressure on their pain point to suppress their personality. The fact is that many people perceive the psychiatric clinic as a place where doctors torment patients by prescribing them hallucinogenic and psychotropic drugs.
Consequently, they are afraid to go there, assuming that the same fate awaits them. Another way of abusing lies can be considered pressure on the relationship of the mentally ill person with his relatives. Many of them have cut off communication with their relatives because they are either afraid of them or do not understand them. A police officer may also say that the perpetrator’s entire family hates him because of his mental condition in order to weaken him morally. Indeed, a person disoriented by painful memories is easier to surrender to the police, but such a method is highly inhumane.
One more way of misusing the lie is when a police officer claims that the offender will not go to a mental institution if he surrenders. When such individuals are subsequently admitted to medical facilities, they become highly embittered and may pose a further threat to society. The criminals may attempt to take revenge on his or her abusers, especially those who have denied the possibility of being placed in an asylum. It is worth remembering that anyone going through a crisis or having a mental illness is hugely vulnerable. This vulnerability can either play out to the police and help demoralize the offender or turn against the officers. For example, a person in crisis who is under moral pressure will more easily commit a rash act. Therefore, the use of lies by police officers is acceptable but should be used with extreme caution when dealing with people who have a mental illness.
References
Bratina, M. P., Carrero, K. M., Kim, B., & Merlo, A. V. (2020). Crisis intervention team training: when police encounter persons with mental illness. Police practice and research, 21(3), 279-296.
Gholami, N., Moazenzadegan, H. A., Abbasi, M., & Soltani, S. (2018). De-regulation mechanisms from criminals with mental disorders in process of preliminary research with emphasis on patterns of police interventions. Medical Law Journal, 11(43), 109-126.
Mills, C. B., Kwon, A. C. & Brown, K. (2021). Examining the COMM in COMMunity Policing: Communication accommodation, perception, and trust in law enforcement-suspect encounters. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 36(1), 333–341. Web.