Christopher Wallace Case Study

Ethical and Moral Dilemmas in the Investigation
This case study revolves around one of hip-hops most recognized rapper, Christopher Wallace, or as most of the hip-hop world knew him as, The Notorious B.I.G. As CNN’s Dana Ford reported, on March 9th, 1997, Wallace was shot and killed leaving a party (2012). Wallace was a victim of a drive-by shooting, where he received several shots, which subsequently caused his death and was later pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Even though, Wallace was murdered in 1997, his murder has never been found. However, Christopher Wallace’s is just a part of a series of allegations of cover-up and gangster cops that have plagued the Los Angeles Police Department. As Randall Sullivan wrote in the

However, focusing on Officer Gaines, one must look at the circumstances in which he placed himself in. Sullivan wrote that Officer Gaines, who was married with children at the time, took residence at the home of Sharitha Knight, Suge Knights estranged wife, and gained employment as a bodyguard. Ethically and morally speaking, having Officer Gaines move into a married woman’s home is wrong. It is not, in any way acceptable in society that a married man with children live with a married woman. However, Officer Gaines’s ethical and moral dilemmas did not end there. Officer Gaines began to live a lifestyle that did not match his income as an LAPD officer. Officer Gaines was ethics within the police department began to change as he began to show up in “Versace shirts costing $1000 apiece” (Sullivan, 2001). On a normal officer’s salary, there would be no way that he/she could afford to spender in such luxuries without ethically and morally violating LAPD conduct procedures. Pollock explains that police officers, are mean to enforce the laws, but also carry a great deal of discretionary power (2014, p 3). The more that Officer Gaines is investigated, the more a sense of “double standard” (Pollock, 2014, p 4) he is ethically taking advantage by collecting and providing favors as he becomes more involved with Death Row Records and Suge