Assignment task:
You arrive at a detail involving a domestic disturbance. A couple are arguing loudly enough to have necessitated the call from neighbors. Two small children and a young teenager are in attendance. As part of sorting things out, you run everyone for records and warrants. The father is clean and the teenager is clean, but the mother comes up with an outstanding warrant. It involves a traffic violation that has turned into a $180 warrant. The father is arrogant and verbally abusive. The mother is sober and cooperative. The teenager is sober, but obviously intimidated by the father. The warrant is large enough that you are prone to serve it. After all, it's not merely a $30 parking ticket warrant.
But you stop to think: What would the impact be of "doing your duty" and arresting this woman and taking her to jail? Two small children would be left alone with an irate and potentially (your police officer's sixth sense tells you) abusive father. You have no right to take the children to the shelter, as the father is there, sober, and warrantless. They are his kids. You cannot take them away from him.
The first part of our ethic to live by suggests that doing no harm is your priority. Taking the mother away in handcuffs-while perfectly legal and proper-would do all sorts of bad things for this little family. It might impact upon the little kids in a particularly negative way. It might set the teenager against the father. What do you do? Does cleaving to our axiom and "not inflict evil or harm"? If you let the woman slide (with a lecture about taking care of the warrant) you would be ignoring one of your primary functions, to enforce the law, but you would be cleaving to our ethic.