Police Department And The Law Enforcement

Everyday police officers are faced with two difficult decision to make. Whether to intervene in the situation and how to intervene when they observe something suspicious or illegal happening. Police discretion is defined as having the power to make decision, and choosing how to respond to a given situation depending on the circumstances. Even though, there are law in place it is still up to a police officer own discretion. Ultimately, police officers have the choice to enforce the law and how to carry it out in public. In the text book “Policing America” by Ken Peak he states that there are two criminal law in discretion. “the formality and the reality. The formality is found in the statute books and opinions of appellate courts; the reality is found in the practices of enforcement officers” (82). He also, demonstrate when should each criminal law be use. However, there are negative and positive aspects of police discretion. Also, there are pros and cons of allowing patrol officers to make discretionary decisions.

With such a broad volume of discretion apparently in nearly every aspect of police decision making what strengths does this level of discretion have? Police work and the work environment require the use of discretion. Decisions must be made very quickly, usually without time for input from another source. This is despite the fact that a bureaucratic structure exists for the department as a whole. Moreover, communities cannot agree on what constitutes criminal behavior or the level to which criminal behavior should be sanctioned or ignored. A prime example is that of the skid-rows areas. The approach taken by most police in dealing with the skid-row “problem” or

To illustrate this imagine that two men get into a fight in Times Square. A nearby police officer notices the disturbance and attempts to separate the two men instead of arresting them on the spot. In this hypothetical situation the police officer needed to use discretion to decide how to best handle the situation. At times however, police discretion causes more problems than it resolves. There have been reports of police being called to a scene were a husband is being extremely aggressive towards his wife. The police feel as the situation that is occurring is not severe, and therefore leave the scene. The next day, the police station receives a call that there was a homicide. As they arrive to the scene, the police realized it was the same couple from day before.” The report details in-depth reviews of 84 cases in which 135 people died, including some instances of homicide-suicide — cases when abusers killed victims as well as themselves. In 48 of those 84 cases, police had previously responded to a domestic-violence call”- (WA Report: Criminal-Justice System Fails Domestic-Violence Victims). At times the unfettered use of discretion can lead to the denial of citizen rights, at times the unfettered use of discretion can lead to the denial of citizen rights, and cause many flaws in the justice system; for example, many communities might have different definitions of what constitutes criminal behavior or what

In this essay a discussion will be explored about the benefits and problems associated with police use of discretion. Which current policing strategies have the most potential for controlling officer discretion and providing accountability, and which have the least, and why is that the case? And finally, how might these issues impact the various concerns facing law enforcement today?

Discretion is defined as the authority to make a decision between two or more choices (Pollock, 2010). More specifically, it is defined as “the capacity to identify and to document criminal and noncriminal events” (Boivin & Cordeau, 2011). Every police officer has a great deal of discretion concerning when to use their authority, power, persuasion, or force. Depending on how an officer sees their duty to society will determine an officer’s discretion. Discretion leads to selective enforcement practices and may result in discrimination against certain groups of people or select individuals (Young, 2011). Most police officer discretion is exercised in situations with individuals (Sherman, 1984).

Over the years, the nature of policing has changed and developed drastically. Their role not only entails crime fighting and emergency response, but also social enforcement and social peacekeeping. Bound by a code of ethics, this highly demanding role asks police to remain professional in their dealings with society, and ensure they uphold the law impartially and fairly. When it comes to enforcing the law, it is important to look at the methods and approaches taken by police in order to combat crime, and whether or not they meet current ethical standards. Although this may be the case, it is also important to acknowledge that aspects of police culture such as loyalty, deception and protection of colleagues will ultimately shape the nature of approach to resolving crime, gaining helpful information and protecting fellow officers. Police officers are granted large amounts of discretion within their roles, however, when officers deliberately abuse this amount of discretion and become display misconduct, it becomes challenging to limit discretionary authority of police officers because of the frequent circumstances they encounter where deception may provide highly constructive outcomes. Throughout this essay, methods used by police officers including entrapment, wiretapping and planting of evidence will be assessed for their strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, the ethical standards of these methods and approaches will be assessed as to whether or not they prove as ethically

Discretion is not doing as you please. Discretion is bounded by norms. The future of policing as a profession depends upon whether discretion can be put to good use. Two problems impending police professionalization, however, in that there are few uncontroversial areas in police work, than in other professions. Sometimes the public wants no enforcement, and other times they want strict enforcement. Citizens will scream false arrest in the first case, and some groups may file a write of mandamus in the second case.

Discretion in policing and the court system is a necessary and unavoidable facet of criminal justice work, yet it is still very controversial. Discretion exists when courtroom actors (police officers, attorneys, judges) have the flexibility to choose an appropriate response to a situation. Police discretion is defined as “The opportunity of law enforcement officers to exercise choice in their daily activities” (Nowacki, 2015). This means that actors with a great deal of discretion at their disposal may allow biases to affect their decision-making. These decisions lead to important implications throughout the criminal justice process, especially in the courtroom. The process begins with the decision to arrest by a law enforcement officer in the field. Once the case is forwarded to the prosecuting attorney, multifarious avenues of discretionary decisions are available to resolve a case. Potential issues that could arise and that are ever-present in everyday policing include racism, sexism and socialism (Miller, 2015). These issues ultimately have a negative affect on the criminal justice process, leading civilians to not trust the one process and actors that are there to help them. While discretion should play a role in the actions a courtroom actor takes and cannot be eliminated entirely, instead it should be limited and controlled throughout the criminal justice environment so that citizens can once again trust the process and so that there will be no disparities.

Police discretion is an issue for American policing because how police use their discretion can greatly impact the public’s view on the police. First what police discretion is must be defined, “the leeway that officers enjoy in selecting from more than one choice in carrying out their work” (Mastrofski, 2004). This definition accurately sums up an ability the police use every single day that affects the public. The police can use discretion for almost any situation they encounter. There are many reason the police can exercise their own discretion the way they do, usually through personnel experience or departmental policy. While every person exercise discretion on a daily basis the reason police discretion is an issue is because they are agents of a government force that are allowed by the public to enforce the rules set down by members of the legislature that are elected by the public. Discretion for the police arises because of the individual subjectivity that each officers use when assessing an incident that requires police attention. An example is that Officer A does not arrest a teenage for underage drinking, he instead pour out the remaining alcohol and tells the youth to go home and that he better never catch him drinking again. In the same situation Officer B arrest the youth for underage drinking. The way these officers handle the situation different is police discretion. Officer B may have had a young relative that was involved in a drunk driving accident, either

Today, police discretion is a very important aspect to the criminal justice field. There are different substances where discretion is not discipline enough or not monitored enough even though having discretion is not always bad. There are still ways to abuse it and today police officers have their own way of using police discretion for different situations. Discretion can be defined as someone having the power or authority to make a decision based on what they feel should be done in a certain situation. Police officers are taught how to handle certain situations according the law. But when the officer is on duty no one is there to make sure that they are making the right decisions that follow the law and according to the law, there are not set guidelines in the law for police discretion which give the police officer an advantage. Discretion is used by police officers when they are facing a decision with a bunch of results that could handle the situation but the officer has control to pick which result they would want to choose.

Police discretion is a very important part of the entire criminal justice system. Police officers find themselves in situations every day that simply put cannot be accounted for in a rulebook. Police discretion is the idea that an officer will have the ability to judge a situation and act appropriately to it. This can be used in smaller incidents such as deciding not to give a crying pregnant woman a ticket, to some larger decisions such as an emergency sweep of a criminal’s house.

Unfortunately, not all police officers or citizens commit ethical or wise actions. Because of this fact, there countless problems between police and the public. An example could be issue with failing to protect human life, such as corrupt shootings or suicide. By understanding the issues and controversies that surround the public and police officers, difficulties on both sides can be recognized an a possible solution can be brought up. The policy’s ability to use discretion, should be limited so that it lessens the chance of corrupt misuse.

Police officers are given a significant amount of discretion simply due to the nature of the job. Officers are faced with many threatening situations forcing them to react quickly, yet appropriately. They have the power to infringe upon any citizen’s rights to freedom and therefore they must use this power effectively. One major concern with the amount of discretion officers have is their power to decide when to use force or when to use lethal force. Manning (1997) argues that it is generally accepted that police should be allowed to use force. He also explains that there are an uncertain amount people who agree on as to what constitutes excessive force. The line

Police discretion by definition is the power to make decisions of policy and practice. Police have the choice to enforce certain laws and how they will be enforced. “Some law is always or almost always enforced, some is never or almost never enforced, and some is sometimes enforced and sometimes not” (Davis, p.1). Similarly with discretion is that the law may not cover every situation a police officer encounters, so they must use their discretion wisely. Until 1956, people thought of police discretion as “taboo”. According to http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/ 205/205lect09.htm, “The attitude of police administrators was that any deviation from accepted procedures was extralegal and probably a source of corruption.

In the United States of America, law enforcement has the ability to make their own judgement, while encountering criminals. Although discretion is at all levels of the police department, law enforcement agencies can easily make unlawful decision. Researchers determined that police officers are prohibited from using offensive language or speaking discourteously, abusing their authority, and using unnecessary force (Carroll, Kovath, & Pereira, 2004). Law enforcement officers are expected to respect their community and ensure that all citizens are kept safe. Some police activity can occur in a private view without supervision from the public, which allow police officers to make a reasonable decision. Police often make quick reaction when it comes