Should Police Exercise Discretion?

Cassandra Evje

Criminal Justice 1010

Professor Gregory Butler
December 11, 2014

I decided to choose this topic because I feel like it is such a controversial topic that is
being discussed all over the world, especially with current events going on in this day and age. I
can see both views of this argument. I will admit, before taking this class I stood with many
people who believed discretion should not be allowed. After seeing how many police shootings
had been going on recently, it seemed to me as if many officers were getting trigger- happy.
I dont think a lot of people think of the officers side of things though. When we read
stories from officers in Exploring the Police: A Book of Readings by John Hill, it gave me a
lot of perspective on when police need to use discretion. They are often faced with life or death
situations and have to act fast. Many people dont take this into consideration when hearing just
one side of the stories the media puts out. There will always be good cops and there will always
be bad cops. Just like with anywhere, there will always be good and bad citizens, employees,
students, etc. I believe that some cops use discretion in a manner that could save or end their
own or another persons life, and some cops use it just because they can.
I am a firm believer that there are benefits and problems to police discretion, just like
there is to most things in the world. I would like to first discuss the good points of police
discretion and how it can be beneficial to police, civilians and a community. As discussed in the
readings John Hill put together, we are informed that police officers operate in an environment
where they are often alone when they have situations with citizens. Such work is has a very low
visibility against dangers. Decisions must be made very quickly, usually without time for input
from another source or without much time for the officer to think of different outcomes. This is
despite the fact that a quasi-military, bureaucratic structure exists for the department as a whole
a structure based on a cohesive chain-of-command. (1)

Using discretion can also be beneficial to economics or resource allocation. There simply
are not enough police, jails, courts, prisons, or community-based correctional programs to handle
all of those who would be processed through the criminal justice system, if the police officer did
not exercise discretion in his or her daily decision making. If every encounter required specific
enforcement action or exercise of a service function, then officers would be completely occupied
all of the time in just those functions. That is not to mention the extremely large number of
additional officers that would be needed to handle the work load and the large financial drain of
the public coffers. (2)
Another benefit of officers using discretion, which has actually been a key topic in many
recent events, is based on what is actually considered discretion and how criminal behavior
should actually be handled. People cannot seem to agree on what constitutes criminal behavior or
on what level 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
risk to normal society is one of containment. Under such an approach, officers use their
discretion by allowing certain crimes in the skid-row area to exist with little, if any police
intervention. The police might overlook drunkenness, drug use, or prostitution as long as they
remain in the skid-row area or do not grow to endanger normal society or bring severe threats to
the occupants of the area. (3)
There are many over looked benefits of police using discretion in their day-to-day
decisions. People often ignore these issues and just jump the gun, often without knowing a
situation, and blame an officer for using too much force, wrongfully arresting somebody, even
down to wrongfully pulling somebody over, the list goes on. The decisions must be made in

order for them to do their jobs. However, just like with any situation with big decisions to make,
there are also downfalls as much as there are benefits.
A topic discussed earlier as one of the benefits, the failure of communities to have
consensus on what constitutes criminal behavior or what approach should be taken in dealing
with a communities problems, also raises a problem. In particular, legislatures and communities
are all too aware that officers are able to exercise discretion. Vagueness in the drafting of the
language of a statute may be built in to specifically allow for this discretion As such, it negates
the duty of the legislature to create laws that are easily understood by the public that is to put
the public on notice as to what is violative of the statute. (4)
Officers are all different and exercise discretion differently, which also a few problems
with the public, one being lack of consistency. Because each officer acts differently in any given
situation, it becomes difficult for a citizen to know what behavior they can expect from an
officer, or the behavior the officer expects from a citizen in the situation. This can create distrust
between the public and the police, which seems to be a major issue we face today. Without a
strong exercise of control over an officers use of force, citizens would be at the mercy of a
police force able to exercise extreme amounts of physical control over them with little, or no,
provocation, or at a level that is not proportional to the situation at hand.(5)
There are always going to problems with using discretion, just as much as there are
benefits. However, completely eliminating police discretion is an unrealistic goal. There is
definitely a time and a place for police to use discretion. Unfortunately, many officers abuse this
ability and do use excessive force. It continues to be a largely discussed topic. You cant go a
day without reading the paper, seeing it on the television, or even getting on the internet. There
seems to be a new story about an officer using unnecessary and excessive force, killing innocent

people, killing innocent animals, etc. For example, if I get onto my Facebook account, there
would be at least three new videos that have been posted of an officer doing one of these things.
The problem is definitely on a rise, which brings more questions to be taken into account.
Has this always been happening? Are we now just realizing how much it actually happens
because of how much technological access we have? Or are police now days just abusing their
power? Many people automatically assume any of these to be true. More often than not, that
police are just abusing their power of being able to use discretion. I will admit, I have seen
disturbing videos of officers shooting a harmless animal or beating a person for no reason.
However, as disturbing as they were, I did not know the back story to any of these situations.
It seems most people just assume the officers are in the wrong, yet they dont look up any
of the facts to back it up. With the events happening in Ferguson, I find this to be most true.
People are trying to turn it into a race war. A white cop got off killing an innocent, young black
man. People jump to conclusions but dont do their research. From my understanding, this man
was already committing a crime by shoplifting at a liquor store. The officer responded to the call,
there was an altercation and the young man reached for the officers gun and got killed. People
think that such excessive force shouldnt have been used and caused a death. But what if the
young man had actually grabbed a hold of the officers gun? Would other people be shot by him,
possibly leading to him to get shot anyways? Theres no way of telling. However, I believe the
officer was just doing what he was trained to do and was dealing with a potential life or death
situation.
These situations happen all the time, and often times the officers are in the wrong. Not
surprisingly, this gives officers as a whole a bad reputation. People are terrified of them, not
knowing if they will wrongfully be arrested, hurt or killed. Its a very unfortunate situation, but

how do we fix it? Discretion cant be completely eliminated. Should we put stricter rules on what
situations are allowed to be put under discretion? How much force is used in this situations? Its
something that is too complicated to put under categories like this. Every situation is so different,
how can one determine these factors if no situation is the same? In my opinion, police discretion
is a benefit to the community as long as its controlled. Unfortunately, there is no way to control
it. There will be officers that use accordingly to a situation and officers who abuse it.

Works Cited
1. Bittner, Egon. 1970. The quasi-military organization of the police. pps. 52-62 in The
Functions of the Police in Modern Society.
2. Goldstein, Herman. 1977. Categorizing and structuring discretion. Chapter 5 (pss. 93130) in Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing
Company.
3. Bittner, Egon. 1967. The police on skid row: A study of peace keeping. American
Sociological Review. 32(5): 699-715.
4. Walker, Samuel and Katz, Charles M. 2002. The history of American police. Chapter
2 (pps. 22-56)
5. Wilson, James Q. 1968. The patrolman. Chapter 2 (pps. 16-56) in Varieties of Police
Behavior: The Management of Law & Order in Eight Communities. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.