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William Colton Fadely

Criminal Justice 1010

Professor Bertram

April 30, 2017

Police Discretion

Discretion is a tool that police are provided with to help them make the tough decisions

that keep the public safe. Police officers should be able to use discretion to ensure public safety

and to help the criminal justice system function more effectively. Doing away with this practice

would be cutting off the arms of the police force by not allowing them to do their jobs. However,

this does raise some ethical concerns. By allowing all police officers to make decisions based on

personal judgment and not on strict guidelines and rules will create some problems with people

overstepping their authority. Recently we have seen many of these instances happen among

minorities and officers who may just be doing their job but it appears may be taking the limits of

discretion too far and people have gotten hurt and killed. Questions of diversity comes up with

this topic: do the police treat everyone the same regardless of race? Do they target people with a

different color of skin on purpose? These are questions that are worth researching while on the

topic of discretion and are important to know the answers to.

The definition of discretion is the ability of individuals in the criminal justice system to

make operational decisions based on personal judgment instead of formal rules or official

information. (Gaines & Miller, G-4) This gives members of law enforcement the ability to

choose between different courses of action in given situations. T Casey LaFrance from the

Department of Political Science at Western Illinois University says that, The exercise of
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discretionary authority is a significant professional responsibility. (LaFrance, 2011) It is the

responsibility of each police officer to exercise this authority to the best of his or her ability.

There is a lot that rests on their shoulders, the decisions they make every day effect how the

public sees them and responds to them. It is important how they use this not just for the public

but for their safety as well. Officers cant just arrest anyone they want whenever they want, they

do have restrictions. They must have probable cause to believe that a person has or is about to

commit a crime to arrest them. Another thing that effects discretion among police officers are

mandatory arrest laws which require an officer to arrest a person who has abused a family

member by blood or marriage (Gaines & Miller, 173-174).

The use of discretion among the police force does more to protect the public than it does

to harm it, despite popular belief. It is helpful when talking about how discretion protects the

public is to think how the police system would be without it. If officers did not have the ability to

make these decisions on the spot, they would not have the ability to protect people. For example,

if a police officer did not have the authority to make the call to arrest a suspect they have reason

to believe has a gun and is about to rub a store, they would either not be able to act or would

have to get permission from a supervisor to take action. In this case and many others, a quick

decision is required in order to avoid a lethal encounter but in this situation, it would not be

quick and the officer would not have the ability to act in time. There would be a lot more rules

and regulations they would have to adhere to in any given situation. To that point as well, there

are so many different scenarios so how could they possibly have a procedure or a policy on every

single little thing that can happen?

Help criminal justice system function more effectively. Thinking about all the things that

go on at any police station can be overwhelming. There are the 911 calls and the dispatchers who
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respond to those calls, the officers on patrol, officers serving warrants, and not to mention the

duties of the administration to hire more employees and keep the day to day things going. From

the chief of police all the way down to the patrol officers and the front desk, if no one had the

ability to make decisions based on their own personal feelings in a situation, it would take even

more time out of everyone elses duties just to deal with the problem of that one officer on hand.

According to updsl.org just in the dispatch division alone there are 47 full time dispatchers, 16

part time dispatchers/call takers, and only 5 dispatch floor supervisors. (Thomas, 2017) Even if

those 47 each had a situation they could not decide for themselves what to do, it would be

impossible for them all to be resolved in time which would really hinder the efficiency of the

police departments.

Ethical concerns with discretion along with diversity. In the text titled Criminal Justice In

Action, it defines an ethical dilemma as a situation that a police officers, Do not know the right

course of action, have difficulty doing what they consider to be right, and/or find the wrong

choice is very tempting. (Gaines & Miller, 205) These three situations effect law enforcements

decisions on a daily basis. Whether or not the officer follows through with the wrong choice or

not is up to them, but having that power to make that decision can lead to overstepping their

authority. This is not a new discussion at all, it has gone back to the 1950s where scholars

identified a discretion problem They suggested that police departments delegated excess

policymaking discretion to individual officers and those officers, in turn, used that discretion

inconsistently if not abusively. (Sekhon, 2012) Another factor that goes into the ethics question

with discretion is the noble cause corruption which is essentially doing something wrong to make

sure the bad guy gets what they deserve such as planting evidence or lying in court (Gaines &

Miller, 205). This is a very serious matter that is the main focus of police discretion. If everyone
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was perfect in the world we would not even need police officers, we also cant expect them to be

perfect, mistakes will happen. It is important to know the difference in these situations between a

mistake and blatant act directed under the direction of discretion. There are also factors of

diversity that go into play here. An African American named Robert Tolan was shot and killed by

a police officer because he thought he had a weapon (Gaines & Miller, 200). Unfortunately, this

is not the only case like this. The perception is that the black community is targeted more often

than any others. A recent Justice Department study reports that although police pull over black,

white, and Hispanic drivers at similar rates, blacks and Hispanics are almost three times more

likely to be searched following the stop (Gaines & Miller, 201). These ethical questions will

continue to be looked at as the tensions in this country keep getting higher.

While there are many problems and ethical questions that come up with police using

discretion in their everyday work, the benefits outweigh those problems ten to one. From the

examples and facts given in this essay, it has shown that this is true. There would be chaos in the

streets, or more chaos if law enforcement didnt have the ability to make those hard decisions

that protect our lives. Everyone has a responsibility in this. The police officers need to make sure

they are using the same level of professionalism with everyone and the public has a

responsibility to treat them with respect and help them to do their job, which is serve and protect.
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Works Cited

Gaines, Larry K and Roger Leroy Miller. Criminal Justice In Action, 7th Edition. Belmont:

Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013.

LaFrance, T. Casey. "Targeting Discretion: An Exploration of Organizational Communication

between Rank Levels in a Medium-Sized Southern US Police Department." International

Journal of Police Science & Management, vol. 13, no. 2, Summer2011, pp. 158-171.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1350/ijps.2011.13.2.227.

Sekhon, Nirej S. "Redistributive Policing." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, vol. 101,

no. 4, Fall2011, pp. 1171-1226. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=aph&AN=73365191&site=ehost-live.

Thomas, Randy, Lieutenant. "Dispatch Services." Dispatch | Unified Police Department of

Greater Salt Lake. N.p., 2017. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.