William Otis
CJ 1010
5/2/2015
Police Officer Discretion
“Just last week I was patrolling on Highway 7 about 50 miles west of Minneapolis. I
stopped a car for expired registration and a seat belt violation. I could only see the top of the
driver’s head as he had his seat kicked so far back.
He told me that he did not have a driver’s license and never has. He spoke in broken
English and looked frazzled. I asked if he had any identification and he gave me his Visa card.
The card had a name on it. I asked, “Where are you from?” I expected him to say Minnesota, but
he candidly replied, “Mexico.” I asked if he was a legal citizen, and he said “no.”
The car did not register to him and his female passenger told me his name was something
different than what he gave me. I ran the name he gave me (same as on the Visa card) and his
date of birth on my computer. It showed that there was no one with that name and date of birth
with a license in Minnesota, but it showed that his driving privileges were classified as
“Revoked” because of a DWI he got a year ago. “What should I do?” I asked myself” (Nielsen
2011).
In this scenario above, which is just one of many examples of the times police officers
use discretion on a daily basis, we see how much freedom police officers have to use discretion.
Discretion is the ability for a police officer to use their own judgement from past experiences to
decide what course of action is best. Police officers make these kinds of decisions multiple times
in a day. This officer from the story above could do multiple things that could all have a different
significant impact. He could issue this gentleman a warning and let him move on, knowing he is
here illegally and just assuming he is here for a better life, or, he could have the man’s car
impounded and this man deported back to Mexico.
“Here’s what I did. The passenger had a Minnesota ID with a local address, but no
license to drive. I called a tow truck. We called the woman’s mother to come and get her (after I
issued her a ticket for drug paraphernalia). I arrested the driver for driving after revocation and
drove him to the county jail so that I could get photos and fingerprints because he had no ID. I
booked him on the misdemeanor for DAR and called the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minnesota. I gave the phone to my prisoner and he spoke with the
ICE agent. He handed the phone back to me and I spoke to the agent. I was told that he had
established that, indeed, my driver had entered the country illegally and that an ICE “detainer”
would be faxed to the jail within 15 minutes. It was. This detainer said there was a hold placed
on my prisoner saying that when his business with the local court was finished, ICE would come
pick him up to be processed for likely deportation” (Nielsen 2011). In this example above this
officer used his discretion to exercise the full extent of the law in this individual case.
Let’s take a look at the positives that come from police using discretion. According to the
NAACP the United States population makes up 5% of the world’s population, and 25% of the
world’s prisoners. This comes out to about 1 in every 31 adults is under some kind of
correctional control in the United States. We have seen huge spikes in our nation’s prison
populations over the last 30 years. This has led to prison overcrowding which makes prisons
more dangerous for inmates and correctional personnel. The United States spends hundreds of
millions of dollars to feed, provide medical care, and house all of these inmates. So how might
police discretion help alleviate some of our prison population? Police officers have that option to
let people go on minor offenses, and let first time offenders go off with warnings. Could you
imagine what our prisons would look like if police officers charged every individual who broke
the law to the full extent of the law?
Police officers also have to use discretion to determine what level the individuals offense
would fall into, for instance; hate crimes, drunk driving, domestic violence, and vice crimes
(Halliday, Issues Paper: Police Discretion). Each of these different types of crimes has different
levels of seriousness a person can be charged with. Officers need to understand the requirements
for each level of a crime and use discretion to charge the culprit with the correct offense.
The last benefit of police discretion I will look at in this paper is the officer has the
freedom to charge someone based on the type of person they are encountering. For example, an
old man accidently leaves a restaurant without paying his check, an officer can come and talk to
that elderly gentleman and discern that the man might not be mentally accountable for the crime
due to age and not charge the man with theft. Other examples of this could be someone who is
stopped for a minor traffic violation but gets hostile with the police officer. The officer can then
cite the man with a ticket due to the crime he committed.
On the other side of this issue, there are some cons to police officer discretion. Due to the
different experiences and opinions of police officers, each officer will act a different way in each
situation. This leaves officers open to different scrutiny from ethics boards and public opinion.
Because the police have the power to use their discretion some feel that it gives officers too
much power and room for corruption. The point of our nation’s criminal justice system is that
everyone is treated fairly and equally. How can this happen if police officers charge someone for
one thing and do not charge another for the same?
Police discretion leaves room for an officer’s prejudice and racism to be a deciding factor
in how he handles certain situations. We have seen this many times in our news today. There are
riots in Baltimore right now because an unarmed man African American man was killed while
trying to be restraint from police officers. These officers used their discretion on how to control
this man and it ended in his death. There are always going to be instances where officers make
the wrong decisions, and there are some officers who use their discretion to their advantage in an
unethical way, but does that mean we should take away the ability for all police officers to use
that discretion?
In conclusion, I believe the ability for police men and women to use discretion has many
more benefits than disadvantages. We ask officer’s to risk their lives day in and day out and they
need that freedom to decide what is the best course of action to keep themselves and the
community safe. Like stated earlier there will be mistakes made, but the amount of mistakes
made does not outweigh the good done. In a 2011 report from the New York City Police
Department is showed that in a city of over 8 million residents the police made contact with
civilians 23 million times. Out of those 23 million contacts officers only fired their weapons 62
times during an adversarial contact. Because news and social media are so focused on attacking
our police officers they miss the facts. Officers don’t run around shooting unarmed individuals,
the amount of times an officer discharges their weapons is a very small fraction of the time. We
need to help our nation’s police officers by not scrutinizing every decision made and continue to
allow and support the use of their discretion in the line of duty.
Bibliography
Halliday, Gemma. Issues Paper: Police Discretion. Retrieved May 2, 2015, from
www.wiu.edu/coehs/leja/cacj/.../haliday.doc
Kelly, Raymond W. (2011). Annual Firearms Discharge Report. Retrieved May 2, 2015, from
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/nypd_annual_firearms_dischar
ge_report_2011.pdf
NAACP. (2009). Criminal Justice Fact Sheet. Retrieved May 2, 2015, from
http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
Nielsen, Jim. (2011). Discretion – The Art of Law Enforcement. Retrieved May 2, 2015, from
http://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/justice-studies/blog/discretion-the-art-of-law-enforcement/