Importance Of Discretion In Police Officer

“Discretion is the availability of a choice of options or actions one can take in a situation” (Dempsey 143). Discretion is a huge part of being a police officer because you come across problems that give you many options to choose from and as an officer you must be ready to make a quick choice. Police officer must face tough choices that involve a small amount of thinking and can put their lives at risk. Discretion is not only used by officers but by every living person that has to make everyday choices, such as waking up for school or not waking up. Problems we see today concerning excessive force from police can be because of bad discretion and that can be because they’re afraid or just they just simply don’t care.

Discretion is heavily used in the U.S and that’s because people are individuals and they don’t allow one person to speak for everyone else; meaning that everyone does something with different reasons. Whether they were angry, had mental problems, looking for revenge, etc., everyone’s different and that’s how they’re treated in the U.S (Dempsey 143). Police officers the toughest time when it comes to

A good way of using discretion would be letting someone off with a warning for going five over the limit but a bad way would be using discretion without thinking. In the case of Sandra Bland; she was stopped for not signaling when she was switching lanes. Sandra did not want to leave her car after being asked by the officer so he took her out of the car himself. Bland was then arrest and taken to prison where she was later found dead (Death of…). In my opinion, I believe that the officer was not thinking things through and did not think of the outcome of the situation. I understand that the officer was doing his job but a changing signal could have been forgiving. In this case I think that the officer abused his power by forcing her to step out of the car and using excessive force against