Pros And Cons Of Police Discretion

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Police discretion is given to officers to use their individual judgment concerning decisions that they must make throughout their career. Police Officers use police discretion to deal with people who may or may not have committed a crime. Citizens wondered if officers treat every situation equally. Police officers in the United States should enforce the law equally in all situations. There are a lot of situations that require officers to fully enforce the law. Statutory laws, case laws, administrative laws, and civil laws can be used to enforce the law. Felonies is another situation that officers can enforce law on. Officers can decide whether or not they should enforce law on misdemeanors or minor crimes. Misdemeanors aren’t seen as serious crimes in …show more content…

An officer's goal is to prevent a crime from happening in their society. The reason why Police discretion exist in the United States is because it gives officers the ability to perform their duties. Officers use police discretion all the time to prioritize and to be efficient with their work. Officers also must be fair and nondiscriminatory when they use police discretion. The thing that officers focus on when they make a decision is their individual backgrounds. It's been widely accepted and became a universal practice that allows officers to make their own decisions based on their experience working in the field. There are many advantages and disadvantages of the usage of police discretion. Soma advantages of police discretion is that it gives the police the ability to use force in cases a offender of a crime to be violent. The most important rule of a police officer is to protect the citizens. Therefore, discretion allows an officer to do anything possible in that situation to

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