The Importance Of Police Discretion

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The degree of force that officers use is heavily influenced by police discretion in real-world situations rather than espoused by a certain agenda. Discretion can be classified into four different categories where administrators, the community, and the individual police officer exercise differing degrees of influence in decision-making. What is needed to help officer discretion is a central ethos that will guide discretion when all other rules fail to help.
Normal force is distinct from legal and brutal force (Hunt, 1985). Legal force is taught in the police academy. It pertains to being able to subdue, restrain, and control a suspect if the officer is threatened with great bodily harm. Legal force also encompasses the use of deadly force
The helpfulness of their choice is much more important than obeying their duty or moral. Thus, when normal force is explained it is done under the pretense of justifiably. To recap, normal force is simply the force used under police discretion that is neither legally taught nor brutal (Hunt, 1985). Normal force is justified by taking responsibility for their actions, yet denying they were wrong because of situational or abstract events. At other times officers use excuses for normal force and recognize their use of force as inappropriate. They will recall emotional or psychological states as a reason for such inappropriate
In these cases cops do not like what is going on – crimes like vice, gambling, and traffic violations. For such offenses as gambling and vice a certain level of law enforcement is executed. Officers are coerced to achieve these goals by their administrators and by the community. For traffic offenses administrators expect a certain number of traffic tickets, but tickets do not affect traffic quality very much, so the community does not hold officers accountable for traffic conditions.
Citizen-invoked law enforcement pertains to situations where citizens are victims of crimes and call the police (Wilson, 1968). Most occurrences are property crimes and the suspect is usually unknown. Under these circumstances police are usually report takers and information gatherers. If a suspect is caught at the scene then the officer must decide whether to make an arrest, tell the citizen that they must handle the matter, or encourage him to effect a citizen’s arrest. Administrators have much influence because they can set guidelines and measure

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