Should
Police Officers be Allowed to use their Discretion
According to one article from the Raynard Law Firm, police
officers are faced each day with a vast array of situations with which they
must deal, and no two situations are ever the same. In addition to what this
article pointed out, it is probably fair to say that due to the nature of
police work that a great number of these situations are life threatening and sometimes
require police officers to make split-second decisions before they take action.
Some people would also agree that in order for police officers to be effective
in responding to some of these situations that the officers should have the
power and authority to be able to exercise a high degree of discretion in order
to make things happen and get the job done. However, it should also be pointed
out that some police officers have been also known to deliberately use their
wide powers of discretion and their authority to perform acts of misconduct
(Banks, 2013, p. 23).
In performing their policing
duties, as Banks (2013) has also pointed out, police officers are able to
exercise a high degree of police discretion, and this means that they have broad
freedom to make decisions about how to act in any given situation; this also
means that they can choose which situation to respond to, and can also decide whether
or not to make an arrest. Because of this,
there are some people who believe that a police officer’s discretion should be
limited; some also believe that police officers should not be allowed to exercise
any discretion at all when it comes to doing their job. For example, as Banks
(2013) noted, Jeffrey Reiman argues that police discretion has no place in a
free society; however, other commentators argue that police discretion should
be limited so that the rules and regulations of the police department and
ethical standards circumscribe that discretion (Banks, 2013, p. 23). These
commentators really made some interesting points because I believe that if the exercise
of police discretion were limited we would see a decrease in police misconduct
and the abuse of their discretion. However, I also don’t believe that it will
be such a good idea to put so much restriction of police officers either
because, as mentioned earlier, police officers are faced each day with a vast
array of situations with which they must deal, and we have to also take into
consideration that police officers sometime cannot afford to wait for a
response from their supervisors for them to take action, especially when they are
faced with a life threatening situation. With that said, I believe that
officers should be allowed to exercise some degree of discretion because even
though some police officers abuse their discretion, research has shown that they
cannot do their jobs effectively unless they are allowed to exercise some
degree of discretion.
Reference
Banks, C. (2013). Criminal justice ethics (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks:
SAGE
