Police discretion is the power or authority that is given to a police officer to act officially in a manner that appears to be just and proper under the presented circumstances. In a domestic disturbance, the police officer has to use his discretion based upon the situation before him. The officer needs to make a decision that will make both parties involved be content with the resolution. This discretion that a police officer uses at the time of a domestic disturbance is the most difficult because his decisions ends up affecting either parties to a situation for the better or for the worse. In such situation, the officer can either mediate a peaceful agreement, can suggest counseling or if this doesn’t work he can also make an arrest of the person that is not willing to come to a peaceful resolution to the problem.
All factors of the situation should be taken into consideration when using this discretion. Some of these factors include the seriousness of the offense, attitude of the suspect, position and preference of the victim, relationship between the suspect and victim, evidence of the offense, and minority status of the parties (Black, 1971.) Police officers tend to have an overall common goal in ridding their community of crime. Although this goal falls within the wishes of residents in the community as well, there is typically a negative view when it comes to police officers. Some officer’s actions have labeled an entire force as racist, rude, and abusive.
However, the vehicle appeared to have committed a traffic violation based off of Smith’s perception. In the case of Whren v. United States, this case can back up Smiths’ reason to pull the driver over based off of probable cause to believe a traffic violation has occurred. Once Officer Smith began to approach the automobile, she then had reasonable suspicion of the vehicle based off of its description of an earlier crime. This gives law enforcement a reason to conduct a pat down. The pat down of the driver was very much legal based off of reasonable suspicion of the vehicle’s description.
Police brutality wouldn’t be an issue if we didn’t have to police our law enforcement officers. Policing our law enforcement officers is a challenge in itself, because who is responsible for this job, how are they going to police them, what actions are they going to take against them when they catch them and what are the penalties for
Many decisions pertaining to a case going to trial and how actively they pursue the case are left up to prosecutors and how they view the evidence and what the evidence means to them. This can be described as prosecutorial discretion. How does this affect the prosecutor and overall case flow in the criminal court system? Prosecutorial discretion puts an abundance of pressure on the prosecutors and their roles in the courts. The prosecution must without a reasonable doubt prove the defendant is responsible for committing the crime.
A police officer tends to be authoritive because of the constant danger he or she is in while on the job. Having this trait will help the officer handle all situations and help the officer pay close attention to what is going on around him or her. Suspicion is more or less a belief or opinion that is solely based on facts but does not require proof. Suspicion is also a feeling of doubt, uncertainty, or slight indication that something is up. An officer tends to be suspicious after working the job for awhile because of the criminal acts that go on.
Every police officer is aware of the possibility that while on duty they may have to use force to restrain and subdue a criminal. Many factors go into an officer’s decision of how to react when he is faced with a non-compliant or combative criminal. The amount of force can vary from simple verbal commands, all the way up to deadly force. This broad range of actions that an officer may use is often charted on a Confrontational Continuum Model. This paper while not cover the ethics behind lethal force, but will discuss the steps, and progressions leading up to that point.
“Probable Cause is a reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime. The test the court of appeals employs to determine whether probable cause existed for purposes of arrest is whether facts and circumstances within the officer's knowledge are sufficient to warrant a prudent person to believe a suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.” When determining whether probable cause has been established many questions will arise, not only to see if all necessary procedures were being followed by the officer but also to make sure that the citizen’s rights were not violated. Many of the case laws that have taken place have done so because they feel like in some way or another their rights had been violated or they were not treated fairly these are the cases that change laws or the
This means that all trials must be open to the public. The right to a public trial is generally unrestricted, which is also means that basically anyone can go and watch the proceedings. The consequence in not having this right upheld or followed would be very wrong. Prosecutors could then base their cases on absolutely nothing, without supporting facts or evidence. Child molesters would be set free because of this as well.
Some of the duties of law enforcement are to investigate law violations, gather evidence, make arrests, solve crimes, and then assist with the successful prosecution of suspects. Upon the law enforcement officer making an arrest the case is then presented to the court system. The district attorney office handles most cases of the criminal nature, besides some misdemeanor crimes such as minor traffic violations. Law enforcement usually develop a good working relationship with their local district attorney’s office which promotes quality officer related testimony and