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Mario Sellick
Professor Michael Cupella
CJ-1010
25 November 2015

Police Officers Discretion in Law Enforcement

In todays Law Enforcement a Police Officers has many things he must think about when
interacting with a suspect who has violated the Law in one fashion or another. The Police Officer
must take the totality of the circumstance and make a judgment call to either follow the letter of
the law, cite, arrest or give a warning. The Police Officer has to think about many things when
making his decision, such as state/federal law, policy, public image, and the Police Officers own
morals.
In todays Law Enforcement a Police Officer does have some discretion in regards to what area
they are going to patrol and if they are going to interact with a person who he suspect of criminal
activity or not to, be proactive or just be responsive. Police officers dont have to cite for every
traffic violation or other offense. Police officer look at a variety of circumstance when it comes
to their discretion such as, is it a person first offense (will contact with a police officer be
enough). Sometimes a person will run a stop sign, or speed, or whatever minor offense it may be
multiple times before they are actually observed in the act by a police officer. Most Police
Officers know that sometimes given a person a warning is enough to have the violator take a

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certain look at the overall picture and hopefully the warning will be enough so the violator wont
repeat the same crime.
If a Police Officer has encounter a person that they have used their discretion on in the past and
issued warnings a police officer may fill the next time if the suspect repeats the same crime to
issue a citation or arrest. Some violators may think the police let me off once maybe they will
again. Police Officers are a good judge of characters and have training and rely on past
experience to determine there level of discretion.
On the other hand there are some incidents where a Police Officer has very small amounts of
discretion and is forced to go by the letter of the law. At the beginning of 2015 the state passed a
law if a police officer performs a traffic stop and the vehicle has no insurance the officer shall
impound the vehicle, as stated in UNINSURED MOTORIST PROVISIONS (2) (a) Subject to
the restriction in Subsection (2)(b), the division or any peace officer, without a warrant, shall
seize and take possession of any vehicle that is being operated on a highway without owner's or
operator's security in effect for the vehicle as required under Section 41-12a-301 unless the
division or any peace officer makes a reasonable determination
( UNINSURED MOTORIST PROVISIONS 2014 GENERAL SESSION, Subsection (2)(b),)

There is some discretion even at this point. What if a police Officer pulls over a vehicle and
comes to find out the vehicle does not have insurance and there are some small children in the
car and its a cold snowy day. The officer can still use his discretion and let the vehicle go. He
might get in trouble for a policy violation but the officer still needs to be able to sleep at night

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with the choice that he has made. The Officer still has to take into account what happens if that
vehicle he let go gets in an accident and people get hurt and he was outside of policy. The
general public when getting a citation thinks that officer was a jerk, why didnt he just let me go.
Why did I not get a break, even though they were the ones violating the law. In some cases the
Officer does not have a choice.

There are not too many offences were the Officer shall arrest or cite but another one is domestic
violence. The statute reads, In addition to the arrest powers described in Section 77-7-2, when a
peace officer responds to a domestic violence call and has probable cause to believe that an act of
domestic violence has been committed, the peace officer shall arrest without a warrant or shall
issue a citation to any person that the peace officer has probable cause to believe has committed
an act of domestic violence.
(Title 77 Utah Code of Criminal Procedure, 77-36-2.2)
In the past police officers could separate the partys for the night or in the early 1900s sometime
a police officers could use something called street justice. Today in the modern day the statute is
pretty black and white. The officer has very little discretion arrest or issue a citation. There are
still some ethical issues that can come into place on this statue. I know a Police Officer who
responded on a domestic violence call where the husband was at the hospital with his wife. They
had just had a miscarriage and the wife needed to be cleaned out. At the hospital the wife
changed her mind and wanted to leave. The husband knew it was in the best interest for the wife
to stay and get treatment. The wife tried to leave and the husband used a small amount of force to
try and convince the wife to stay. The incident was caught on camera. The husband had no ill

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intension on hurting his wife only wanted the best for her and for her to get treatment. Once
again discretion comes into play. Does the Officer make the arrest; does he cite or no case the
incident? Sometimes Officer discretion is nice sometimes it leaves them in-between a rock and a
hard place. If an Officer gives the discretion to cut a violator a break he could be asked by a
supervisor why he took certain action. If the supervisor does not think the Officer took
appropriate action that Police Officer could get a write up, unpaid time off or even worse fired
for trying to give someone a break.

On big hot topic lately is use of force by a Police Officer. In the past it was up to a Police Officer
what level of force he wanted to use without fear of getting sued, getting fire or jail time. Now an
Officer really has to wait until his life is in danger before waiting to shoot. I agree with how the
use of force in todays Law Enforcement is applied. It does take away some of the Police Officer
desertion on just shooting or over use of force. I do think some police officers are afraid to
escalate to high levels of force because of public image, afraid to get fired of even prosecuted.

With all the media and news coverage going on these days if police officers had to go by the
book I believe they would be even more scrutinized by the public eye. Police discretion has
become a central part for legal order for officers to give effect to the enforcement of law.
(Rumbaut & Bittner, 1979; Bargen, 2005).
In conclusion todays Police need some form of discretion to effetely do their job and maintain an
image of public trust. People get into police work to help out the community, to protect and

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serve. It is not the goal of a police officer to upset everyone they come in contact with to arrest or
issue a citation. There is the letter of the Law and the spirt of the Law. The spirt I believe is what
helped the community become closer with the police. If we were to take away the discretion of a
police officer the Law would not be up to interoperation. I think when a Police Officer is able to
give a good hard working American a break its good for both parties. A police Officer is still
human too and speeds from time to time or violates a least some small infraction at certain points
in his life and release the important of giving people a second chance or a break. Not all the laws
can be followed all the time.