Critical Thinking Response – Part II (Ethical Issues in Policing)
Police discretion is a term that defines the fact that police officers are given the discretion, or in
other terms the freedom to decide about things when they are on the job. These are often
decisions that they have to take on the spot and often on their own. A couple of examples of
police discretion are: the fact that they can decide if they are handing someone a ticket or not, the
decision whether or not to draw their weapon, whether or not to shoot with their firearm,… It is
all about the decisions they have to take on the spot. Police discretion can also be applied on the
use of force, they are the ones deciding if they are going to use force, and the intensity of it.
The fact that police officers are given the freedom to make such important decisions on the spot
can also lead to unethical decisions and behavior. Sadly, not everyone has the same values and
beliefs, and this is also applicable for police officers. Power can often get to people’s head and
make them completely forget what they stood for in the first place. When this happens, police
officer’s can take advantage of their power and use it in unethical ways like for example:
perform a search on someone that they know haven’t done anything wrong, or even using force,
when in reality it is not needed. Unethical behavior due to police discretion can persist for a
while before being discovered, since this would be lawful but unlawful and because it would
often come from a police officer that was alone with a suspect at the time of the decision.
Police discretion relates to a lot of topics from this part of the course. First of all it relates to
police use of force because even if the Graham factors were instored to give some guidelines on
when and to which extend to use force, it is still the police officer that has the power to decide
how to act. Police discretion also relates to the thin blue line because it is the police, with their
discretion who will often define the line between lawfulness and illegal acts. Police discretion
gives the power to the officers to decide on the spot if something is illegal or if it is legal in their
eyes. They are the ones who will ultimately decide to intervene or not to intervene. A third link
between the course and police discretion is during interrogations, especially during police
deception in interrogations. Even though police deception can be seen as unethical, it is used in a