Police Discretion Research Paper

In the black community, there have been many questionable incidents between police officers and black citizens. An officer might approach an African American who broke the law differentially than a White American based on their own discretion. Whereby an officer would hesitate to immediately arrest a white person for breaking the same law, they would handle the arrest of a black person differently. This is problematic: Police discretion impacts the way the society views the criminal justice system by having too much range on enforcing the law. Time and time again we see this being the case in relation to black America. Throughout this paper I will examine, explain and express the power of police officers, what discretion is and the officer’s

In the United States police power is conferred upon the states by the tenth amendment, which states, “The capacity of the states to regulate behavior and enforce order within their territory for the betterment of the health, safety, moral, and general welfare of their inhabitants.” The police are supposed to be the ones who protect and serve the public but they have been killing unarmed African Americans and minorities as a whole. They have been trying to enforce order and law but the only thing they really have been doing is enforcing fear. They have been using police power to get away with a lot of killing. Minorities are starting to see that some police officers don’t care about their lives and they start to fear them. It’s unfair to the minorities they do this to it starts to make them feel deferentially about the police. Issues as such make people walk around in their daily lives with fear in their hearts due to the cruel doings of police officers and it makes the police’s interaction with the black community worse than what it has to

But they have different ways of handling it. Officers use their discretion something that causes one to do the things that they do or behave in the way in which they behave. Whether it be good or bad motives, what gives one the motivation to do what it is that they do? For example most average southern police officers are in the law enforcement just to carry a gun and have some type of authority. “His social heritage has taught him to despise the Negros and he has had little education which could have change him, the result is that probably no group of whites in America have a lower opinion of Negros.” These motives have led to street interactions between the police and African Americans that have reached a level of distrust based on his up growing. According to Chancy and Robertson, “Negrophobia can be surmised as an irrational of blacks, which includes a fear of being victimized by blacks, that can result in whites shooting or harming an African American based on criminal/racial stereotypes.” They then use this to justify the killings of unarmed African Americans based on them being black and fearing for their lives. Police officers are killing African Americans every other day and some are getting away with it; even in states where officers have to wear body cams and