The Three Dimensions Of Departmental Discretion

Throughout law enforcement, discretion plays one of the biggest roles. The biggest department in the world is known as the NYPD. The NYPD is the heart of New York City. Some people would see discretion is a good thing for the community, meanwhile, others see discretion as officers not doing their job. Discretion as many people that plays parts to how it would or should be handled. Some article argued for discretion and some argue against it.
Discretion is processed differently depending on the situation. In the article by Sekhon (2011) he states that “Departmental discretion has three dimensions: geographic deployment, enforcement priority, and enforcement tactics” (p. 1171). Meaning that the Police Officers get to choose who's guilty or innocent and who they want to give discretion to. This article argues that officer's discretion could not be measured by one little thing but a lot of different factors, that could hurt some people.
Geographic deployment is used to see who the officers stop, search, and arrest. Some people from a particular area or neighborhood could get hurt with this type of classification to who is
One they are not allowed to use unnecessary force because it’s unconstitutional. Second, they aren't allowed to abuse their authority, so they can’t try to be above anyone else. Third, they aren't allowed to speak discourteously. Lastly, they aren't allowed to use offensive languages. All of these things could be considered misconduct on part of the officer. Unfortunately, when an officer doesn’t act how the citizen wanted them to then the citizen would try to file a misconduct report against the officers. Officers are expected to protect people's rights to due process and to protect them day by day. A victim of bad language and is being threatened should be protected but officers have to deal with that every day they protecting the