Police Discretion, Use of Force, and De-Escalation

APPLICATION ESSAY: POLICE DISCRETION, USE OF FORCE, AND DE-ESCALATION
ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
OVERVIEW
The application essay assignments address topics integral to the criminal justice field and future criminal justice professionals from a biblical worldview. As societal change compels criminal justice reform, studying the effects of reform related to justice from a biblical worldview is essential. Rethinking law enforcement procedures, criminal sentencing, and law, overall, are just a few of the topics examined.
INSTRUCTIONS
 In your essay, support your views with the required readings and study materials for this week, or other scholarly articles published within the last five years to support your statements.
 Four in-text citations are required for this assignment, in current APA formatting.
 Your paper must be formatted using 12 pt. Times New Roman font, with a 400-word minimum/425-word maximum double-spaced.
o Assignment questions, title page, and reference section will be excluded from the word count. In Module 4: Week 4 you are presented with the body camera footage from two police officers in two unrelated incidents, Watch: Body Camera Footage 1 and Watch: Body Camera Footage
2. Watch and listen to the officers in each incident. Be mindful of possible tactical skills and de- escalation skills that were employed or not exercised. Both incidents ended very differently. Before you write your essay, consider the following definitions and research findings: Police discretion is the flexibility police officers have in deciding between multiple courses of action to resolve a situation while performing their duties. Research identifies several factors that determine whether law enforcement officers decide to enforce or not enforce laws: (1) the officer’s personal feelings regarding the severity of an offense and the potential risk it poses to the public; (2) the specifics of a situation; and (3) supervisor expectations of how officers will carry out their job functions (Ishoy, 2016). Other studies find that if an offender is a resident in the community where the offense occurs, an officer is 18% less likely to arrest the offender, especially if the offender is under the age of 21 or over the age of 51 (McCamman & Mowen, 2017).
Use of force is the amount of police effort necessary to get a resistant suspect to comply. In Case: Graham v. Connor found in the Reading & Study folder for Module 4: Week 4, the United States Supreme Court determined that the Fourth Amendment’s objective reasonableness standard should be the measure used in alleged excessive use of force cases.
All claims that law enforcement officials have used excessive force - deadly or not - in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other "seizure" of a free citizen are properly analyzed under the
Fourth Amendment's "objective reasonableness" standard, rather under a substantive due process standard.
Points of interest from this case:
a. If use of force is being questioned, it has to be based on a specific constitutional right infringement. You have to judge this claim of constitutional right infringement by the specific constitutional standard which governs that right. What specific constitutional right is being infringed upon?
b. Claims that law enforcement officials have used excessive force in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other "seizure" of a free citizen are most properly characterized as invoking the protections of the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees citizens the right "to be secure in their persons . . . against unreasonable seizures," and must be judged by reference to the Fourth Amendment's "reasonableness" standard.
c. The Fourth Amendment must be the guide to judge law enforcement excessive force incidents in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other "seizure" of a free citizen. De-escalation is when officers reduce the intensity of a potentially violent situation. It is the actions of the suspect (their level of cooperation or resistance) that impacts the discretionary powers of the police in deciding how to de-escalate the situation, if possible.
Based on the above information, respond to the following questions:
1. When comparing Watch: Body Camera Footage 1 to Watch: Body Camera Footage 2, how does the severity of the crime in each incident compare with the discretionary tactics employed by the officers involved? What biblical principles can you apply to the better approach?
2. Discuss whether the suspect in each incident posed an immediate threat to the safety of the officers, himself, or the public. Consider if each suspect was actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight?
3. When comparing the two incidents, why do you think one ended more appropriately than the other?
4. Why are non-coercive measures such as conversational requests and directives better than coercive measures?
Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.