Discretion and Disorder

Discretion and Disorder

June 3, 2006

Discretion and Disorder

It’s 10:45 pm on a particularly hot Saturday night in June. There is a group of approximately ten teenage boys and girls talking and playing basketball in the neighborhood park. The kids are a little on the noisy side, but they are generally well-behaved. They are not drinking or using any drugs. A police car cruises through the park, the officer observes the group and he is aware that there is an ordinance that prohibits anyone from being in the park after 9:30 pm. He stops his car, gets out and has a brief conversation with the group. They are respectful and explain that they don’t really have any other place to hang out. None of the area neighbors has called to complain about the activity in the park. The officer asks that they keep the noise level down and make sure that they are out of the park by midnight. He then wishes everyone a good night, returns his patrol car and drives away. At about 12:15 am, he drives through the park again and it is empty. Consider the same situation, but with a different officer. The officer stops his car, gets out and has a brief conversation with the group. He advises the group of the provisions of the ordinance and that he is going to cite each teen for a violation. The officer arranges transportation for the group, takes them to police headquarters and contacts each respective parent to come pick up their children. A short time later, each teen leaves police headquarters holding a summons for being in a park after 9:30 pm. Both officers acted in a professional manner, but the outcomes of the incident were very different. This is a prime example of police use of discretion in responding to situations that involve disorder.

In his research report titled “’Broken Windows’ and Police Discretions”, George L. Kelling examines how police use discretion when they respond to and deal with incidents that involve social order. Kelling espouses the idea that police discretion is an essential element of responding to and effectively dealing with social disorder. (1) When speaking of “social disorder” this includes a number of less-criminal violations that include disorderly persons offenses and nearly all traffic offenses. These types of offenses are often community sensitive; what may be seen as disorderly in one location in a given situation may not necessarily be perceived that way in another. As such, the viewpoints and values of a given community are important in defining disorder.

Discretion can be defined as the art of making an appropriate decision how to successfully handle an incident in the absence of official guidelines or standards so long as the response is within acceptable professional limits. While Kelling acknowledges the importance of discretion, he discusses how to make its implementation more uniform and how to eliminate its unnecessary use. (25) He explains that guidelines should be implemented to assist street officers in their decision making process for handling situations frequently encountered. One primary component to be considered when formulating these guidelines is the context of the incident that is being addressed. (36) Context can be more fully explored by considering the criteria used by the New Haven (CT) Police department in their Order Maintenance Training Bulleting 96-1. They define context by examining five specific elements; (a) time of an incident, (b) location of the incident, (c) condition of the offender, (d) condition of the victim/witness