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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
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Fourth Amendment's "objective reasonableness" standard, rather
than 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.
Ishoy, G. A., & Dabney, D. A. (2017). Policing and the focal concerns framework: Exploring
how its core components apply to the discretionary enforcement decisions of police
officers. Deviant Behavior, 1-18. doi:10.1080/01639625.2017.1335537
McCamman, M. & Mowen, T. (2017). Does residency matter? Local residency as a predictor of
arrest, Criminal Justice Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1478601X.2017.1420651
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Police Discretion, Use of Force, and De-escalation Assignment Instructions
Name
Department; University
Course Code; Course Name
Tutor
Date
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Police Discretion, Use of Force, and De-escalation Assignment Instructions
An observer of the two footages can quickly draw an obvious conclusion based on the
police having employed discretionary tactics in both cases. In what appears to be a far less severe
crime (jaywalking) in body camera 1, more than three police officers in Asheville are seen
employing excessive force to have him arrested. They pursued him, took him down using a lot of
force despite him being unarmed and appearing to be engaging in a less confrontational path, but
as our text suggests, the police have the discretion of deciding over multiple courses of action to
take. However, it can be seen that the police in Baltimore are de-escalating a standoff with an
armed man seeming to be in crisis. The police did not have physical contact with the individual,
neither did they appear to be interested in having the individual arrested at all cost. Applying the
argument by Fischer (2016), the Baltimore officer put into action biblical principles derived from
the Mosaic Covenant related to a measured use of force where the consequence is a desired
ending result. The actions of the officer are in agreement with what the book of Psalm 82:3-4
says, which is “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and
the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
In the first footage, the suspect did not pose a threat to the officers, but it can be argued
that he could risk the life of members of the public because he was jaywalking, and this could
easily result in a road accident. In the second video, the individual is a threat to himself, the
responding officer, and members of the public since he was armed and could attempt to evade
the officers.
Comparing the two incidents, they both ended in totally different ways. The first one
ended with the suspect being injured and forcefully taken into custody. The involved officers
immediately escalated the use of force. In the second footage, the officer applied de-escalation
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tactics to achieve a desirable result which was to make an arrest of an armed male person without
injuring anyone.
Non-coercive measures are best placed in providing the arresting officers with the
opportunity to learn more about the suspect before putting them in custody. Compared to
coercive measures, non-coercive measures also increase the chance of meeting the ultimate goal
of making an arrest without injuring anyone (Mielke, & Kocher, 2020).
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References
Fischer, S. A. (2016). Transformational leadership in nursing: a concept analysis. Journal of
advanced nursing, 72(11), 2644-2653.
Mielke, F., & Kocher, C. (2020). Changing times: Transforming culture and behaviors for law
enforcement. Rowman & Littlefield.
Psalm 82:3-4 NIV - - Bible Gateway. (n.d.). Www.biblegateway.com.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus%203:1-2&version=NIV
