Regardless of the fact that no serious criminal activity transpired in most cases, it detracted from the quality of life of some residents of buildings immediately adjacent to such congregations (Conlon, 2004).
In other situations, such as peaceful gatherings of small groups of students outside bars every weekend night, residents of buildings overlooking the bars were subjected to loud conversations, cigarette smoke, music from vehicles until well after typical closing times of 4:00AM every weekend night, at a minimum. Giuliani's zero-tolerance approach to "unlawful assembly" of the type previously and ordinarily ignored as a technical violation not worth enforcing prohibited these gatherings for the benefit of residents who wished not to be disturbed all night long three or four nights a week in many "trendy" neighborhoods. Furthermore, the broken windows analogy also applied to those situations, by virtue of the frequency with which altercations and brawls break out in conjunction with alcohol and large gatherings.
Admittedly, the zero-tolerance approach to minor violations under the Giuliani administration sometimes seemed to go too far without any apparent purpose. For example, one of the previously ignored violations enforced concerned occupying more than one seat on public transportation. Of course, that rule serves a valid purpose in the case of inconsiderate subway or bus riders who occupy a second seat with their...
Furthermore, there is often a veil of silence from witnesses in these types of assaults, which makes investigation very difficult. However, when an officer exercises the discretion to treat these incidents as lesser-crimes, he reinforces the devaluation of the gang members and actually increases the validity of the gang culture. Furthermore, gang violence does not occur in isolation, and it is unfair to the non-criminal members of gang-afflicted communities
706). Yet, this clearly does not eliminate the possibility of abuse of power and wrongful use of police discretion as the disproportionate application of justice upon those of lower class and of minority races is fundamentally present in both lesser and greater crimes. III. If you were a supervisor within a police department, how would you manage or control the discretionary practices of your officers? One of the most important aspects
, Skolnick and Fyfe, and Walker, that conclude racial discrimination has been found in several policing duties, facilitated by police discretion, including shootings, use of force, arrests, street stops, offense charging, search and seizure, and equality of coverage. Police discretion allows for this discrimination to occur. Skogan and Frydl (2004) concur that police discretion is an increased concern, in relation to racial profiling and discrimination. The authors surmise that pro-active special
Police Discretion The execution of discretion in judgment among police officers has been studied for decades (De Lint, 1998). Before the 1960's, For some three decades now it has been established knowledge that police officers use discretion (De Lint, 1998). Through the 1960's, officers were expected to use "common sense," with little attention paid to analyzing situations where discretion was called for or for applying specific training to improve the kinds of
Police and Juvenile Delinquency According to the numbers published on the National Institute of Justice, in 2010, the number of arrests of juveniles was down by a little over half the same number in 1994, when it reached its maximum. The reasons for this "recession" in juvenile arrests in the U.S. may be attributed to better results in the work of juvenile delinquency prevention as well to increased police discretion when
Therefore, it does not seem logical that a police department could exist without at least some form of discretionary decision-making. Discretion is used at just about every level of a police department, from the officers on patrol to detectives and even management. Another expert notes, "Police encounter a wide range of behaviors and a variety of situations that the law hasn't even thought about yet. One of the most amazing
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