Читать книгу Force Decisions. A Citizen's Guide to Understanding How Police Determine Appropriate Use of Force онлайн

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Fear can be rationalized as discretion. Stopping a high-speed chase or not engaging in a Use of Force or not chasing a running suspect can all easily be rationalized—they can be dangerous, and sometimes the danger to the threat, yourself, and bystanders, isn’t justified by the potential result. What level of force would you be willing use for a city noise ordinance? For a car theft, are you willing to risk tearing through a school zone at lunchtime at 90 mph? There are good and bad reasons for making any of these decisions.

At the extreme, discretion can become abuse of authority. The “reasonable officer” rule is vague. It has to be, because the situations in which you need it are impossible to script. In that vagueness, it is possible for a bad or fearful officer to perceive justifications for things he wants, not needs, to do.

There is no easy answer for this one, no line that can be drawn that will make everyone happy. We all want ‘justice’ but that is a hard concept to define. If ‘justice’ were based simply on results, motivation wouldn’t matter and there would be no difference between intentional murder and accidental manslaughter. Justice-as-retribution collides with the concept of ‘behavior modification.’