Police Community Relations
Ethics is the study of the general nature of morals and the moral choices made by an individual while relating to others. On the other hand, integrity is the adherence to the code of standard of values. Police discretion is normally associated with ethics in the criminal justice system. It is therefore defined as the ability to choose between two or more courses of behaviour. When enforcing a law, law enforcement officers have a great deal with discretion because it can transform into discrimination, for instance, this can happen when a law enforcement officer treats individual of a group of people differently from others majorly because of racism or any other form of discrimination.
In traffic law enforcement, discrimination is highly experienced. Police choose who to arrest or stop and question. The police officers decide on where and when to enforce a wide variety of laws and ordinances. Therefore such type of discretional power creates a bigger impact than the formal rules and regulations of the traffic police department. Other factors that affect traffic law enforcement include nature of the offence, characteristics of the violator, including mannerism, gender age, ethnicity and physical appearances. Lastly, we have Attitude of the violator that is moods, temperament or how the violator carries him or herself.
Ticket quotas are commonly defined as any establishment of a predetermined or specified number of traffic citations an officer must issue in a specified time whereas Racial or ethnic profiling is the act of suspecting or targeting a person based on assumed characteristics, racial or ethnic group, instead of individual suspicion. Racial profiling is not limited only to an individual’s ethnicity or race, but can also be based on the individual’s religion, or national origin.