Police Structure

What makes the criminal justice system a process?

 has multiple steps, Sequential (has an appropriate order), Filtering (removes people so that not all criminals have to serve sentencing), Resource Dependence (government allocates a budget), Discretion (ppl make choices with the law giving guidance)  

What are 5 main points about the US police structure?

• The discretion used by police is very important, political, and highly politicized → police investigations and failings are given a lot of scrutiny 

• The role of police is very broad, it’s the least-well defined part of the process, therefore most subject to discretion 

1. order maintenance is below legal mandate

2. Law enforcement

2. Service

• Difficult to standardize 

• Significant discretion in how to use power (force, aggression) 

• *The more intrusive the power of force, the higher the judicial limitation is on the use of that power → these limitations are constitutional (ex. 4th amendment) found in the Supreme Court

What is meant by Reasonable Suspicion?

if a reasonable person would agree, reasonable: the capacity for someone to rationally explain, not on a ‘hunch’

Is there too much leeway in Stop-And-Frisk or reasonable suspicion? 

Yes, because it’s more often Blacks and Latinos that are subject to suspicion. For example, the 2012 case of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic-American. Martin had accompanied his father to visit his father's fiancée at her townhouse at The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford. On the evening of February 26, Martin walked into a 7-Eleven in Sanford, grabbing a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona iced tea. The hood from his dark gray sweatshirt over his head, he walked up to the counter, reached deep into his pants’ pockets, paid the clerk, then walked out. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, saw Martin and reported him to the Sanford Police as suspicious. Several minutes later, an argument happened and Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest. Zimmerman was injured during the altercation with Martin. He said he shot Martin in self-defense and was not charged at the time. The police said there was no evidence to refute his claim of self-defense, and Florida's stand-your-ground law prohibited them from arresting or charging him. After national media focused on the incident, Zimmerman was eventually charged and tried, but a jury acquitted him of second-degree murder and manslaughter in July 2013.

This ‘Reasonable Suspicion’ cost him his life.