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It seems to me that if I was an officer, I'd follow the law to the letter, and in such cases as it (the law) doesn't sit well in application to a certain situation like this one, I would do my best to speak on behalf of the arrested party.
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Hard one, I know, as in this case the man brought on his own strife by actually breaking the law, even if not in spirit.
The system would function a lot worse, and more injustice would occur, in a zero tolerance world. If you start out with the supposition that the law is designed to discourage bad behavior, rather than merely to punish, the goal frequently can be accomplished without the need for enforcement action. Once an officer makes a decision to act or not act, s/he owns the decision, so it behooves the officer to examine the issue in good faith and have a really good rationale either way.
What's a cop to do though? If he doesn't uphold the letter of the law, his neck is on the block. If he does, his neck is on the block.
Jim brought something to light for me. There had to have been an investigation on the scene. This means it had to be the investigators decision to arrest, not the actual arresting officer.
It's a murky process all around. There has to be a better way to protect the public and enforce the laws....
Every agency has different policies. Where I policed, I didn't have to arrest anybody by policy. I was ordered to arrest someone exactly once. I put that in my report: "Sgt. ordered me to arrest, and charge with..." So when the detective got the case, he knew I didn't create the screwed up mess, and my Sgt. was on the hook as a witness now.
It used to be policy in the City of Birmingham, that a patrol officer could not make an arrest on the street for drugs. If it was a simple possession case, he made a report, took the drugs, and it was handed over to a drug detective. If it was something big, the detective had to be called to the scene.
Cases like the one in this thread though? Yeah, the facts fit the letter of the law, BUT there were extenuating circumstances too. Hard for me to fathom that somebody in the chain of command didn't have the ability to say either "Policy be damned, investigate, do a report, and let the DA decide to charge or not." Or that a supervisor didn't pull officer Do-right aside and say "hey, why don't you rethink this decision, you can always get a warrant or indictment later if need be?" Whichever was the case.
