Police officers are known for many things, but one of those things that they are not known for is their high expertise in criminal law. That is to say, police officers are not lawyers and typically have never attended law school, which means that they actually don’t know the law backwards and forwards. Additionally, no human being knows every single law or the appropriate application of the law in every single circumstance. In other words, when police officers arrest a given individual, they often are just going to go to a common playbook that they are familiar with, and find a charge that seems to fit, which will thus justify the arrest, of which, there are those types of charges that pretty much can be used in many a circumstance, such as disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and things of that general ilk.
The above thus signifies that when a person is being arrested and they ask what they are being arrested for, there probably isn’t any point in the asking, because the police officer is just going to find a charge that seems reasonable for the circumstances, for that initial charge leading to the arrest is not going to often represent the formal charge. In actuality, the charging of an individual with a crime is determined by the prosecuting agent of the state, who will look at the notes so provided by the police officer and determine what charges are most appropriate, or decide not to charge the individual so arrested, at all.
This signifies that those being arrested not only don’t know for certain what they are being arrested for, but really won’t know what charges they will be accused of until the prosecuting agent weighs in. Additionally, there are many cases in which someone is arrested in which no formal charges are ever filed, whatsoever, and thereby the person arrested is released. While that might sound good to the person that has been released from having been arrested, it has to be noted that being arrested is for many people a pretty traumatic affair, and to thus lose one’s freedom for some period of time in which at the end of the day, no charges are filed, seems to be the type of thing, that should be investigated more thoroughly because there may be arrests being made that the officer of the law knew were under a spurious charge, but they did so perhaps because they simply wanted to enforce their authority that they are an agency not to be trifled with.
The bottom line is that it is one thing for a police officer to engage in a conversation with a person, over some perceived incident, and to thereby let that person go, as compared to actually arresting and putting a person in handcuffs and the back of the police vehicle to be processed. This means that police officers seemingly have a lot of discretion over what they are allowed to do, which seems to be something that should be monitored, but not necessarily by agents of the state, such as the prosecution, but rather, monitored by those who are citizens of the state to ascertain as to whether police officers are behaving in a way and manner consistent with civility and service to the community.