Discretion is defined as the authority to make a decision between two or more choices (Pollock, 2010). More specifically, it is defined as “the ability to identify and document criminal and noncriminal events” (Boivin & Cordeau, 2011). Every police officer has great discretion regarding when to use their authority, power, persuasion, or force. Depending on how an officer views their duty to society will determine an officer's discretion. Discretion leads to selective enforcement practices and can result in discrimination against certain groups of people or selected individuals (Young, 2011). Most police officer discretion is exercised in situations with individuals (Sherman, 1984). Discrimination can lead to legal problems for a law officer. If discrimination due to an official's use of discretion results in a violation of due process, it is a violation of the law (Young, 2010). Due process is the set of procedural steps constitutionally required to eliminate errors in any governmental deprivation of liberty, life, or property (Pollock, 2010). A major concern with the use of discretion is the potential for it to lead to a violation of due process through racial profiling. Types of Negative Police Discretion Racial profiling occurs when a police officer uses a “profile” as reasonable suspicion to stop a person with the intent to obtain consent to have their belongings searched (Pollock, 2010). These stops are usually traffic stops and the officer is trying to get consent to search the individual's car. The “profile” used is based on race. In these cases, an officer uses his or her discretion to target minority groups because he or she believes they are involved in criminal activity… half of the paper… researcher report. The problem I see with the topic of conversation is that not much research is being done on the actual effects of each officer's individual discretion versus a department that has been educated to follow policies more than personal discretion. In fact, from what I've seen there isn't much research on the effects of discretion. It seems to be an overlooked topic when researching the effectiveness of a department. I think that before further solutions are found on how to correct the discretion problem, more research needs to be done on how discretion plays a role in everyday policing. Until this research is conducted, all published articles will be about theories of discretion that cause problems, and all of the solutions mentioned are methods of correcting a problem that hasn't even been proven to be a problem..