Case Studies with Questions and Answers
Chapter 05: Police and Policing
You are a police officer assigned to patrol the rural areas of your county. Generally, the nights are calm with the occasional domestic dispute but nothing very dangerous. The most trouble this area of the county has is out of the teenagers in the area. Around Halloween every year, teenagers pile into cars with baseball bats and cruise the streets looking for mailboxes to destroy.
This Halloween has been no different. Five to six mailboxes have been hit each night for the last three nights. Your captain has decided this behavior needs to be nipped in the bud and wants whoever is caught hitting a mailbox to be brought to the station and handled by him. His is one of the mailboxes that was hit on the first night. You feel this teenage prank deserves different treatment but have never gone against the wishes of your captain.
You are driving around a sharp curve when you see a smashed mailbox. As you drive further down the road you hear a loud bang and the squeal of tires. You speed up and see a teenage boy hanging out of a car window with a bat in hand. You turn on your lights, and they immediately pull over. To your surprise it is your neighbor's son, Scott, in the backseat. He has always helped you out whenever you needed it. You never dreamed one of the mailbox smashers would be him. Scott and his friends seem appropriately terrified of you and remorseful for the actions they've done. You know what the captain expects you to do next.