What exactly is reasonable suspicion and how is it different than officer’s discretion?
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Reasonable suspicion means that:
A reasonable person in the officers place would suspect that a crime has taken place or is in progress.
> how is it different than officer’s discretion.
per Terry V Ohio
It must be based on “specific and articulable facts”, “taken together with rational inferences from those facts” and the suspicion must be associated with the specific individual.
In England, there is some discretion, but it’s still sometimes possible to sue the police and win a claim for false imprisonment if they arrest you wrongfully.
There are lots of court cases you can read where judges have set out more details, but essentially if a police officer arrests on the basis of “reasonable suspicion” they might have to explain that suspicion to a court if they get sued.
It’s possible for the court to listen to the officer and either decide that they’re simply lying, they didn’t really suspect the person of a crime and they arrested for another reason, or that they had a suspicion but their way of thinking wasn’t a reasonable one. In either case it makes it an unlawful arrest, so the arrested person should be able to get compensation, and if they resisted arrested they could be found not guilty because it was a bad arrest to start with.
If a police officer says “I suspected they had burgled that house because they were wearing a ring on their middle finger, and burglars wear rings” that’s clearly an unreasonable way of thinking. No-one can know for sure if the officer is lying or is hard of thinking, but either way it would be an unlawful arrest.
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