Legal Question in Civil Rights Law in District of Columbia

Re: Equal Protection

Generally speaking, the police have broad discretion to make arrests and can choose to arrest one person and not another. Thus, in an ordinary situation, a person won't be able to claim that an arrest was wrongful merely because that person was arrested and not the other person. However, having said that, at the same time, the police officer's decision to arrest one person and not another must be based on the officer's expertise and objective evaluation of the situation and not on improper factors such as racism. So, if there's a situation where a caucasion and African American are in a brawl and the latter is arrested while the former is not, the African American might be able to raise a claim of racial motivation depending upon other factors (e.g., if officer used racial epithets, or the African American was completely innocent, the caucasion was the instigator and there are other witnesses to that, etc...) But unless there's some additional evidence, other than the fact that the black person was arrested and the white person was let go - particularly, if they were both engaged in similar conduct - it's going to be a very, very tough case to prove.