Last month, we got a call from an angry father. Ron Hughes said his son was being harassed by a sheriff’s deputy. He called our paper because he knew we had run a number of stories involving the deputy  — Philip Milano.

We advised Hughes to follow the office’s recommendation, which we’d reported on:  File a formal complaint with the department.

Hughes did.

We’re pleased to report this week, in a story by Elizabeth Floyd Mair, that Hughes’s complaint was heeded.

The investigation has not yet been completed but Sheriff Craig Apple confirmed that Milano has been taken off patrol and been assigned to headquarters.

Hughes was interviewed by Senior Investigator Charles Higgins of the sheriff’s Professional Standards Unit and he said that Higgins “seemed fair.” His son’s ticket, issued by Milano, was dismissed, and Higgins assured him, Hughes said, that “there’s not going to be any more problems with [Milano] on the Hill.”

“It’s going to be a whole new day,” Hughes said Sheriff Apple told him.

We like the philosophy Sheriff Apple shared with our reporter. “I firmly believe in stopping somebody and talking to them, explaining what they did,” he said. “Sometimes people are going to be an idiot on the side of the road and, you know what, you use your discretion and, if you want to give them the ticket, you give the ticket. More times than not, people will fix the problem; they’re going to be very gracious of the break they got, and they’re going to take their own corrective action.”

“Discretion” is a key word here.

Apple said that, as a new cop 29 years ago, he was taught this: “Law enforcement involves a lot of discretion.”

Warren Berger, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1969 to 1986, stated, “The police officer working the beat makes more decisions, and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily lives of people every day, and to a greater extent, than a judge will exercise in a week.”

That discretion gives a police officer great power; it must be used wisely. We’ve covered several cases where Milano has not used discretion wisely.

We wrote about Milano a year ago in July when he and another deputy, Javier-Luis Martinez, charged Marcia Pangburn with two misdemeanors — resisting arrest and second-degree obstructing governmental administration.

She was questioned by the deputies as she sat in the graveyard a few hundred yards from her home on Thompson’s Lake Road, mourning her father, brother, and infant son, who are all buried there. After an hours-long ordeal, she was released with tickets when a breathlyzer test at the police station showed .01 percent alcohol, well below the legal limit of .08 percent for driving.

Pangburn had driven to the cemetery, she said, when she started feeling blue several hours after attending a nearby housewarming party where she had a mixed drink; she was sitting outside her car, with her headlights trained on the graves.

Sheriff Craig Apple told us at the time that the probable cause for stopping Pangburn in the cemetery had been that she didn’t stay on the roadway when she drove to the graves.

The arrest report, written by Martinez, says the suspect “stated that she had driven her vehicle from her house to the graveyard to be close to her brother and father, whose tombstone was right next to her vehicle. Suspect was very emotional and was crying. A strong odor of an alcoholic beverage was emanating from within her vehicle.”

Pangburn said there were no alcoholic beverages in her SUV. The only beverages, she said, were the coffee she had been drinking, and some unsweetened iced tea she had purchased earlier in the day when she had made a trip to the Great Escape with some family members.

“I said, ‘I’m tired. I’m going to go home.’ They grabbed me and handcuffed me,” Pangburn said. “They were mean to me.” Deputy Milano said, “Now you made us put our hands on you. You refused to breath in the breathalyzer,” she recalled.

“I said, ‘I’ll blow in it.’ They said I wasn’t blowing right. I did it three times,” said Pangburn.

Pangburn said she suffers from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and perhaps, because of her difficulties breathing, the test wasn’t registering.

“They were abusive,” she said. “They treated me like a criminal.”

The arrest report says, “I asked suspect to consent to a preliminary breath screening device, at which point suspect became very agitated and refused to do so. I asked suspect to place her hands behind her back, where she stated, ‘I’m done with this. I’m going home,’ and began to run away from Deputy Milano and I. We grabbed suspect and told her to stop resisting. Suspect fell to her knees and used her dead weight to keep deputies from handcuffing her. Suspect took her hands and clenched them tightly against her chest. I and deputy Milano each grabbed one of suspect’s arms and placed them behind her back. Suspect was successfully handcuffed and placed into my patrol car.”

“I never fell to my knees or clenched my fists,” said Pangburn. “I just said, ‘I’m going home now. I’m through with these games.’ I turned to walk home. I didn’t run. They grabbed me really quickly — one on each side — and handcuffed me.”

Sheriff Apple, asked at the time what constitutes resisting arrest, said, “The discretion is up to the police officer. One person may vary from another...If she does anything to keep him from arresting her, that can be resisting arrest.”

There is that word again — discretion.

At a time when police departments are under greater scrutiny following injury or death during police stops, Sheriff Apple this week referenced the police motto “protect and serve” and said that his officers had the protecting part down but that he’s been trying to change “the whole mindset of this department in terms of the serving portion.”

Wouldn’t the “serving portion” be best followed by letting a grieving woman walk home as she wanted?

Similarly, Karen Boas of Berne was pulled over by Milano and Sergeant Philip White. The police followed behind her and said she had a loud muffler and went over the center line twice. Boas told the officers she had taken her daily prescribed dosage of Clonazepam, used to treat seizure disorders, that morning.

White wrote in the arrest report that Boas had failed field sobriety tests and was arrested for failure to keep right, operation of a motor vehicle impaired by drugs, and an equipment violation for her exhaust system, among other charges. The Enterprise viewed the dashcam video of the arrest and noted that, during the field sobriety’s one-leg stand test, Boas stood for 19 seconds with one leg outstretched in front of her, without wavering; this was one of the tests the report said she failed.

At the station, she blew a breathalyzer test of 0.00 percent.

In the spring jury trial, Boas was found guilty of drugged driving. Police testimony often carries added weight when a case goes to trial and the prosecution frequently depends heavily on the police. Boas was found not guilty of the other charges, including the charges on which she was originally arrested.

Police officers have a huge responsibility when they exercise discretion, and departments would be wise to adopt policies that clearly delineate how discretion should be used.

The Boston Globe conducted a landmark study in 2003 that showed statewide bias in ticketing — bias based on race, gender, and age. For example, statewide in Massachusetts, when local police cited drivers for speeding 45 miles per hour in a zone for 30, the most common offense, whites got a ticket 31 percent of the time, while 49 percent of minority drivers got tickets.

When factors of race and sex were considered together, the records amassed by The Boston Globe showed a tiered system of ticketing. Local police allowed white women to drive faster without penalty, while reserving the harshest treatment for minority men. When drivers went 45 miles per hour in a zone for 30, white women were ticketed 28 percent of the time; white men, 34 percent; minority women, 44 percent; and minority men, 52 percent.

Even more detailed analysis showed further disparities, for example, on age: After a woman turns 40, the advantage swiftly declines. And by age 70, it's gone. Older men and older women of the same race are treated about the same.

The Globe found one striking exception to the pattern of bias — the Massachusetts State Police. The records showed that troopers gave almost exactly equal treatment to all drivers, regardless of race, sex, or age. No local police department of any size was as fair as the State Police, The Globe said.

The Massachusetts State Police have a policy in place. We urge our local police departments to do two things.

First, look at department statistics on arrest to see if there is a pattern of bias. It may come as a surprise because it may not be intentional.

Second, develop a clear written policy for officers to follow.

Law and Order Magazine surveyed 50 police departments across the country and found that all the agencies granted officers complete discretion whether to issue tickets or warnings for traffic violations. Only 62 percent had written policies in effect to dictate what procedures officers must follow when initiating traffic stops and determining their outcomes.

Law and Order Magazine highlighted written guidelines of the Arlington, Texas Police Department as an excellent example, because the orders are both “varied and explicit,” for example, outlining when a verbal warning is advisable.

Law and Order Magazine stresses that, with discretion comes responsibility, using the South Windsor, Connecticut Police Department as a model, which has an audit trail for stops with accessible digital records for every stop made and every warning or ticket issued.

In 67 percent of the departments, officers could downgrade a charge — for example, from speeding to a seatbelt violation — at their discretion. Opinions differed on whether this “no see,” option, overlooking certain violations, was viable, with some insisting that motorists must be advised of the problem so they can correct it.

We agree with what Sheriff Apple said: An officer should point out a problem, so it can be fixed. Discretion comes into play on whether it should be a warning or a ticket.

We commend the sheriff’s office for having a system in place where citizen complaints are taken seriously. But, further, in all of our local departments, an assessment of bias must be made, and clear guidelines must be written and followed.

This is essential both for the police who bear the burden of using discretion and for the public which deserves fair treatment.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer