Discretion means giving a light hand and letting little stuff pass. Not the other way.
Yeah,
There's a scene in one of my fav movies, "Colors", where Robert Duvall's character stomps on a suspect's dope and tells him to 'beat it.' Sean Penn's character is incredulous and can't understand why his partner let a potential felony arrest skate. Duvall explains that it's petty ****, and now that 'perp' 'owes him one.' In real life, that kind of discretion was crucial in getting actual policing done. I had a near-identical experience as a 'baby cop.'
A passenger in a felony car stop was determined to potentially have some useful information on a related case. I ran his info and discovered several warrants out for him. I was ready to pounce, but my trainer instead asks the guy, "Hey, you got any warrants?" The guy looks down at the ground, "Yeah, I think I might." My trainer says, "Like what? Anything serious or just ******** warrants?" Guy says, "Yeah, just some ********." My trainer says, "Look. I'm not even gonna check. I'm gonna take your word, ok? But next time I see you, if I need something from you, you have to cough it up. We good on that?"
About a week later, he gives all that to the detective on that other case and the detective calls him to the station where they have the guy on another, totally unrelated beef. My trainer asks the detectives to step out of the room so he can 'talk to my guy in private', and he calls in his favor and has the dude snitch on the much bigger fish in the other case. Long story short, his 'discretion' led to a subsequent arrest and conviction on an attempted murder case instead of locking a dude up on some traffic fines and failures to appear in traffic court.
There were no body-cams back then, though, lol...