Should  duly trained and duly authorized officers be given the authority to impose some  limited fines or other civil penalties at their discretion and with out  any other cause?

Examine for a moment the advantages.   

Let say, a citizen is doing something which is not actually against any law  but it is obviously causing a some legitimate problem.  Or a traffic  stop results in a slightly uncooperative citizen.  The officer  would like to resolve the issue with out escalating the situation.  If  he had the authority to demand an immediate action on the part of the  citizen and enforce that demand with the civil authority to impose a civil  fine say limited to $100 should the citizen choose to ignore the officer,  wouldn't that be a helpful tool in any officers bag of tricks?  

First,  this idea isn't really new.  US laws are already written with  in many ways to give law enforcement the advantage of discretionary enforcement.  Severe penalties which are usually not enforced  in full give the prosecutor latitude and a myriad of laws of which most  people find they are in violation at nearly all times, are laws which an  officer can threaten to enforce to encourage cooperation.  

Second,  Do we like that state of affairs?  Do we want the sort of latitude?  Or do we as a people feel that the protections of  due process are important?  I think we are confused.   

If we feel that discretionary enforcement was valuable, we should simply  pass the laws allowing authorized police officers to impose arbitrary  fines against which there is no legal relief.  But if we as a  people feel that the protections of due process are important, we need to  rewrite and perhaps eliminate many laws which constructively grant  discretionary enforcement. 

Which will we do?  Probably the same  thing that most who read this web page do, dismiss the information as  unimportant, do nothing, and turn the game back on.