One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else.
They should have less.
The correct term to use here is "powers". The people have "rights". The people delegate, through the constitution, certain "powers" to the government. The government, in turn, delegates some of those powers to the police. The police do not have "rights". The government does not have "rights". The government and police have "powers", and are supposed to exercise those powers within specified limits.
What is under discussion here is the limits of those powers.
Intent is a reasonable yardstick to assess who goes to jail and who doesn't. It is a terrible way to deal with systems and processes. There isn't time and it isn't productive to defend a system with bad incentives and outcomes because it wasn't intended to be that way.
Did the people vote to delegate those rights? Were the people ever asked?
So, at best the "people" of 3 centuries ago where asked. And not all the people, just the white, male, landowners (and rich -- poorer white male people only got to vote 1.5 centuries later or more in the US, even in general elections).
And why is this binding for people, including poor, non landowning, women, blacks, latinos, asians, etc, 3 centuries later?
If a regular citizen can't plant a bug, neither can police. If police can conduct a stakeout, so can regular citizens. They just have to follow the same process. That might include going in front of a judge and getting a warrant.
If a regular citizen could break up a bar fight, the police should be able to take the same actions. If police can set up a sting operation, so should citizens be allowed.
Obviously, we don't want everybody running around conducting sting operations or traffic stops. So we set some bar for regular citizens that makes it less likely. But police should have to face the exact same bar. The difference is that we pay for their time, training, equipment, etc. If a certain level of training is required before anybody can make a traffic stop, that training should be open for anybody. We just pay the admission and the salary for police to take the training. Regular citizens foot their own bill.
Edit: poor proofreading
Equivalencies of Powers/Rights is a good thought experiment that would keep the powers of the enforcers from multiplying without limits.
and if magnetic shit falls off my car, that's the breaks, suckers.
We were also taught it's almost never worth doing this; basically, if someone's shooting people and you're doing an armed job, yes, use your gun to try and stop them or detain them, but if it's just property damage or theft, call the cops and let them do their thing. The risk to you isn't worth it, nor is the risk of a false arrest lawsuit.
Then the question is, is such a good idea?
There was a curious case a few years back of a non-citizen who had been a military police officer and became a civilian cop because nobody checked his documentation. His military activities were perfectly legal but all arrests made as a civilian were invalid.
I was told the difference between a policeman and a citizen (via citizen's arrest) is that a policeman can arrest someone for a misdemeanor.
I think the real difference is that the cops have qualified immunity, meaning they aren't at fault even if the arrest turned out to be unjustified, and regular citizens do not.
I don't mean to sound pedantic, just having a conversation.
Or at least I’d hope they can.
On the way to an emergency? Of course they should. And people should pull over.
And only sometimes while on the job. For example, if they catch someone for speeding and happen to go through a red light, I don't find that to be a grave thing. Speeding is easily a public hazard. Going off to investigate a theft where the thief has left the property, though? No need to run the light as the delay won't make a difference. Going to a car accident, especially with hurt folks or that is blocking traffic? Yes. Car accident in an open section of parking lot? Rarely necessary.
I live in a small northeast city off of an avenue where there are two trauma centers, a firehouse that does about 5,000 calls/year and a police HQ. I see and hear plenty of these vehicles. When you see it enough, you can spot the different patterns in how police, ambulances and fire trucks respond.
2. I don't know where they are dispactched or anything. I could tell the difference between sirens though.
3. I know not all dispatches are emergencies that need lights, sounds, or running lights. If someone has broken into your business, for example, and the person is no longer there, there is no need for speed, lights, and so on. I'm in a larger city in another country now... and there are less sirens and stuff here. It is really weird. I know they respond and the crime rate is probably lower, but... priorities are different as well. I generally didn't see the same patterns with fire trucks and ambulances in the states, and honestly never had a complaint about them. Just the police.
Edited to add an afterthought.
Cops are supposed to be professionals, with keeping the civil order of their state and/or county and/or municipality as their full-time job, but the authority to arrest criminals historically extends from the sheriff of the county, to every person whom he or she may designate, either orally or in writing. If the sheriff asked for assistance from an ordinary person, and they effected an arrest, that was legally an official act of the sheriff. Similar extension-of-authority constructs exist for a municipal mayor/council, state governor, and federal president.
Without a preexisting order to assist, as one might have as a municipal cop or full-time county deputy, there is no official cover for an arrest, and the person making one would have personal liability, if they made a mistake. That privilege of immunity for mistakes made during establishment or maintenance of civil order is supposed to keep professional cops from being too fearful of civil liability lawsuit to do their jobs effectively. I would argue that they are now not fearful enough to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with their positions in the community, as part of it, simply being persons who have been given a standing order to assist the office of the president/governor/sheriff/mayor in their duty to keep civil order. They have now set themselves apart from the communities in which they live, behind the cordon of their thin blue lines, as adversaries to those whom they see as enemies of civil order.
As such, they have become blind to those occasions on which their actions are actually upsetting to the civil order. In other words, they get into some crazy bullshit legal arguments, and sometimes get away with it.
The privilege they enjoy is actually in having their personal actions taken as extensions of a higher lawful authority, rather than as their own.
It is established that the state has the authority to require that motor vehicle owners permanently affix a license plate to their vehicles, which remains the property of the state, and not remove it, and to return it to a designated authority on demand. But this is all written into public law. You can't just arbitrarily extend that power to some cop shop's magnetic GPS tracker. If you want it to be a crime to remove it, you have to write that into its own law. Otherwise, you have to follow the same law for theft (or unlawful conversion) as everyone else. And that opens up a reciprocal liability for putting your property on someone else's property without their authorization.
I suppose the opsec moral of the story is to drop found trackers onto the public road, or report it as lost property, instead of leaving it inside a locker. Putting a classified ad for lost property in the public notices section of the local paper for three consecutive weeks might have been a fun experiment in "fruit of the poisoned tree" lawyering.