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Comment by ImPostingOnHN | Hacker News Reader

> Siccing police on landscapers using leaf blowers

Rephrased it in a straightforward, non-melodramatic way: "asking *police* to *police* people who break the law"

What a difference an honest phrasing makes: that's not so outrageous, is it? If we didn't want police to police illegal stuff, we wouldn't have made it their job. If we didn't want the illegal stuff to be illegal, and thus policed, we wouldn't have made it illegal.

Asking the police to do the job they're paid to do is more appropriate than siccing governments on homeowners and siccing homeowners on landscapers without paying any of them.

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Even if the police make an earnest attempt to do their jobs well (which is a pipe dream) coming to the scene of a lawn worker using a gas blower will be very low on their priority queue and is unlikely to happen most of the time.

If the homeowners don't like being fined and don't want to do the lawn work themselves, they can specifically hire lawn companies that use electric tools. You still haven't given me any reason why my proposal isn't a good one. The homeowners are the ones paying for these gas tools to be used, so they should be the ones fined for it.

The answer to why people wouldn't accept your proposal is simple: that is part of the job that we pay the police to do, and they aren't paying us to do that part of their job.

You keep falling back to the excuse 'well, the police won't do their job'. If that's the case, that's the root cause of the lack of enforcement, and we need to address it. Who knows what other crimes they won't feel like investigating tomorrow? Domestic violence? Murder? Obviously we can't leave such discretion in their hands, rather than the hands of the people.

The excuses about police workload always inspire skepticism given their petulant tantrums and refusals to do their job in retaliation for being criticized for their wrongdoing.

Honestly, though, I'm just not convinced they're using the available person hours and budget in the most optimal way to achieve what the people want. If the police feel like they truly do need more people to do their job, however: like I said, they can submit themselves to civilian review to determine if they're meeting enough civilian goals to justify increased budget.

> "asking police to police people who break the law"

That would be one way to get many laws changed in a hurry. As well as slashing the funding for police. I expect most people don't realize how often they break the law.

Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. Point is, some places voted for them to do it for 2-stroke leafblowers, so if you think they shouldn't have, convince them to change their mind and hold a new vote.

Until then, we still expect police to do their job, which, again, is what we tell them to do, not what they feel like doing.

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