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Comment by some-guy | Hacker News Reader

When I was a child, I thought police had to go to law school. How else would you enforce the law if you didn't know what the law was?

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I took a class in college from a lawyer who said he started as a cop but wanted to understand the law better so he went to law school at night. When he graduated the chief (or whatever) told him he couldn’t practice law and be a cop, and even though he had no intention of actually being an attorney, they let him go.

Literally too smart to be regime muscle.

Regime... how cute to call money a regime.

We all have to go to law school.

How could you live in the world without breaking the law if you didn't know what the law was?

There have been many periods in US history where sets of laws were purposefully created that criminalized activities that nearly ~100% of the population engage in. The intent of those isn't to stop those activities, and there's no intent of prosecuting everyone. The intent is to be able to prosecute any individual person or someone close to them, at any arbitrary point in time.

Many of today's lawmakers no longer have that intent, but the system as a whole still keeps running in a manner that allows tools of that nature to be used against targeted individuals and populations.

Yup. Today these are traffic laws (even if you're a pedestrian).

For the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

Corporate America is very similar in that regard. If the bosses like you, they will turn a blind eye to all sorts of things. But if they have it in for you, they WILL find a way of getting rid of you for cause.

They're supposed to be trained on it, and they probably get a week maybe, depending on the academy. The rest is how to beat your ass.

PDs have attorneys on call and prior to that they can call their sergeant if they are unsure. Even real lawyers don't know every aspect of every law on the books.

What baffles me is the hypocrisy in the political party that wants more government and regulation is the same one that hates the men who enforce it.

I think a good police force could exist, but the current implementation could use improvement

It's not that people hate police, it's that the police have zero accountability and that, over time, has lead to a culture where they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. The police are rife with systemic abuse and even a HINT of "oh maybe we should be looking into this" is met with "back the blue" type people crawling of the woodwork to explain how qualified immunity is good, actually, and we don't want good ole boys going to prison for things as trivial as state-sanctioned murder.

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