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Comment by whats_a_quasar | Hacker News Reader

Fair enough, but it is also valid to be angry at your local law enforcement if they are acting against the community's preferences. Especially when local law enforcement is breaking state law in the process.

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Maybe true, but at a certain point you're just getting angry at the wind for blowing. The system is a scorpion: It cannot, will not go against its nature.

They are a political force, not a force of nature. It is certainly reasonable to get angry at a political force even if their politics are predictable.

At this point it sounds like you have given up believing in checks and balances in politics.

ETA: It’s complicated, but having you give up actually weakens the rule of law even more.

Politics change, scorpions don't. Throw your hands up in and air and give up if you want, but don't pretend some poor analogy absolves you.

I don't think he's throwing his hands up in the air, rather he's implying we need more radical change. If we're going to be waiting around for police to become "good", that's not going to happen. We need to force them to become good.

Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.

This guy gets it.

Yes, this is why the slogan was "Abolish the Police". The replacement "Defund the Police" was entirely astroturfed by Democratic politicians who thought it was better optics (it wasn't).

The greater community, i.e. the United States, may have different preferences than San Francisco.

Those officers are employees of the City, County or State, not the United States.

Local governments are under no obligation to help the federal government enforce federal laws.

But that would put them between federal law vs state law and federal law supersedes state law and state law supersedes local laws.

There are plenty of things Federal law can't do under the Tenth Amendment.

As an example, the Feds can round up marijuana users in California, if they like. They can't require California's law enforcement to help.

Doesn't seem like there was 'force' involved.

There's no law prohibiting local agencies helping feds.

> There's no law prohibiting local agencies helping feds.

The law prohibiting exactly that is linked in the article.

"Under a decade-old state law, California police are prohibited from sharing data from automated license plate readers with out-of-state and federal agencies. Attorney General Rob Bonta affirmed that fact in a 2023 notice to police."

Apologies, I was responding to the comment about weed

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