• Madison420@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Bro law and order explains this to five year olds, you should know how dumb that argument is.

    In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.

    Implying that the executive doesn’t need to know law is crazy, every branch of government utilizes the law but one can only make law and the other can only enforce it.

    Ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse from the law unless you work for the government and then reasonable mistakes are somehow reasonable to make. Ie. The government can get away with ignorant criminality and use it as a defense but you and I cannot, that’s not ok.

    • ryathal
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      8 months ago

      In the case of cops, not knowing the law is actually a benefit. They’ve been allowed to enforce what they believe is law, and if they find something actually illegal in the course of enforcing imaginary law, then it’s still valid.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        It’s a benefit for the government not the people, they get to extract more from people who don’t know better, it’s abusive. It may exist but I don’t enjoy it.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Implying that the executive doesn’t need to know law is crazy

      Its not entirely crazy.

      Police exist to follow a very particular set of orders from their commanders (not unlike soldiers in the military). They get told “Keep people away from this building” or “Point this radar gun down the highway and don’t come back to the office until you’ve cited at least 10 people over the speed limit” or “Keep anyone who looks suspicious out of this neighborhood” and they’re graded on that task, not on the overarching capacity to enforce all laws.

      In the same way you don’t need to give a guard dog a chemistry degree, you don’t need to give a cop a law license.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        The guard dog isn’t expected to do chemistry, it is however expected to know it’s job ie. Where it is and isn’t supposed to be and to be fair if a guard dog kills the sheep the dog don’t survive the night. Probably not a good example on your part.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          to be fair if a guard dog kills the sheep the dog don’t survive the night

          Thanks @KristiNoeme for your input.

          But I more meant to say that a dog doesn’t have to explain how smells work or why the thing it smells is illegal. Its job is to point and bark.

          Street cops aren’t expected to analyze the legal angles of their orders. They’re just expected to follow orders. Hell, your admission to the police force is often predicated on underperforming intelligence tests.

          • Madison420@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            You’ve clearly never owned a guard dog or worked ag. Stop pearl clutching shot that’s been done since the dawn of domestication.

            They don’t, they do however have to know what they’re doing what smell is good, what is bad, what is uncertain and react accordingly and suffer consequences from bad choices. You’re argument is for more specialization in policing which I’m for but I don’t think you actually know your arguing for it.

            No one is asking them to, but when like 70% of officers do not know thev4th amendment, how it applies and when it does not. Yes, they’re willfully stupid, we get that, it isn’t however something to accept it’s something to change.