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Comment by Beijinger | Hacker News Reader

"They know the law"

No, they don't. They are police officers, not lawyers. Exactly this causes many problems when, sorry to speak this way, testosterone meets incompetence in law enforcement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiUkbE_ktHs

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Replace with "should know the law" or "have a duty to know the law" or "know the law better than civilians."

The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why?

https://www.amazon.de/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

The US Supreme Court has repeatedly held the opposite - that police officers are immune to prosecution for their ignorance of the bounds of their powers unless explicitly informed.

IANAL; I believe you are referring to the second prong of the qualified immunity (QI): "right infringed has to be "clearly established" at the time of the official's conduct."

We should maintain QI but this second test needs an update.

Officers are civilians. Never let them forget that.

If they don't even have a duty to uphold the law [1], why would they have a duty to know it?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

Also not true. They have a duty to enforce the law as they understand it (noting that verification is just a phone call away), which may be better than average due to training and experience, or not.

Either way, your duty is to cooperate with law enforcement. If they are wrong, the only proper place to determine that is the courts. If they are right, you'll still have avoided a "resisting" charge

The police do not have a duty to enforce the law, as determined multiple times by the supreme court and other federal courts.

> No, they don't. They are police officers, not lawyers.

How do you enforce laws that you don't know or understand?

Think about it. These guys mobilize themselves to use force to achieve their goal. How is step 0 of this whole process not "check if what we are about to do complies with the law"?

If they mobilize themselves to use force to achieve a goal through illegal and criminal means, they are not different than organized crime.

I know they don't thats why its in quotes.

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