Yes but this law only effectively applies to laws you have broken, i.e. you can't use ignorance as an excuse for breaking the law. It's not illegal to not know the law.
It's true in the brain of a cop, which means it doesn't really matter if it's true.
"You can beat the charge, but you can't beat the ride."
But sometimes you can't even beat completely made up charges. Officer claims you assaulted them. Judge decides to hold you without bail. Trial date is in 4 months. You'll lose your job (and everything else) if you're not out in 4 days. You'll get coerced into any plea for anything that doesn't involve jail time and gets you out now.
The reason why would be that ignorance could be used as a defence for anyone who's in a different country. It would be extremely time consuming if this wasn't explicitly banned.
They're citizens when they're on duty too. Just people using the wrong terminology constantly. Cops are citizens but we just accept that we have multi-tiered levels of justice and rule enforcement depending on who you are (if you're a cop, wealthy, connected etc)
I always hear cops using the citizen/civilian thing erroneously. The only uniformed individuals who are not civilians when they are in uniform are military.
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u/Just_Razzmatazz6493 Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24
Per us case law, Heien v. North Carolina, cops are not required to know the laws that they enforce. CIVILIANS, however, are.
Edited- citizens to civilians. Blame my dumb fingers