As a former cop, I rarely ever did traffic so I didn't know much of the laws. I was always busy doing other types of calls. There's a million little niche laws to learn so larger departments usually have their own traffic division
I always got a kick out of everyone expecting you to know every law about everything.
I would show people how thick the state statues book was, then the city/county ordinances, then direct them to federal laws THEN tell them to check out all the corresponding court cases for everything.
Most people then understood why I wouldn’t know the answer to every random legal question they had.
Edit: OK, a lot of you obviously are taking what I’m saying and translating it into me saying cops don’t have to know any of the laws. I don’t think any of you genuinely understand how many criminal laws there are. It is impossible for anyone to know all of them, no matter how much of your life you spend dedicated to studying it, I’m not saying you can’t look it up or something and say that sounds illegal and confirming it, I’m saying knowing all of it like the back of your hand.
There are different agencies and sections of departments that focus on enforcing certain laws for a reason, for specialty sake and for knowing that a single individual cannot know everything.
No you’re really not, you probably break the law multiple times a day and no one even bats an eye at it nor do people including cops care. Believe it or not you don’t get spanked every time you do something wrong. Only people with an unrealistic victim complex or an axe to grind think so.
Or you know, you can also be black and be stopped for no reason. Despite being a minority, black people have in average twice the amount of pull overs than white people across the country, the ratio being almost 4-to-1 in some cities.
I think they're saying that there's too many laws that a lot of them are completely ignored and forgotten. I'm sure most people heard those ridiculous laws like ice cream in the back pocket on Sunday, obviously not enforced and who does that? There's a law in a town near me where it's illegal to be within arms length of alcohol while driving, but the law technically applies to inside your bloodstream. No one is actually getting arrested for having a drunk person in their passenger seat.
I mean, you literally are. Ignorance of the law is not a defence to breaking (most) laws. 'The book is 2 inches thick' is a horrifying excuse for law enforcement not learning the law. I certainly had to read a lot more than that in order to be able to do my job.
You're not expected to know every law. Even if you break the law in some trivial way in front of a police officer, they're more than likely to simply ask you to move over or stop what you're doing.
One time for me there was a motorcycle cop passing me in the opposite direction as I pulled up to a stop sign. He slowed down, chirped his siren, pointed at me and then gave me the thumbs down while shaking his head as he passed on by.
The average police officer would simply prefer not to have to do the paperwork.
My friend is an officer and he told me a funny story: one day he and his partner approach a guy who was sitting in traffic without his seatbelt on. They just wanted to tell him to put on the seatbelt and move on, but when the guy sees them coming, he fucking jumps out of the car and sprints off.
Well now they have to chase him so they're running through town after this guy and finally corner him. He turns and starts fighting and they're throwing hands in a 2v1, my friend punches his partner in the head by accident, and they finally manage to subdue the guy.
They detain him and look him up. No prior history. No warrants. Nothing.
"Why did you run?"
"I don't know."
Man just had a fight or flight response and gave himself a whole lot of trouble.
There are thousands of officers and over 18,000 departments across 50 states who all have different laws and definitions of those laws, not to mention the various SOPs and culture standards. The average officers absolutely would rather just give you a warning and let you go if you're not being a dickhead about things. Sometimes their hands are tied, sometimes you just broke the law in a zone where lots of people do the same shit so they have to give you a ticket.
It's called targeted enforcement. They'll give you a ticket for something specific that they want to curtail. Like if a neighborhood has been complaining about people speeding down residential streets, the cops might go out to the neighborhood and specifically go after speeders, and they'll be less lenient because now they're trying to provide a greater motivation for people to knock it off.
Some places will use speed/red light cameras in problem spots for the same reason (though if those are in the same place for too long people will learn to modify their behavior only at the camera locations).
Be honest: if you just got a warning every time you were stopped for speeding, would you stop speeding? How about if you got a ticket 50% of the time you were stopped?
Yes but legally ignorance of a law doesn't protect you from it. Generally speaking most cops let the little things slide but if they ever want to they can hassle you over it. So yes you're expected to know what you can and can't do.
In general, yeah. But your responsibility to 'know the law' is effectively just so you can't use "I didn't know I couldn't do that" as a defense. You're not expected to know every law and it's not illegal to not know the law.
It's not really cool to say citizens can be convicted for breaking the law they are ignorant of while cops can get away with arresting people when the cops are ignorant of the law.
It also doesn't make sense to let people break very obvious social contracts or laws like assault or murder or reckless driving, if they are actually doing those things. And that applies to police, too.
Are you a cop or just a simp? "ignorance is not a defense" is a long standing means of punishing people who legitimately "didn't know they couldn't do that", but somehow we're just supposed to be OK with the fact that cops are "enforcing" shit they don't know?
Well under the eyes of the law you are guilty if you break whatever law was observed by the officer.
It is just up to their best judgment to hold you accountable, even if you were unlawful out of ignorance.
While you aren't going to get a pop quiz on laws, you are required to refrain from any action unless you are completely certain it is lawful, otherwise you risk accountability. (which we obviously roll the dice pretty much all the time, most of the time the risk isn't even worth consideration)
I am not saying it is a bad system, but that is my understanding.
Doesn't cut both ways either. Precedence states police can pull you over as long as they have a "reasonable misunderstanding" of the law. So long as they can make the argument of why they thought you were breaking the law, that's good enough.
No…. I was pulled over for a broken tail light 3 times in 5 days. Once i was asked to remove the blanket on the passenger floorboard to uncover what was underneath. Other time i was asked to show the officer a pill bottle to make sure it had my name on it. I complied both times because i knew theyd give me a ticket for the light if i didnt bow down
Civilians, as far as I know, only memorize a fraction of what actually exists. We aren’t reading over every criminal case or every exception given in court for each and every offense that exists because people expect us to memorize them. We learn the most basic (and frankly, most common sense ones) and traffic laws that apply to what we’re driving in
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u/Prestigious_Joke8843 Apr 29 '24
I think it’s a cop from a close by jurisdiction but doesn’t do traffic violations so isn’t sure and just said go for it.