I expect police to be good people. Guess we differ there. I expect police to not follow evil laws. That's a bit hyperbolic though. More importantly, I expect police to use their judgment to do the right thing.
Police have an incredible amount of flexibility inherent in how they interpret laws. They choose when to put someone in jail and when to give them a break. They choose when pull their gun.
The law doesn't provide adequate guidance here. It cannot. Laws are made to be interpreted by people. Police, prosecutors, judges, and juries all apply their humanity to the ridiculously coarse and simplistic letter of the law.
I expect police to be the best of us. They need to be. It's an impossible goal but we could go a lot better than we do now.
Are you a programmer? If so, I hope it wouldn't offend you to suggest that you might be thinking of the law as a computer program, and police as machines that run it. If we ever create a benevolent machine to serve as our lawbook, I'll agree with you that humans should simply put their judgment aside and be simple agents of its will.
I think that flexibility is what puts laws as they exist (imperfect, maybe even bad) right next to the "ideal" social contract (good) in their mandate. With both of those in the job description, yeah, they ought to be good. That flexibility in enforcement and the judiciary can have bad unintended consequences (leaving the door wide open for the same action being legal for people in power and illegal for everyone else, or for bias to creep in), but on the whole we need it. You're totally right. Thanks for the insight.
Police have an incredible amount of flexibility inherent in how they interpret laws. They choose when to put someone in jail and when to give them a break. They choose when pull their gun.
The law doesn't provide adequate guidance here. It cannot. Laws are made to be interpreted by people. Police, prosecutors, judges, and juries all apply their humanity to the ridiculously coarse and simplistic letter of the law.
I expect police to be the best of us. They need to be. It's an impossible goal but we could go a lot better than we do now.
Are you a programmer? If so, I hope it wouldn't offend you to suggest that you might be thinking of the law as a computer program, and police as machines that run it. If we ever create a benevolent machine to serve as our lawbook, I'll agree with you that humans should simply put their judgment aside and be simple agents of its will.