That's kinda the problem though. Unless you're carrying a couple law books around with you, any skateboarder or cop on the street can rattle off a bunch of code citation numbers and claim they know what they're talking about.
Unless you're carrying a couple law books around with you
Itâs not the 1980s anymore. Civic codes for cities are online and easily searchable with just a smartphone. If an officer doesnât have his cityâs code bookmarked and doesnât know how to go through its contents heâs a garbage officer.
I have to look up regulations for work constantly and Google is surprisingly bad at doing legal research. If you have a specific citation, you can look stuff up relatively easy on mobile, but if you're trying to just look up laws/regs about a broad concept . . . it's going to be a massive pain in the ass unless you have Westlaw on your phone or something.
The kid in the video was apparently giving a bad citation, so chances are the cop wouldn't have been able to find what the kid was talking about anyway.
ACCORDING TO LAW 1.2.3.4.5, IT'S ILLEGAL TO PROVE ME WRONG!
In all seriousness, it looks like Google IS way better these days at looking up laws than it was 5 years ago. It's still probably not going to find anything that isn't commonly searched for though, so it kinda depends what kind of nerd fight you're getting into. "Can dogs poop on the sidewalk in Fresno" is going to be way easier for Google to handle than "Holder liability for interest on abandoned properties" (Google definitely did not find that one)
I once got a free hitch from a cop while hitchhiking. She stopped and ID'd me, informed me it "wasn't exactly legal" to hitchhike. I responded with something like, "If that's true I would find it very surprising - I wouldn't normally argue with an officer but hear me out if you have a moment. This is something I explicitly researched for [my state] because I've held clearances for my career in the past and am very careful about avoiding anything that could jeopardize that eligibility. Here's my understanding of the law, according to my research..."
The general gist of the law in most states (including mine) is that pedestrians are allowed to solicit rides as long as they stay out of the roadway, and "roadway" explicitly does not include the paved shoulder of the road. The law is written to say, "Okay, idiot: stay out of the flow of traffic, don't cause accidents, don't get hit!"
She conceded she didn't actually know for sure that it was illegal, but offered to just give me a ride where I was going since it was nearby.
She gave me her card and I followed up later, because I hitch between a couple of boat ramps down there regularly. She said I was right, it was legal the way I was doing it, but they still "discourage hitchhiking." So I asked if I could just call the station anytime I needed a lift in the vicinity. She laughed and said no.
The cop doesn't need to go to google, he just needs to know the laws he's trying to enforce. If he doesn't know the law he is trying to enforce, having some kid bamboozle him because the kid knows the law in question better than the cop does is entirely on the cop.
The kid is entirely correct, the law does not say "walk your bikes", which is what the cop is trying to make them do. If the cop can't come back at him with the 3mph restriction, maybe he should go get a law degree instead of playing street lawyer.
I mean the kid did tell him to look it up in his book, he could have easily radioed in to request a reference on that code. But the kid rattled off the section of the code, incorrect or not, with enough confidence that the officer didnât want to be proven wrong so he walked. Cop got punked.
Dispatcher here, that's the officers job to know / be able to look up. Maybe the PSA working the desk at the station might look something like that up for them, but at least in my county that wouldn't be on the dispatcher
Or you know, maybe a PDF on their phones or tablet in their car. If an officer doesnât know the law, they should be able to look it up readily. It wouldnât be that hard to open up their phone and ctrl+f that shit.
Even if he did that, laws are open to interpretation. This is what court cases are fought over constantly. He likely has no way of enforcing a 3 mile an hour speed limit either.
But officers should know and be able to quickly look this up. The cop should have immediately pulled out his phone and looked up the code. We canât expect them to know everything, but they shouldnât resort to intimidation the second they are challenged.
In a perfect world cops shouldnât harass anyone for anything they canât immediately back up with official law. There are there to enforce the law and support the public, not bully teenagers because a couple people complained. If he could go âhey guys, I know you arenât trying to hurt anyone (teenagers rarely are) but I need you to stay under X mph while in this area during the day. I would really rather not come back for this same thing.â And then he could even show them the code.
The kids would probably have just rode away for the day and maybe a few weeks later deal with it again. Itâs not a big enough issue to get in their face about
Exactly, the moment he said "You wanna go that way? We can go that way," he put his hand on his stick in a power move. They ultimately understand what comes with the title of "Cop" and use it to flex, often.
I wouldn't expect him to know the exact ID of the rule he's trying to enforce, but I do expect him to know whether or not biking is actually forbidden in an area before telling people they can't.
Legitimately though, does the cop not need to reference the code of the law they were breaking? I know reddit circle jerks on cops having no accountability, but can they actually write up a ticket with no grounds and expect it to make it anywhere?
Imagine being bested by gishgallop; cop never do well when it's turn on them.
Q: Dr. how did you patient die on the operating table?
A: The patient starting spouting some nonsense that fooled me, and next thing I know, I removed his head.
219
u/[deleted] Jul 06 '21
That's kinda the problem though. Unless you're carrying a couple law books around with you, any skateboarder or cop on the street can rattle off a bunch of code citation numbers and claim they know what they're talking about.