2 ms·

Thanks. The police officer made it seem quite to the contrary. It's a shame that one of the police officer's core duties _isnt_ clarifying finer points of laws

• pc86 10y ago
  The ELI5 is that the police officer's duty is to enforce the law, not explain it. The slightly (but not much) more nuanced explanation is that 99% of police officers do not know the finer points of laws because they don't need to. They know just enough to get an idea of whether or not a person has broken a law. Once they get enough information to arrest someone, it's up to the DA if a law was actually broken and if they want to pursue charges. It's not generally relevant to the police officer's day-to-day interactions with the public to have enough knowledge about the law to clarify the finer points of it to a layman, as they're mostly laymen themselves. Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not saying this is the ideal, just that this is how it is currently in the US. The police pack the pipeline to the DA and the DA decides which cases to pursue (press charges) and which to ignore (release).