The stupidity of this aside, I think it's an instructive example of the "mall cop" effect: police forces, instead of tackling major crime and public safety ofte

The stupidity of this aside, I think it's an instructive example of the "mall cop" effect: police forces, instead of tackling major crime and public safety often end up putting much of their effort into petty enforcement, really out of laziness, because speeding tickets or whatever are an easy metric to rack up, compared to trying to do actual police work. The same is true here. We're effectively in the middle of a massive civil liberties crisis, but it's hard and unpopular to engage with that, and so to score points they trot out some silly thing like this that is infinitely easier than actually engaging with the issues they could be. It's their prerogative, but it shows they are irrelevant and I hope enough people realize this for their funding to dry up.