Do you think a potentially improved tweak to baybal2's >There should be no plainclothes officers on duty. might be "there should be no plainclothes officers w

Do you think a potentially improved tweak to baybal2's >There should be no plainclothes officers on duty. might be "there should be no plainclothes officers with regular police arrest powers"? I agree that there are certainly cases where it's valuable to have officers working undercover. I also think there is a strong argument though that while they are in plain clothes, they should also have more restricted "plain clothes powers" more like a regular civilian. They shouldn't be able to arrest anyone or demand special recognition as police, or at least to no greater extent then what any random citizen can do in a Citizen's Arrest [0]. That could tamper a certain amount of abuse and room for mixups while still preserving the valuable investigative and monitoring aspects. Basically if they want to surrender some of the typical recognition and accountability they must also surrender some of the power that goes with it, so it's more self-regulating. Feels like a parallel with other areas of force like military, where in general legitimate combatants justified in full protection of the laws of war also must have identifiable uniforms and so on. ---- 0: Rules vary by state and country. In the US at least in general (though not all states) citizens may do arrests, but there are much stricter requirements. They need to directly witness the crime, they do not have qualified immunity and aren't entitled to the same mistakes of fact when it comes to personal liability, and are much more limited in use of force.