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Can someone please explain something to me? How is it that in the US the police is such a deregulated entity? Almost anywhere I’ve been in the world the police

Can someone please explain something to me? How is it that in the US the police is such a deregulated entity? Almost anywhere I’ve been in the world the police worked the same nation or state wide, maybe the local police department of town A works a little different from that of town B but the core rules are many and the same for all of them. Which historical, legal and cultural reasons bring to this situation where a small town can shape a police department so freely?

calvinmorrison 5y ago
Because the united states is designed politically and legally to be decentralized, giving large discretion to localities and states over how they run their rules and business. For example, most people in jail are not in federal jail. Most people are served by local police. Rules on taxes vary county to county as needs vary county to county. This is good and bad
- giantg2 5y ago
  That's true but largely irrelevant to this story - traffic laws are the same through the state. The main thing in this is law enforcement discretion. There's no way the population would vote these malicious leaders in if the tickets were being given to residents. They are mostly hitting non-residents. This is very common near military bases. The law is the same, but they choose not to apply it to residents (and apparently make up violations too). Hopefully people have dashcams, and record interactions on their phones. It sounds like they will end up losing much more in lawsuits than they are bringing in. Perhaps the FBI and DOJ will get involved due to rights and color of law violations.
- 01acheru 5y ago
  Yeah this is something I know and understand, I also appreciate this line of thought. What I don’t understand is about police in particular, if police is “law enforcement”. I’d expect some laws to be national, then some laws to be state, then going down and down until we reach a single small town where something might be different from the next one but they should share many things… how is it that the enforcement part of those same laws is so subjective? IMHO the law has two sides: the normative one, what it actually is, and the enforcement one, how it is applied to society. If the enforcement part is highly subjective we are distorting the law. It should be desirable to minimize the differences of enforcing the same law. Is it something really appreciated by the population over there that the same law is applied very differently in the next town over simply because it decides to enforce it in a different manner?
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    The actual laws are just as decentralized as the law enforcement. Speed limits are a state/local law. While many of them are similar, enforcement varies greatly, and there is a propensity for corruption, as we see in the article. I remember a few decades ago, AAA (large US auto club) recommended against using certain stretches of highway in Florida because the local town loved to ticket out-of-state drivers (heading from the northern border to Disney World in Orlando, IIRC). And because enforcement is decentralized, so is enforcement of police procedures. "Thin Blue Line" is the term used to describe cops backing cops, even when they do illegal things. Like planting evidence in Baltimore (a few news worthy cases over the past several years). Basically, policing in the US is completely broken. And the Supreme Court has decided (not recently) that police have zero obligation to actually help and protect citizens. So, if a crime is occurring, the police aren't obligated to help. They just wait until the beatings and rapes finish, then maybe arrest suspects, if they can be bothered (ie, did the crime make headlines and is a politician pressuring them to do so).
  - cardamomo 5y ago
    These discrepancies in law enforcement practices don't just arise out of the subjectivity inherent in enforcing rules. In the US, Black people and Black communities have long been policed differently than White people and White communities. There is a culture of systemic anti-Blackness in many if not most police departments. It is seen by many on the left to be so entrenched in the US system of policing and police culture that reform is not possible, hence the defund the police movement.
  - sgjohnson 5y ago
    > I’d expect some laws to be national The reality in the United States is that the only national law in situations where you don't explicitly deal with the federal government is the Consitution, and even then the Constitution is interpreted differently by different states. The states are more or less free to ignore (refuse to enforce) federal law. How do you think certain states legalised weed, illegal immigration and refuse to enforce the NFA in certain situations?
    - 5y ago
thinkcontext 5y ago
This WaPo article has some good background, it puts the number of local police and sheriff depts at over 15,000, with 90% having less than 50 officers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/08/most-police-departments-america-are-small-thats-partly-why-changing-policing-is-difficult-experts-say/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/08/most-police...
skrbjc 5y ago
In the US there are multiple levels of law enforcement that generally have their own jurisdictions. At the national level, there is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to handle crimes that occur across state lines or large crime webs, like the Mafia. Then there are state-wide police, some states call them highway patrol, others state police. Probably the most famous are the Texas Rangers. These have the jurisdiction of the entire state. Next down the line is the county Sheriff, typically for enforcing county-wide laws. In many areas that don't have a local police force, the county sheriff are the most local police force they have. Finally there are city police like Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) or New York Police Department (NYPD). These departments handle crime and law enforcement within a city's limits. These range from very large like the above examples to small departments like this article. Generally if a crime occurs within a city it's that city police that will investigate, if it is outside the city within a county it may be the county sheriff or state police, and across state lines, the federal government gets involved. Obviously this can cause some confusion or fighting over jurisdictions. On the flip-side a local police department can help the needs of the community specifically. For example, where I live we have a small police department that responds immediately if there is a problem when you call them. They often help elderly residents that are having trouble, will drive by your house when you're on vacation, etc. Depending on states and cities local laws, sheriffs and police chiefs may be hired or elected. Culturally, the United States has been oriented towards local control and biased against federal control. The states traditionally have been very independent of the federal government. For example most state constitutions are very long compared to our relatively short national constitution. In the western part of the united states, as communities were developed and grew, the need for local law enforcement grew with those communities, often before they were really a part of a state or the federal government had any control. So the legacies of those localized police and law enforcement entities has lived on. I'm less familiar with how Europe's or other countries' police came to be, but typically those countries are far smaller than the United States and generally have more centralized federal power, which means having a centralized police force makes more sense.
- gregschlom 5y ago
  And also even more local police departments such as campus police (on university campuses), or stuff like the BART police in the Bay Area (BART being the local commuter rail network). Just blows my mind.

calvinmorrison 5y ago

Because the united states is designed politically and legally to be decentralized, giving large discretion to localities and states over how they run their rules and business. For example, most people in jail are not in federal jail. Most people are served by local police. Rules on taxes vary county to county as needs vary county to county. This is good and bad

giantg2 5y ago
That's true but largely irrelevant to this story - traffic laws are the same through the state. The main thing in this is law enforcement discretion. There's no way the population would vote these malicious leaders in if the tickets were being given to residents. They are mostly hitting non-residents. This is very common near military bases. The law is the same, but they choose not to apply it to residents (and apparently make up violations too). Hopefully people have dashcams, and record interactions on their phones. It sounds like they will end up losing much more in lawsuits than they are bringing in. Perhaps the FBI and DOJ will get involved due to rights and color of law violations.
01acheru 5y ago
Yeah this is something I know and understand, I also appreciate this line of thought. What I don’t understand is about police in particular, if police is “law enforcement”. I’d expect some laws to be national, then some laws to be state, then going down and down until we reach a single small town where something might be different from the next one but they should share many things… how is it that the enforcement part of those same laws is so subjective? IMHO the law has two sides: the normative one, what it actually is, and the enforcement one, how it is applied to society. If the enforcement part is highly subjective we are distorting the law. It should be desirable to minimize the differences of enforcing the same law. Is it something really appreciated by the population over there that the same law is applied very differently in the next town over simply because it decides to enforce it in a different manner?
- alistairSH 5y ago
  The actual laws are just as decentralized as the law enforcement. Speed limits are a state/local law. While many of them are similar, enforcement varies greatly, and there is a propensity for corruption, as we see in the article. I remember a few decades ago, AAA (large US auto club) recommended against using certain stretches of highway in Florida because the local town loved to ticket out-of-state drivers (heading from the northern border to Disney World in Orlando, IIRC). And because enforcement is decentralized, so is enforcement of police procedures. "Thin Blue Line" is the term used to describe cops backing cops, even when they do illegal things. Like planting evidence in Baltimore (a few news worthy cases over the past several years). Basically, policing in the US is completely broken. And the Supreme Court has decided (not recently) that police have zero obligation to actually help and protect citizens. So, if a crime is occurring, the police aren't obligated to help. They just wait until the beatings and rapes finish, then maybe arrest suspects, if they can be bothered (ie, did the crime make headlines and is a politician pressuring them to do so).
- cardamomo 5y ago
  These discrepancies in law enforcement practices don't just arise out of the subjectivity inherent in enforcing rules. In the US, Black people and Black communities have long been policed differently than White people and White communities. There is a culture of systemic anti-Blackness in many if not most police departments. It is seen by many on the left to be so entrenched in the US system of policing and police culture that reform is not possible, hence the defund the police movement.
- sgjohnson 5y ago
  > I’d expect some laws to be national The reality in the United States is that the only national law in situations where you don't explicitly deal with the federal government is the Consitution, and even then the Constitution is interpreted differently by different states. The states are more or less free to ignore (refuse to enforce) federal law. How do you think certain states legalised weed, illegal immigration and refuse to enforce the NFA in certain situations?
  - 5y ago

thinkcontext 5y ago

This WaPo article has some good background, it puts the number of local police and sheriff depts at over 15,000, with 90% having less than 50 officers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/08/most-police-departments-america-are-small-thats-partly-why-changing-policing-is-difficult-experts-say/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/08/most-police...

skrbjc 5y ago

In the US there are multiple levels of law enforcement that generally have their own jurisdictions. At the national level, there is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to handle crimes that occur across state lines or large crime webs, like the Mafia. Then there are state-wide police, some states call them highway patrol, others state police. Probably the most famous are the Texas Rangers. These have the jurisdiction of the entire state. Next down the line is the county Sheriff, typically for enforcing county-wide laws. In many areas that don't have a local police force, the county sheriff are the most local police force they have. Finally there are city police like Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) or New York Police Department (NYPD). These departments handle crime and law enforcement within a city's limits. These range from very large like the above examples to small departments like this article. Generally if a crime occurs within a city it's that city police that will investigate, if it is outside the city within a county it may be the county sheriff or state police, and across state lines, the federal government gets involved. Obviously this can cause some confusion or fighting over jurisdictions. On the flip-side a local police department can help the needs of the community specifically. For example, where I live we have a small police department that responds immediately if there is a problem when you call them. They often help elderly residents that are having trouble, will drive by your house when you're on vacation, etc. Depending on states and cities local laws, sheriffs and police chiefs may be hired or elected. Culturally, the United States has been oriented towards local control and biased against federal control. The states traditionally have been very independent of the federal government. For example most state constitutions are very long compared to our relatively short national constitution. In the western part of the united states, as communities were developed and grew, the need for local law enforcement grew with those communities, often before they were really a part of a state or the federal government had any control. So the legacies of those localized police and law enforcement entities has lived on. I'm less familiar with how Europe's or other countries' police came to be, but typically those countries are far smaller than the United States and generally have more centralized federal power, which means having a centralized police force makes more sense.

gregschlom 5y ago
And also even more local police departments such as campus police (on university campuses), or stuff like the BART police in the Bay Area (BART being the local commuter rail network). Just blows my mind.