I never said they are paid to “administer justice” but I do expect them to prioritize their activities. Making arrests for things that won’t be prosecuted is a waste of time.
I’m honestly not even sure what you are advocating for. J walking is a good example of something I expect them not to bother with 99% of the time but it is a law nearly everywhere. To enforce that in a major metro could use all the cops every day. Huge waste of time.
I'm advocating for police to accept the priorities we give them. I don't get to set the priorities at my job; I don't get to favor working on features I think are good and to ignore features I don't. I'm given priorities.
What happens after people are arrested is not relevant to the police, and they have no training or authority to make decisions about it. We elected different people for that.
Isn’t the DA telling, both them and us, what the priority is if they say they won’t prosecute a specific crime?
Along that same line of thought is that it is not relevant what the DA thinks about the law. The powers that be created the law and the DA should prosecute it every time there is an arrest and let the courts figure it out.
Also in your job you are given priorities and you work on the lowest ones last. And if you always have more priorities than hours in the day then the lower priority ones don’t get done. Based on the laws that are actually on the books there are more law breakers than police officers so they have to pick and choose their priorities. That’s still a reasonable thing to do.
I’m honestly not even sure what you are advocating for. J walking is a good example of something I expect them not to bother with 99% of the time but it is a law nearly everywhere. To enforce that in a major metro could use all the cops every day. Huge waste of time.