Officer, it’s called discretion. You were trained, just like every other officer in the US, that you have it and should exercise it. Letter of the law vs. spirit of the law; sometimes you have to decide which is best for the situation.
Part of an officer’s job is to gain compliance with laws and scratching off worthless tickets is not always the best way to do it.
If there is an ordinance for this and you feel you must detain someone for this, show some compassion, and inform the citizen of the ordinance, ask for compliance, and then once satisfied, send them on their way, without a ticket and perhaps a smaller degree of respect for LE in general. There are much bigger issues than this to tackle.
I get the feeling this is because of some administrator saying, “Jones, your summons count is down. Step it up or your evaluation (raise) is going to suffer.” Ticket quotas are absolute BS, citizen contacts are a much better way to guage productivity and it shows a bit more compassion for the citizenry as well.
Folks, there are a lot of useless laws out there, contact your legislators to have them repealed or abolished.
“If there is an ordinance for this and you feel you must detain someone for this, show some compassion, and inform the citizen of the ordinance, ask for compliance, and then once satisfied, send them on their way, without a ticket and perhaps a smaller degree of respect for LE in general. There are much bigger issues than this to tackle.”
Way too much compliance going on. It’s not about the officers discretion, it’s about the State’s tyranny. Now questioning the sanity of anybody who would want to be a Police Officer, for any price... That’s fair game.
I am trying to understand the thought process:
I want to have a bad haircut, be an armed Union Thug, have wide discretionary powers and a code book so big it can’t be stuffed into the back of a Police car. I want to spend my day screwing over my neighbors and friends, transferring wealth from the productive members of society to the unproductive “otherwise unemployable lawyer class” that makes up city hall, it’s courts, and it’s functionaries.”
Man, that sounds like a great job! I get a pension, and all the gubment cheese I can eat! FANTASTIC!
Until city hall has extracted every last bit of money and desire to work from every citizen. Then what? Who will make the cheese for the gubment to steal?