[BearTitan]

Philadelphia, I agree with most of what you wrote, except for the insinuation that criminal law is a small volume of knowledge. I think that we are all very aware of situations like PA Patriot's arrest which was absolute total BS. The cop made a judgement call that was wrong. Other than admitting that and learning from it, I don't know what we can expect him to do.

Most of the times, though, cops deal with criminals. That is the job we have put them in. The reason they treat everyone like a criminal is that they spend 60 hours a week dealing with them. Should they understand the law better? Yes. Can we expect the $10 or $20 per hour cop on the street to know the laws relating to an issue that may come up once in his career? I say that it is not reasonable to expect that.

IMO, when we, as citizens, are OK with the taxes to support $200K per officer per year police compensation, then we can expect those folks to be experts on the entire criminal law.