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"Anyone finds out" means "it gets press".

There's a case working its way through the courts where LEOs disarmed someone at the behest of some thugs and then watched him get beat to death by said thugs.

The LEOs are arguing that they had no duty and that they're not responsible for the consequences of said disarming.




The nature of "anyone finds out" is relative to departmental corruption, yes. But that doesn't change the actual rules. And it should be noted that most people's understanding of law enforcement procedure comes from tv fiction or the news. The unreliability of the former should be obvious, and the latter.. well the only things that make the news are things that are newsworthy and out of the ordinary. Which is probably not a good basis for making sweeping judgements about all LEOs and agencies everywhere.


The point of mentioning the court case is that case and statutory law are NOT a slam dunk for "LEOs are required to act." in even cases where "the rest of us" would expect. The last I heard, the LEOs in that case were prevailing....


The case of NYPD cops hiding from a guy on a slashing spree [0] kind of comes to mind.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maksim_Gelman_stabbing_spree




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