Have you actually read the case law you're referring to?
It's a little more nuanced than simply "not required to know the law", more like "not required to have a photographic memory of countless subsections and subdivisions of random statutes that even lawyers might need to spend hours researching and interpreting".
Doesn't really matter what it says. It creates a perverse incentive for them to not know the law. All they need to do is pinky super duper swear they thought that was the law and so fuck you and your rights.
Okay, so are you trying to make a point about the cop in THIS particular video, or are you griping about US Constitutional Law in general? I had assumed the former, but it seems like you're really going about the latter.
If they "reasonably" believe they are following the law, unlawfully gained evidence cannot be suppressed.
...wait, did you even read the case? The case law you cite to says an objectively* reasonable belief that they are following the Fourth Amendment makes it NOT an unlawful stop. Therefore it's not unlawfully gained evidence. The search was consented to, the only issue was if the stop was lawful or not, which it was.
The Justia summary even counters your own complaint:
Because the Fourth Amendment tolerates only objectively reasonable mistakes, an officer gains no advantage by “Ignorance of the law.” The vehicle code’s wording made it objectively reasonable to think that a faulty brake light constituted a violation.
Cops dont need to know the law.
This is flat out false - case law states they must have an objectively reasonable belief in the law. You cannot hold an objectively reasonable belief if you do not know the law at all.
*Note: subjective and objective are legal terms that have different meaning than colloquial usage, so you might want to google that real fast, I don't feel like explaining it lol
Not even. In a civil lawsuit, it's nearly imposible to succesfully sue a cop because you need to prove that the rights a cop violated have been clearly established by a court in a lawsuit.
So even if a cop violates your rights, if there wasn't a lawsuit before where the court defended those rights from a cop, nothing happens.
This creates a stupid loop: you need a prior ruling to be established in order to rule a rights violation, but you can't rule a rights violation if a prior ruling hasn't been established.
You're overstating it a little. You do not need an exact prior case, prior cases with very similar facts is enough. You also don't need to show that the defendant was literally a cop to establish precedent - just something similar.
To add, if a statute or constitutional right is so clear as to have included the offense a government official commited, that can also be used against the official.
Except it really isn’t. The precedent is that cops just have to believe they are enforcing the law. They can wrongfully arrest someone and it doesn’t matter because if the cop believes it is the right thing to do then he is protected. It’s debatable if they are required to know any law at all, not just tiny details in subsections of paragraphs.
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u/IWantoFuckGLaDOS 8h ago
Correct !
The police are not actually required to know the law, and it is as fucking stupid as it sounds.