Distrust

Prosecutorial discretion is a huge factor in why people don't trust the cops anymore.

Look at the FBI refusing to charge Hillary, for example.

It's not prosecutorial, per se, but Selective enforcement is another place to look and a good example is speeding tickets.  We've all seen someone going the same speed as us get the ticket while we blithely continue on (or been the one to get the ticket).

It's a real problem.

I'm a believer in the Peele maxim that "the police are the people and the people are the police."  When the relationship between the people and the police is an adversarial one based on mutual distrust, the wheels are already off the cart.

We might already be there.

If you haven't seen this video, go watch it now.

Do you know a lawyer?  Show them that video and see if they contradict the advice.

The wheels are off when the best advice you can get is to clam up and not speak to the police at all until you've got your lawyer there to speak for you.

It sometimes feels like we're approaching The Jigsaw Man point.  If you're not familiar it's a Larry Niven story where increasingly minor crimes get the death penalty to feed the organ banks.  A traffic offender temporarily escapes and breaks into the body banks and ruins much of the harvested stock and is recaptured at peace with himself that he's finally done something worth the death penalty he'll receive for running a red light.

The increasing sentences from arcane and obscure laws and the surety that we lowly peons will be convicted (and get the maximum sentence) is reaching a point where some might be tempted to say, "if I'm going to jail anyway, I might as well stand and fight."  Because the bullshit, obscure and arcane laws don't create a feeling in the mind of the "perpetrator" that they've done something wrong.

That makes things more dangerous for everyone!

Sadly the solution is to get off our asses and spend as much time canvassing to unfuck the government as we spend watching television.  To look at the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be and focus on what can be done rather than what cannot.

To demand a legal system where we don't need a lawyer to navigate the obscure and arcane before we build a shed in our own back yard.

Guess what we're not going to do?

But we're probably going to have violators of the environmental protection act shooting it out with the cops over cutting down a tree that once had a nest of animal on the protected species list.