[CodeToad]

“Police are by constitutional construct, a reactive force to crimes committed, not a preventive force.”

Where the Hell did you get that from? Enforcement of anything is not after the fact.

[blackdog]

What's legal or illegal is not up to the police. Laws are enforced by the courts. If cops are supposed to enforce laws, then why do we have courts? If cops can enforce laws, then we really have some super-cops out there, because I cannot imagine how they can process hundreds of thousands of pages of laws per second to "enforce" them? By circumstance, the average suzie public breaks the law every day. We have so many laws on the books now that the cops are ignoring violations of most laws while "enforcing" others. They "enforce" them in a rather disproportinate and inconsistant manner.

Sure, cops can enforce traffic laws which we all must take tests to prove we have a working knowledge of them before we can drive. Of course cops should arrest someone for an obvious crime which someone has committed while being observed to do so, but enforcing laws is a reach. It may be a phrase which we've woven into regular speech patterns today, but I do believe the more accurate description of their charter is to "uphold the law". There is a huge difference in the arrangement of the words.