[AnthonyMouse]

You want a better example? Suppose the officer is covertly following a suspect of a serious crime to see where he goes. Turning on lights and sirens will obviously give the officer away. The suspect is violating various traffic laws as many people often do (speeding, ignoring "no turn on red" etc.) and the officer has to match the violations or lose the suspect.

The point is, zero tolerance is stupid. We need to have an appropriate balance between clear rules and discretion, so that the law actually means something rather than only being whatever the prosecutor says it is, without being so overly rigid that you have people being prosecuted for doing harmless or beneficial things.

The existing law is very, very far away from being overly rigid. Government officials have far too much discretion and get away with far too much. But it is theoretically possible to go too far the other way -- we just haven't, and never have to worry about doing so in practice, because of the politics of the situation. Politics making zero tolerance for police misconduct unachievable in practice doesn't mean it would be a good idea even if we could manage to implement it.

[thwarted]

This is a bad example too, and is pretty much the same example I already refuted. The point here is that there is no such thing as "covertly following" if the police are disobeying traffic laws. They'd have to be close enough to keep track of the suspect, and that means the suspect will see that someone else is "matching their violations". In this case, many police departments will not pursue because a chase endangers too many lives (I don't have a reference handy for this, but I believe I read about here on HN some months back).

Yes, zero tolerance is stupid, and this remains a bad example.

[AnthonyMouse]

>The point here is that there is no such thing as "covertly following" if the police are disobeying traffic laws.

If the suspect is flagrantly running red lights or driving 140 in a 55, someone else doing the same thing is going to be conspicuous. If the suspect is ignoring "no turn on red" signs or driving 65 in a 55, they're doing the same thing as 80+% of other motorists and someone else doing the same thing is not going to stand out.

> In this case, many police departments will not pursue because a chase endangers too many lives (I don't have a reference handy for this, but I believe I read about here on HN some months back).

You're referring to situations where the suspect is aware of the pursuit.