Yes, Virginia, Discretion Matters

It seems that Virginia's Attorney General is cheesed off at the resolutions of many locations to refuse to enforce unconstitutional law.  He says, in part:

“When the General Assembly passes new guns safety laws they will be enforced, and they will be followed,” Herring said in announcing the opinion. “These resolutions have no legal force, and they’re just part of an effort by the gun lobby to stoke fear.”

Yes, and no.  I knew, as a street-level cop that I could not possibly know every law on the books.  Further, I could not know of the changes in the law, which the legislature did regularly.  I was fairly conversant in Louisiana's criminal statutes, but many times would have to research the law.  We all knew that if we stumbled across a human corpse, that perhaps a law had been violated, or if we came to a house with the front door destroyed, that we should perform certain procedures.

But, generally, we relied on our understanding o the law, and the instructions from our supervisors.  If the Boss said that he believed that law to be unconstitutional, then we didn't expend much time or energy trying to enforce it.

There is no doubt that state law supersedes local ordinance, and that the state cam make any laws that the legislature decrees, but the question become, who is going to enforce it?  The Governor cam certainly instruct the state police to enforce state law, but I don't believe that he can decree that elected sheriff's and chiefs of police to enforce those laws.

There are many laws, mostly administrative in nature, that local police do not enforce.  For example, there is a prohibition in Louisiana about the placement of political signs on the state right-of-way.  The local cops don't enforce that law.  We simply didn't have the time or resources to spend on that particular law.  We let the DOT enforce it at their discretion.  And they did, by the simple expedient of picking them up and throwing them away.

As a young soldier, I learned that discretion is the better part of valor.  As a military officer, I learned to never give an order that I knew would not be followed.  As a cop, I learned that discretion was vital to effective law enforcement.

I have a feeling that Virginia's Attorney General is about to learn about discretion, and he'll probably learn that petulance is no way to get re-elected.