The same way we can trust an overweight doctor, a depressed therapist, a housecleaner who doesn't make their bed, or me to verify code I push to corporate repos even while I vibecode apps at home for fun without paying attention. I don't understand the basis for applying this standard to cops.

If I don't trust my doctor, I can ignore them and find a new doctor.

If I don't trust my therapist, I can ignore them and find a new therapist.

If I don't trust my housekeeper, I can fire them and hire a new housekeeper.

If I don't trust a police officer, it doesn't matter. If they detain me and order me to step out of my vehicle, I have to comply under threat of the law and violence. I don't get to only listen to police officers whom I trust.

That is why they must be held to a higher standard, because they wield elevated authority not granted to ordinary citizens.

A police officer who has demonstrated such a reckless disregard for the law and safety can not be trusted as a police officer to uphold the law.

Each of those examples varies widely, and I don't think most people would treat each of them the same way.

In general when the stakes are higher and the ambiguity of outcome is less clear, secondary signals become more important.

Concretely: I don't give a shit if my housecleaner doesn't make their own bed as long as they make mine; the outcome I need is easy to verify and the stakes are fairly low so the secondary signal doesn't matter very much. Conversely, I care a lot if the therapist I'm relying on to help me manage my depression is visibly unable to manage their own; the outcome I need has a slow feedback loop and the stakes are high so I'm much more likely to rely on secondary signals like "is this person able to manage their own mood successfully?"

> I don't understand the basis for applying this standard to cops.

Because those other examples don't involve breaking the law.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious: society holds breaking the law to be more serious than being fat or not making your bed.

Now, speeding is very much a lesser form of breaking the law...but then again, very few people have literally hundreds of speeding tickets.

Huh? Your examples are all people failing at something that merely resembles their job. For the analogy to work, Giovansanti would need to be failing at something in his personal life that resembles traffic enforcement. Instead he's doing the exact thing his job exists to prevent.

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