The American police doesn't know the laws they are enforcing

There's a big irony when it comes to the United States as compared to most other countries.

You see, the United States is one of the very few countries where you don't need to present your ID to police even if demanded to do so, unless you are reasonably suspected of a crime. In fact, a few states go so far that you only need to present ID if you have been arrested, and no sooner. This is a direct consequence and interpretation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In other words, the United States is not a so-called stop-and-id country.

In contrast, in the vast, vast majority of other countries (regardless of form of government) you are required by law to present ID if requested by a police officer, no matter what the circumstances, no reasons need given. In other words, the vast majority of other countries are so-called stop-and-id countries.

So what's the irony? The irony is that the United States is one of the very few countries where the police will routinely demand for ID to anybody they come in contact with, no matter what the situation, and they will quite often be extremely insistent about it and imply that it's an arrestable crime if you don't present it. In fact, in many cases police officers will outright state it directly. This even though that's completely false.

Ironically, the United States is one of the very few free democratic countries where the police does this. In most other countries the police does not routinely demand people's IDs even though they could legally do so, fully backed up by the law of the country.

So it's kind of this completely reverse situation than it should be.

I don't know if most American police officers know the ID laws of their own state perfectly well but choose to ignore them anyway, or whether they are just outright ignorant of these laws because they have never been taught them, but I wouldn't be surprised if both cases exist in large numbers.

Another very common area where many American police officers show their complete ignorance of the law is in their use of legal terminology.

For example, there are many so-called First Amendment auditing videos where police officers come to someone filming in the publicly accessible areas of a governmental building and tell him, for example, that "this is state property, not public property".

I have never, ever, not even once, seen such an officer explain what the difference is between "state property" and "public property". In the few cases that the auditor has asked, the officer has invariably completely dodged the question and started whining about something else.

(The fact is that there is no difference. "State property" is public property by definition. These police officers probably meant to use some other legal terminology, but they are just so ignorant about the law that they just don't know what the proper terms are to describe what they want to say.)

Another very typical and related mistake is for them to use the term "private property" when what they mean is "restricted access area". A building or area owned and run by the government literally cannot be "private property", by definition. However, many American police officers just don't know their legal terminology and will spout complete nonsense.

But all this is no surprise given how little training American police officers get. Their total amount of training can be counted in months. There are some parts of the country where it takes only 2 and half months for a complete newcomer to become a fully-fledged police officer.

Two and a half months.

Contrast this with, for example, Finland, where police academy is an actual college-level school with an actual degree that takes four years.

Four years!

And a good portion of those four years is literally studying law. Police officers in Finland need to know the laws they will be enforcing.