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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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How much of a problem is this in reality though? How many police chiefs are disciplining beat cops for discretionary acts of mercy? I ask because I regularly see bodycam videos of exactly that: the officer being kind and understanding toward someone who technically broke the law but clearly doesn't deserve punishment, and these officers recieve nothing but praise. Local PD facebook pages regularly post these types of videos themselves as a PR move. And personally, the one time I've been pulled over in the bodycam era involved a courteous interaction where the officer let me off with a warning and we both parted smiling.

It really depends on whether hindsight proves him to be wrong a lot of the time, if we are being honest.

You see this a lot in judicial retention races. Two judges can release the same % of domestic batterers from jail prior to trial, but if one of them has two guys come back and kill their girlfriend and the other has zero, you know who gets the campaign against them. Same for an officer that lets a guy who had 3 beers off with a warning, then T-bones a family of 5 months later.