Comment by massysett

This is disingenuous. Few reasonable people would suggest that the police have authority to kill because someone litters, has a broken tail light, or sells single cigarettes in violation of New York law. Depending on your viewpoint and the situation, killings occur because people resist the police, because people run from the police, because the police are trigger-happy and biased, or because the police are murderers. One might even think that it is ridiculous to ban sales of single cigarettes. Even so, this piece suggests I should not support laws banning littering unless I believe the police should be authorized to kill litterers. This is ridiculous. Of course we can support a law even if we believe that a violator should not be subjected to summary execution.