> They don't face any liability if they decide not to engage with a violent suspect. They might lose their job, but that's an ongoing choice they make, not an obligation.

I wanted to say that this is hyperbole, but it's just an obviously flagrant misuse of a word.

Rules of conduct that dictate a profession are obligations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obligation

Okay, fine, they have no legal obligation to engage with a violent suspect.

I guess I thought that's the context you were using the word in, here where we are discussing how the law applies to police.

Software developers do not have obligations aside from do the minimum dictated by your boss to not be terminated, so I suspect the concept of obligations is foreign to most software developers.

In most other professions there exists licensing and such licensing establishes rules of conduct. Violation of such results not just in termination of a job but failure to practice, usually forever. In those professions obligations are essentially laws, except violating such may not, but can, result in incarceration. Instead they will just be poor and forever unemployable in their invested trade.

Don't want to talk about what police are (actually) legally obligated to do then?