system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Purge] What's to stop a police/military force from enforcing the rule of law as it was before the purge took place?

Let's just say for the sake of argument that a local police force have all agreed that on purge night, they'll all go to work. They'll do their patrols and they'll enforce the law, albeit somewhat unforgiving in their methods by assuming that everybody is going to try to kill them if they give them an inch.

The Purge is a night where all crime is legal, so therefore punishing somebody for a crime would be illegal. But, illegal acts are legal on purge night, so punishing somebody for their non-crime should also be legal, right? 

So, what happens if a police force decides to ignore Purge Night and continue to enforce the rule of law as it was the day before?
gpt
If the police went out to punish people for crime on purge night it wouldn't be illegal for them to do so, it'd just be kind of pointless since they can't legally enforce their authority.

The police could go and 'arrest' people and pretend that it's a normal night, but they'd pretty much be limited to detaining people without truly arresting them. They could even go through the motion of paperwork, and processing them if they feel like it but they'd still effectively just be 'playing' cops.

What would probably be illegal is if they didn't release everyone they had rounded up by the following dawn, since after that point they would be holding a bunch of people who haven't broken any laws for any legally justifiable reason.