Yes, sometimes things go uncontrollably wrong. There are bad cops out there, but it's hardly the average case. Those incidents made the news for how bad they were, not how common they are.

There are hundreds of millions of people in the USA. There are millions of people interacting with the police in some capacity. How many incidents can you name?

anecdotal counter-evidence will not be taken as a valid argument, either - just because you know cops that haven't either harmed you or claim to not have harmed anyone unjustly doesn't make policing as a whole less morally reprehensible

I say this as someone who's sister was killed by a policeman who ran a red light, but was revived by the paramedics. She had severe brain hemorrhages, lacerated organs, broke her spine in a dozen places, and her pelvis in another dozen, and lost the use of 1/3rd of her brain tissue from blunt trauma. And while she was in a coma, the policeman tried to illegally access her phone, obtain blood and urine samples without a warrant, and more, all in an attempt to frame her. And to top it all off, on the one year anniversary of her surviving, she was served papers in the driveway on our way to dinner for "emotional trauma" and his sprained wrist from the incident. The judge sided with the policeman, despite the tire marks, forensics, and eye witnesses that demonstrated he ran that red light. She was fined her net worth, which included her entire college savings.

She is alive and well, but will never be the same.

This isn't a statement on police or police reform as much as it is an example of systems put in place to protect us (courts, FBI, the internet and its attempt at security) but can with one false swipe destroy everything we've ever worked for or loved. It sounds dramatic, but there are a dozen stories on this thread that demonstrate that.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say, but it's insane how our social immune system isn't free from autoimmune diseases, where the mechanisms put in place to protect can instantly be flipped by a single bad actor.

The template is like this:

1) Someone plants evidence on your device 2) Investigators are tipped off or find it 3) You get fired, registered as a sex offender, thrown in prison, flee the country, and your reputation is in shambles. 4) the media, rumormill, or even public statements from government, your former employer, university, etc. are distributed like wildfire. 5) it's proven that it wasn't actually you, you were just framed 6) society bears no responsibility in repairing anything it damaged in the process. You're not guaranteed anything, and not only that, scary news travels faster and further than "redaction-based news". 7) you might as well have committed the crime because you faced all the consequences of doing it in the first place.

Did I get that right?

I don't believe that most cops out there actually have an intent to do evil, or to trample your rights though. They deal with criminal after criminal after criminal, I think their perspective is more likely that these tools and methods help solve cases quicker and there-for save taxpayer money and that us civilians aren't able to see that perspective.

I think that they aren't aware of the long term implications of what they're doing and that they should stop, but also that it's important not to think of them as evil if you want to have a dialogue with them about change.

not all cops are good, maybe most of them aren't good. But they definitely aren't all bad, and the good ones hate the bad ones at least as bad as you and I do.

Also the general public has more opinions about the behavior of governments employees.

I dunno how to actually feel about this, from a “is it good” point of view. But I can see why people feel this way at least.

You can be a sweet, community oriented beat cop out there doing your best, but behind you stands surveillance, militarization of police, and the tragedy of prisons in America.

Maybe this isn't a generalization that's fair -- should/do we fault all FAANG employees because their parent companies are doing unethical things?

I don't know the answer, but articles like this definitely make me think a whole lot more about whether individual police can be ethical while operating in the way the departments do today.

But my point is that, while most cops have good intentions, instead of punishing and removing the few assholes so that people can feel safer with cops around, we're rewarding them, giving them heavier weapons, institutionalizing their assholery, and possibly turning good cops bad by encouraging them to do unethical/immoral/illegal things. That makes people feel threatened by cops, and that makes it more dangerous for the cops. Citizens and police should not be an adversarial us-vs-them relationship.

> So I take all of these "cops are evil" claims with a grain of salt

No need to take any "claim" as fact when there is tons of actual evidence in the form of recordings, law suits and more. I simply do not understand how someone is able to have a positive view of police with the access we have to information. Police are not your friend, they do not serve you and they should not be trusted.

The point is, that anecdotally, the police have never appeared to be a positive force around me, except intangibly. They only seem to focus on things I myself, and many of my peers, consider acceptable victimless crimes. They focus on padding revenue by stopping speeding violations, and petty drug offenses.

Largely, police appear to regularly abuse their authority, ignore relevant data, and serve an agenda I am diametrically opposed to. Obviously, this isn't a scientific study, but I think it encapsulates the hatred for police.

Also, there are many instances on youtube and the news, of them either covering for fellow officers, or ignoring basic laws, like speeding, cell-phone use ore petty drugs. They need to wear cameras for objective scrutiny rather than be allowed to BE the law.

EDIT: I should say that of course, there are police officers who work hard, are incorruptible and are genuine upstanding citizens who enforce laws and are just. The simple fact is that a percentage of bad actors can disrupt the flow enough to severely damage an institution if given significant power. See the banking industry for an analogy of this. I do not mean to discount all police, and many do positive things in society.

Try googling ACAB, and you'll see just how popular this view is, and the justifications behind it.

The origins of police, the purpose they serve, the actions they take, and don't take - the beatings, the broken cameras, the gang behaviour, the covering of asses, the nepotism, the shitty training, the domestic abuse, the collusion and corruption, the straight up murders: It's all the tip of the iceberg really.

If policing was as bad as some people want us to believe, we’d all be cowering in our homes afraid to go outside.

It shouldn't be normal to be constantly filled with rage by the actions of police officers. It shouldn't be normal to silently celebrate whenever a police officer is killed. It shouldn't be normal to have to consciously put on an exaggeratedly compliant persona when interacting with police so they don't kill you. It shouldn't be normal to be a law abiding citizen who actively avoids any interaction with police because you might end up in jail or dead. It shouldn't be normal to have to refuse to talk to police because they can and will use anything you say against you if they feel so inclined, even if you're completely innocent of anything. But it is normal. And that needs to stop.

There was national civil unrest over police not holding themselves accountable. Some cases are clearly rotten and only get justice due to national coverage. That would not happen if many departments were not rotten to the core. That isn't just the police officer, but their peers, their management, the DA, judges, etc who all play a part in preventing justice when a cop does something bad.

Some police forces in the US like in San Francisco don't seem able to perform their function at even a basic level. Other police departments like Seattle's have been subjected to a consent decree over use of force. Every friend I have who has used a bike in San Francisco has had at least one bike stolen. I've had 2 bikes stolen in that city, and 2 friends who had phones yanked out of their hands. All that and I've seen San Francisco cops ticketing jaywalkers. Half of the people I know in Seattle or San Francisco have had their car window smashed at least once, mines been smashed twice. I had a bike stolen, which required breaking and entering to get, for which there was video, for which the cop knew who the perpetrator was, and yet I did not get my bike back, nor did I hear of any prosecution taking place.

Police themselves have often flown a thin blue line flag, further separating the idea of us (the thin blue line) and them ("civilians"). Us vs them is a clear culture problem.

Add to that that police forces seek out tech like drones and stingrays (electronic surveillance), deals with corporations to attain data that would otherwise require a warrant, and frequently use chemical weapons...

That's all barely touching on differential ethnic enforcement or crack downs on labor.

Then the very top of our justice system has declared war on stare decisis which is the death of supreme court legitimacy. Civil asset forfeiture and qualified immunity? Laws that cities within 100 miles of a coast don't have specific constitutional protections. For profit prisons? Police unions?

Police in America will unapologetically ruin your life over drugs or alcohol, but in other countries they take you home.

I don't feel safe around American cops, but I've been in countries where I feel safer around cops.

Cops identifying with the dirty cop rather than their victims tells you everything you need to know.

Until I see cops angry that cops aren't being held accountable and the thin blue line flag go away, I will continue to feel righteously skeptic.

These are not "decent people".

I used to have faith in the fundamental goodness and rightness of the police. I knew, in the abstract, there were some bad apples, but doesn't every organization?

Then several years ago I learned from experience that it doesn't matter. The concrete reality of what happens when a bad cop singles you out outweighs all the good cops in the world.

I was out about 15k - which I really needed at the time - but that's not what sticks with me. What sticks with me is the fear and humiliation. I have had some bad times, but my arrest was the absolute bottom.

Other than the immediate experience, I think part of it was the knowledge that it didn't matter that I was innocent, the full force of the law and the state had come down and declared me a scumbag among all the dregs of society. It's something that has to happen to you to understand, I think. Maybe it's just because I always regarded myself as a good, law-abiding (and not very humble) citizen, who did things the Right Way. I don't know.

What I do know is to this day, I get anxious when someone even mentions the police, let alone when they show up.

For the love of God don't ever, ever ever ever ever talk to the police. If the police want to arrest you they will arrest you. Talking can only make it worse. I thought I was being polite and helpful. It doesn't matter.

The former sheriff of a nearby county (now a felon) said he had the job because he loved arresting bad guys. They will see bad guys everywhere they can.