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Originally Posted by Blackadar
Molson, I'd generally agree with you. I worked with a lot of law enforcement personnel over 7 years and the majority were pretty good guys.
The problem is that the "Thin Blue Line" is really a "Thick Brick Wall" and as such when something is done that is bad nothing happens. The whole system is corrupt in their rush to protect police offers from any criticism and repercussions from their actions. That's not much different than any other big bureaucracy, but it makes a difference when those actions take place at the barrel of a gun.
Combine that with the increasing militarization of the police forces and it becomes a critical problem. The mentality is often "shoot now and we'll sort it out later", knowing that there's little chance of any disciplinary action later. That's why we see almost on a daily basis some evidence of police brutality.
Call the Cops - Rob Hustle ft. Liv - The CON Trail |
I think there is definitely a disconnect between the reality and how a lot of agencies express these things to the public. Many officers are fired, many are disciplined, many at lectured in front of their peers, some go to prison, and there's always tension between police chiefs and DOC staffs that want to fire bad veteran officers but are told by lawyers that they can't yet.
A lot of agencies are terrible at communicating this general distaste for bad policing to the public. (And there's definitely terrible agencies out there too with bad cultures, but I don't think that's the norm). Maybe there's a defensiveness when you have so many people who are incredibly over-cynical about everything police do. Sometimes there's policies about what they can say publicly. I think there's some misunderstandings about the law sometimes too, or there's grey areas where many in the public see it as a slam-dunk-cop-is-evil deal.
And I don't think a lot of individual officers really consciously think "what the fuck, I'll shoot this guy, nothing will happen to me." Statistically, I'm sure there's psychopaths like that out there in any profession (and cops are the ones who actually can act on it in the course of their jobs), but for most of them, it's a terrible and stressful thing.