General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: There are roughly 800,000 cops in the United States... [View all]Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)First things first... cops are entrusted with the maintenance of law and order in our society. Society gives them authority to capture, detain, even harm or kill in the course of accomplishing this. When a police officer exceeds their authority in these regards, it is thus magnified, due to the power they hold. when someone charged with upholding hte law, legally vested with those sorts of powers goes rogue, they become a real and legitimate danger to society, not just on the face of being dangerous person, but becuase of the corruptive influence their actions hold on the institution and the way people perceive it.
Second, yes, "a few bad apples" is too dismissive - at least as it's commonly used. The whole adage is more useful - "a few bad apples spoils the barrel." Meaning that if you have one rotten apple in the barrel, they spread the taint to everything else in that barrel, which needs to be thrown out. The problem is that when a police officer goes rogue, other officers are more interested in protecting their buddy - and covering their own asses - than protecting the public. Thus the entire department becomes an accomplice to hatever the original bad guy is doing... and once the lesson is learned, other cops are allowed to slide as well.
The "police state" comment comes from the fact our other government institutions not only turn a blind eye to all this but actually seem to encourage it - to say nothing of the media and its conflict fetishization. The cops are not just permitted to be corrupt, but are rewarded with more money, better technology, sycophantic back-patting, and of course, the fact that their testimony is apparently unimpeachable in the courts.