I spent a year working as a cop and I can assure you that cops are in fact normal people. Like any organization or group there is a tribal aspect to it and they will certainly close ranks and attempt to protect their own; however, that is organizational not individual. There is a larger cultural issue involved that drives such misguided organizational behavior.
I think the real problem here is that police, as an organization, has the power to inflict real and considerable harm on those that try to "get in the way". They're not doing sanitation or driving your bus - they can ruin your life or just kill you.
Agreed. There's an elevated responsibility to be more than just "normal people" when you have a gun and a badge. I don't think it's fair to paint in broad strokes, but I do think it's fair to hold police to a higher standard, especially when it comes to tribalism. When it becomes "us vs them" and "us" has guns and state-sanctioned authority, that's a problem.
Read Alex Kozinski and Misha Tseytlin's classic essay "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal" – http://alex.kozinski.com/articles/Youre_Probably_a_Federal_C... - in the US, there are so many federal crimes, so expansively defined, that almost every adult has probably committed at least one, and the only thing keeping them from prison is that they aren't on some prosecutor's hitlist. And I don't think this is an exclusively American problem either, it is a problem in many other countries too.
It serves the side effect|purpose of making people actionable literally from birth. That is, if some day you become an inconvenient someone for people in power, it's just a matter of finding something you did in the past that can ruin your life Cardinal Richelieu style.
Most people are not cops either. Most cultures (aside from some sometimes vocal subcultures) do appear to consider their abuses unwanted anomalous behaviour.
As it turns out, “normal people in a group with a tribal aspect that closes ranks to defend itself” is ... often very easy to make act in illegal ways.
“Civvies are The Out Group” is a terrible worldview for law enforcement, though a very common one.
> they will certainly close ranks and attempt to protect their own
AKA obstruction of justice. By cops. At an institutional level.
In every other industry, if you are caught breaking the law by a co-worker, you will be thrown under the bus (unless you are an executive or a top-quartile salesperson, because sometimes the money is more important than the justice).
Not all of them are actively abusing citizens or running protection, but the thin blue line means even the "honest" ones tolerate it.
If I were to look the other way while my coworkers abused or stole from people, I would at the very least expect to be fired and not trusted with similar responsibility again. That is what a normal citizen looks like, and I don't think a normal citizen attitude could survive in a cop shop.
There is the additional problem that your criminal cops (and we both know there are plenty of them) don't exactly wear identifying tags, so I have no way of knowing which are which. That means my only strategy is to minimize contact with and distrust all of them.
This is simple: if you want people to respect and work with the police, stop protecting the bad ones.
It seems obvious to me that senior officials should actively lead the organization into not being hostile to the public interest - which this heavy handedness certainly is.
They are meant to serve us, not themselves or the current political party.
I spent a year working as a cop and I can assure you that cops are in fact normal people. Like any organization or group there is a tribal aspect to it and they will certainly close ranks and attempt to protect their own; however, that is organizational not individual. There is a larger cultural issue involved that drives such misguided organizational behavior.