The last (and so far only) time I was called for jury duty, the judge's instructions were very explicit that the word of a police officer was to be given no special weight compared to other witnesses.

Jurors were questioned about this during the voir dire, and several people were dismissed because of an admitted bias in favor of police testimony.

Obviously, this is a sample size of one and no generalizations can be drawn, but it does stand as a counterexample.

I was on a criminal jury trial in Manhattan in May. The guy was being charged with multiple assault and resisting arrest charges against cops. The incident happened a couple years ago. It was basically the cops' word vs. the defendant. You could tell both sides were not telling the whole truth. It's a much longer story, but in the end we found him not guilty for all those charges. Luckily I had a rational, sane jury that no matter what you think it was clear there wasn't proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you don't have that kind of jury..