Edit: District court did rule in MPD's favor. Which isn't surprising of course. Still, wouldn't have been surprised if MPD appealed had it gone against them, for above mentioned reasons.
> [Corrigan] now appeals the grant of summary judgment to the defendants, challenging the district court’s rulings that there was no constitutional violation and that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
Also interesting is how close this case was: the appeals court panel was split 2-1. The dissenting judge agrees that there was a constitutional violation, but says this law was not "clearly established" so the officers should have immunity. It goes to show how low the qualified immunity bar is.
For the most part, most cops are mostly good... there are some very bad apples out there, and some jurisdictions are definitely worse than others.
Have you ever seen what happens when you leave a bad apple in with a bunch of good apples? Very quickly, the entire bunch of apples is bad.
That's why we have the whole saying about "bad apples".
It utterly amazes me that people constantly use this "bad apples" expression without understanding this. Anyone who eats apples should have this basic understanding about bad apples.
Anyway, from what I can tell, whether cops are good or bad is basically department-wide: either a department has decent cops, or they're all horrible and complicit. It's exactly like the "bad apples" analogy, and it depends on the leadership of the department. Notice that it's usually the same departments that come up over and over in the news.