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.
Criminals are in fact normal people.
Could you elaborate more on this claim?
In an ideal world, criminal behavior is supposed to be defined as abnormal and unwanted behavior.
* Is my definition of “criminal” for an ideal world way off target?
* Or, are you mostly critiquing how non-ideal our current world is, and the injustice of many laws currently on the books?
* Something else?
Are you not talking about an organization conspiring to protect law-breakers from justice? Because normal people don't do that.
“Civvies are The Out Group” is a terrible worldview for law enforcement, though a very common one.
man, that is just such a pathetic excuse to say the least.
>Like any organization or group there is a tribal aspect to it
"any organization or group" doesn't have the right to shoot me on sight and get off just by claiming a split second subjective perception of danger.
If one can't handle the "tribal aspect", then the one is just not qualified to be a cop.
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).
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.
They are meant to serve us, not themselves or the current political party.