The cops aren't the ones who get sued. It's the city government. So no, there's no chance of that. Threats to person, property or family are illegal and punishable. Not all cops are dirty. The vast majority are ethical.
So is planting drugs, and obviously the law's not being enforced.
> Not all cops are dirty.
Of course not. But that doesn't make OP's comment "he'll probably be subject to threats to his person, property, and family from dirty cops" less true.
The police are a fraternity. They have a code. At worst, they actively protect and cover up bad actors. At best, they just don't report it. That's why you rarely hear about officers being whistleblowers, or departments doing internal investigations and finding wrongdoing. Things rarely gets past the blue wall.
Policing in America is fundamentally broken, from urban areas where people are framed, to rural areas where people are robbed.
This doesn't mean that all police are bad, but the culture around policing certainly seems bad.
> So no, it's not likely.
Has it occured to you that if cops have been convicted for such things it's because they have at some point engaged in such behavior? Sure, it would be foolish to do so given the risks of getting caught, and yet you could say the same thing about every cop ever convicted of a crime.
What's your point here? Isn't planting evidence also illegal? The problem is that, well, the law is expensive, slow, and tiresome, and there's an inherent power imbalance.
The topic here revolves around how law enforcement officers are able to act with impunity.
Ideally, we should legalize victimless "crimes" like drug possession. If there isn't a clear victim, it shouldn't be illegal. That alone might be enough to refocus police departments on their proper role in society. But in the meantime, we should aggressively prosecute crimes like these.
Is that ethical ?
Frank Serpico and Adrian Schoolcraft.
Two cops who tried to expose corruption.
Serpico got shot in the face in an arrest attempt with the other officers doing nothing even refusing to call it in.
Schoolcraft was forcibly admitted into a psychiatric institution to discredit him.