https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings
Wee video here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/11195...
Honestly I think our Police do a lot of good. There's some bad apples, there's complaints - but that is normal. Overall, they tend to make good judgement calls (most of the time).
To the defence of the US, sometimes their system does work: https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/11/24/us-jury-charge-police-off... honestly though, shooting a guy in a car that wasn't in immediate danger to anyone else around him (he rung the police originally because he was having a mental health crisis - in NZ you do call the cops if you can) so they shoot him with beanbag rounds, tase him then shoot him six times fatally. A bit over the top...
[caution: good-natured linguistic pedantry follows. Apologies in advance!]
As a point of interest, this usage of "bad apple" derives from the old folk wisdom: "one bad apple spoils the bunch".
Unlike quite a lot of old folk wisdom, this saying is literally true: mold growing on one apple will quickly jump to and colonise other nearby apples, and overripe apples emit a gas which causes other nearby fruit to ripen (and then overripen) much faster than normal; so it's important not to store overripe/moldy apples together with regular fruit!
Anyhow, my point is just this: "bad apples" doesn't mean that something is in the minority and therefore doesn't have much effect and can be safely ignored -- it means that something is in the minority but is likely to infect everything around it if urgent action isn't taken to separate them. If that wasn't your intended meaning, then "bad apples" was definitely the wrong metaphor to reach for. :)
Right, no disagreement from me that these things happen. And responses are varied, as you say.
What I was trying to get across was that you get a very lopsided view by concentrating on "crazy shit" and people's responses to it.
For example:
I live in the US. It's snowing where I am. It makes things beautiful. Some birds are at the feeder, and the furnace just turned on. I'm thankful for the warmth. I have some cookies to deliver to the neighbors later on (they recently gave us a loaf of their bread, which was delicious).
----
There you go, that was some real American culture (still second-hand for you, and admittedly not entirely representative). Not very interesting, but it's home. Multiply that by hundreds of millions of people, and yes, sprinkle in a handful of crazy shit too for good measure. Maybe that gets you a little bit closer to reality.
Still plenty that needs fixing, of course. And I'm glad I don't live in Mississippi (: