Although I agree with your sentiment on data privacy, I don't know where you live but in the United States this is a gross [and potentially dangerous] overgeneralization of a million+ hard-working officers who committed their lives to your safety in spite of regularly encountering life-threatening situations.
The Supreme Court explicitly ruled in Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) that police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens from harm, effectively nullifying the "committed their lives to your safety" claim.
These "million+ hard-working officers" actively maintain the corrupt system by refusing to hold their colleagues accountable. The "few bad apples" theory falls apart when entire departments and unions systematically protect officers who abuse their power.
American police have earned their reputation through decades of documented misconduct, militarization, and resistance to meaningful reform. The institution works exactly as designed.
It only came to light after much struggle from people searching for missing family members. Basically people in police or jail custody who died were dumped in there under a blanket assumption that no family had claimed them, but no attempts to notify or find family members was made.
https://jacksonadvocateonline.com/crump-wants-inquiry-of-215...
> The Supreme Court explicitly ruled in Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) that police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens from harm
If a duty isn't constitutional then it doesn't exist?
If, as an individual citizen, I'm aware of a serious crime being committed, I have an obligation to report it. If a "good" police officer has knowledge of crimes committed by "bad" police officers and they don't report it, then they are no longer a "good" police officer.
Your analogy is a false equivalence.
A non-criminal black person has no control or responsibility over a random criminal black person.
A police officer absolutely can speak up, speak out, and blow the whistle when one of their fellow officers does awful things. But most will just keep their mouths shut and help (actively or passively) with whatever coverup the institution decides is appropriate.
We're not talking about guilt by association, here. We're talking about guilt by failing to speak up; their silence makes them complicit.
Exactly. It's not like we can kick people out of a race like it's a profession. Though I think that would make a very useful feature in a comedy plot.
The "just meet some nice cops" argument is precisely how institutions avoid accountability for systemic problems. Individuals, and how nice they might be, are irrelevant when discussing institutional failures.
What statistics, what well documented patterns? You mean biased selection of footage from Reddit?
"Well-documented patterns of abuse" are not statistics! But, if I'm mistaken and they are, please let me know what percentage of police officers engage in abuse of power in their career. I'd love to see those kinds of statistics!
I'm not sure that sort of thing is something you can tie up neatly into a bow and present as some set of statistics. But it's a phenomenon that's very real.
Tons of people have seen things they can't explain, and are convinced that ghosts and the supernatural exist. Those phenomena are "very real" to those folks, too.
To be clear, I agree that police abusing their power is a "real phenomenon", in the sense that it certainly happens. But until you can provide ample evidence that these behaviors are thing a significant minority of police officers take part in, then your generalizing them to all police officers is just about as "real" as ghosts.
They seem to be doing pretty well career-wise, too, so it seems that this is not an uncommon sentiment there.
Actually most people never complete the statement. It seems to be entirely accurate.
"One bad apple can spoil the barrel / bunch."
The bunch has been definitely been spoiled.
And the "circling the wagons" phenomenon you mention is exactly an example of this. The so-called "good cops" rarely speak up when their colleagues are doing horrible things. It's disgusting. Those who are silent are complicit.
Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have repeatedly held that police have no duty to provide protection to citizens in general.
If police were committing their lives to our safety, why would they use their limited funding pursuing court cases to affirm the opposite?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
Consider that the guys entire management chain was involved in the attempt to forcibly institutionalize him, and numerous rank and file police officers as well. And not a single one of them spoke in his defense.
Based on this anecdote, what would you say the ratio of good vs bad cops is in NYPD?
Did you know, in the US it is possible to be overqualified to be a cop, if you are too smart? The system wants jackbooted thugs, rather than intelligent policing.
If corrupt sheriff Moe Carpaio is accepting bribes or selling drugs out of the evidence locker, Moe needs to hire juniors who are less likely to blow the whistle. Much of that involves in trapping them into the perpetuating cycle of crime, and that's easier when they don't have lots of other employment options.
Tough fucking luck.
Police extensively abuse their power, and even the so-called "good" cops rarely speak up against their fellow officers when they do awful things. It's not prejudice to state established facts and patterns of behavior.