Fucking Cops

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Even the best and most dedicated officers cannot properly serve in a broken system. Objective studies of the system, even ones conducted by highly partial observers like the USDoJ, conclude that there are major issues as a result of the legacy of our approach to suppression of certain communities, racial and class-related disadvantages that have been deliberately maintained by the elites in power, and the dismantling of our Constitutional protections in many subtle ways during our pursuit of Prohibition (commonly called "the Drug War"), with its own roots/ties to racist and pro-establishment forces. And no, I'm not just throwing the "race card" out there; sociologists and political historians have looked closely at the clear evidence that both the drug war and the ghettoization of America can be traced to openly racist policies and people in government, enacting laws and methods of enforcement that all but guaranteed the rise of certain peoples and neighborhoods over others... at the expense of the latter, no less.

As has been pointed out, the culture of silence in the face of wrongdoing (and of punishing whistleblowers) negates any claim the "good cops" might have on the moral high ground. I'd venture to say that 99% of police officers are individuals whom I would consider good human beings, moral, ethical, and dedicated to the betterment of their nation and communities... and yet they are dumped into a system that rewards their corruption and/or silence in the face of corruption, and punishes its converse. Our Puritan-rooted love of punishment and belief in those who hold power means that we tend to believe an officer's testimony over that of a defendant, and thus erode the "reasonable doubt" standard to unreasonably low levels which fail to protect us via the task it was created to perform.

This overarching belief in the system manifests itself in the "all lives matter" and "police lives matter" refrain that has echoed back when the community most heavily-hit by the aforementioned history and current policies cries out for change and true justice. They want to be protected by the police, instead of feeling they are in constant danger from an occupying force. They want to be able to believe in the American Dream, in the way WASPs are able to take for granted. When we improve the system for the people on the very bottom of the pile, and show both mercy and justice at the same time by admitting where we have stepped over the line, everyone benefits in the end-- except for those corporations that profit from our mass-incarceration system, the politicians they buy, and the increasingly-militarized police forces tasked with occupying our country's "third-world-style" decayed areas.