As you know, there have been a lot of police killings lately
both deliberate and accidentally. I am not so much
trying to focus on the circumstances of it
but rather asking why so many people align with the police.

Almost everywhere the is a discussion of an incident,
there is staunch "pro-police" people that honestly
seem to think that whatever the police do is absolutely
right and that police a super human and cannot
make a mistake. And if they do make a mistake,
the victim deserved it (whether they did or not)
and that an officer should never be charged.

It seems extremely naive. Police are NOT superhuman
and make mistakes and misjudge just like everyone else.
The big difference is that when someone else makes
a mistake, the get put in prison.

The HUGE problem with that is simple. If the police keep
getting away with doing whatever they want, they will
abuse their power more and more.

So honestly where does the attitude that police cannot do wrong
(in both the "justice system" and in everyday persons)
come from?

-edit-
to be clear, I am not "anti-police" but I do think that EVERYONE whether police or not
should take responsibility for their actions

That's because police and judicial staff are scarce.

And people are too many.

Actually there is not a rise in police killings and/or unjustified police killings. What is happening is that the media are taking a few extreme examples and giving them a lot of publicity. Then in typical media fashion they cite the extreme example as being the norm.

As a more innocuous example of sensationalist reporting look at the TV weather report. They will tell you that you will get up to 2 feet of snow. What they actually should say is that you will get 9 inches of snow and an isolated mountain top will get 20 to 24 inches of snow. (For what it is worth I live on the mountain top.)

---------------------
Steve Stites

Its not so much the police killings themselves that are getting to me per se but rather the lack of responsibility laid on police

We just had this thread.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ed-4175526524/

Because one day my neighbor came home, late in the evening, and the front door to his house was slightly open.

He withdrew, and called the police.

A police officer and his K-9 dog now had the g-u-t-s, not to mention the duty, to go inside that house (at night!) and to face whatever or whoever might be in there. It turns out that a few things had been stolen but that there was no (possibly armed ...) person in there. Nevertheless, had there been, that officer and his dog would have been facing that threat, so that my neighbor didn't.

So, yeah. They're not perfect, any more than anyone else on this planet is perfect, but throughout the world we owe a tremendous debt to the people who have the courage and the integrity to perform such a difficult task, at a daily risk of their own lives.

Sure, I don't like seeing blue lights in my rear-view any more than anyone else does, but, "uhhh, go ahead, you try it." Walk right up to that car . . .

When I was a kid, they called 'em "pigs." The police turned that negative-slang around very nicely: "PIG = Pride, Integrity, and Guts.™"

Obviously the police have their pros and cons, in more than one way. They are needed to fight crime and uphold the law (try going to a country where the police don't do their job, and you'll see it's not at all good). They also need to do this without harming innocents or using excessive force.

I think you should try to focus on each incident as a unique incident done by a unique individual. I know there is a tendency for people to form groups of themselves and others, but I am against this mentality.

Certainly, a cop should not kill or injure unarmed suspects and get away with it. They should not be above the law, although they seem to have extra protection from it.

Your mentality should be to favor the right thing, not pro or against a group. If a member of a group did something wrong, then be against that member, and make sure the punishment serves as an example to the other members. This is why I would be against light punishment for cops compared to regular citizens. Their punishment should be equal, but that's not how the justice system works.

I think metaschima has fingered it.

By virtue of some of the projects I've worked on, I've gotten to know a lot of cops over the years, and I've also know some socially. The great majority of them have been really decent folks who were a pleasure to know.

The problem occurs when the few who aren't decent folks get a free pass for misconduct because they were wearing blue when they misconducted. Sadly, that happens far too often, at least in the USA.

I'll stop there.

Exactly. But that is my gripe. How do people keep defending the individuals that
DO use excessive force or otherwise harm someone without reason.

Exactly my point. I am not anti-cop. But I am pro-responsibility. The cops need to show as much responsibility
as the citizens they should be there to protect. And that means if they unnecessarily harm or kill someone, they should
be punished as such.

I choose not the second guess a cops actions as I wasn't there, having said that we have some pretty obvious cases of abuse and that needs to be dealt with.

Well, this applies to some regions differently than others I'm sure. OP, you're in the US. I guess good thing you're not from some country with a much different situation.

I agree with the comment that maybe a lot of this is media emphasis, probably also enhanced by the pervasiveness social networking.

Times are tough, and have been tough for 5? 10? Years? It's been a LOOOONG time they've merely stopped discussing things like "recession", and "inflation", or maybe I desensitized myself from reading any economic stories.

But consider how in motion the economy isn't in the US. And my point there is that when times are tough, it becomes tough for the general population. Crime rises, and normal people do things out of their normal boundaries due to the whole big picture.

You see and hear, actors/actresses, sports figures, CEOs, politicians all making huge money, you see corruption and cheating and then see it plastered in our faces like crazy. You see "entitled" people get away with either literal, or the equivalent of murder. And then you see these whole varieties of un-reality shows spanning everywhere from little kiddies, to marriages in disaster, to general people just sitting around their houses and the implication is that people want to watch that.

And when "doo-doo" hits the fan. The cops get called. Small wonder they have some biased opinions. They're also people too.

Yes, I agree. Everyone should take responsibility for their actions. I think we all know that they do not. From your coworkers, to the literal everyone in the street.