And with that being said, while I managed to restrain myself the first go around of this thread, I will give my honest, personal manifesto about my profession.
I do not begrudge anyone their personal negative interactions with police, nor can I possibly account for the very real shadow that American race relations/issues casts upon policing in America, compared with Canada.
That being said, in regards to cops being assholes/bullies/dicks... from my own experience in six years on this job, I just do not see it. Now, granted, I am both a Canadian police officer, and a federal police officer at that, so maybe that accounts for the difference in experience, but I am not convinced.
In spite of my six short years on the job, I have worked with and trained with a rather large number of officers. I have probably worked for extended periods with about 150 officers, firsthand. And I do not see any obvious or over "bully" or "asshole" streak in them. 95% of the colleagues I have worked with are pure gold, great people. And sure, the 5% that remain can be true assholes.
I know that is anecdotal, but it is the profession as I see it.
And I do view things somewhat as Biz said. If, between America and Canada, there are about 900,000 police officers, and 1% of them are complete fucking assholes, that still leaves 9,000 assholes, able to be complete dicks and commit offensive acts to make the front page of a regional/national newspaper every day of the year for 24 years, before one of them even REPEATED an offensive act to make the papers.
I fundamentally believe that the vast majority of my profession are good guys/gals, but that law enforcement has simply failed to adapt to the 21st century. I absolutely believe that, on the whole, police officers are better educated, better trained, and more professional than we have been in the idealized past, but that the modern world magnifies the bad behaviour.
In the past, corrupt cops could more easily get away with their behaviour. Today, you have a news media more willing to be critical of the police, you have more technology to keep police accountable (in car cameras, etc), the explosion of personal recording devices, and of social media to spread such recordings. I believe that has created a perfect storm that magnifies police misconduct, and, absolutely, my profession has been poor at adapting to it. ie. witness police officers who simply cannot deal with the growing habit of citizens whipping out their cell phones to put their behaviour under the microscope. But lets be honest, such behaviour IS a stressor, and something that can pile onto an already stressful job. Everyones behaviour changes when they have a camera in their face, scrutinizing everything they do.
And let me be clear, I cannot stand the truly corrupt, thuggish cops, probably moreso than the cop haters do. Because I really do understand that it stains the profession, that it frustrates me to no end that it does not matter how much I try to do an honest, earnest, and professional job, when it can be undone by one fucking asshole who gets put on the front page of the newspaper.
Anyway, I can list the reasons why I chose this profession, and some are more noble than others:
I joined because the pay is good.
I joined because there is a damn good, guaranteed pension (although who knows whether that will still be the case in 20 years....)
I joined because I wanted a job with excitement, where every day could promise something different (and although 85% of this job is tedious, holy shit does the remaining 15% make up for it, and I could never see myself doing something else)
And yeah, I joined out of a sense of wanting to contribute to society, protect people and "make a difference". And while the internets may have mixed feelings about my profession, I have actually been given several "thank you"s from random citizens, and those moments put me over the moon and humble me.
but I sure as hell did not become a cop because I was a bully in high school. I was not the guy getting into fights. I was, quite honestly, on a few occasions, the guy who jumped in the middle of a beatdown and pulled the bully off, while everyone else just stared and gawked. And while I did not "always want to be a cop", that is probably part of the reason why no one was surprised when I became one.
.
So yeah, I did not mean the above as any sort of "God, I, and all cops, are so awesome", nor as some sort of an argumentative post against those who do not, generally, like police. Its just how I feel about my profession, and almost all of the people that I have worked with. There is a lot of bullshit you have to deal with in this job, but it is still the greatest show on earth, and I love it.
