1. There are bad cops in this country...not many but there are some. The HIRING is the key and MOST police forces have some psychological exams before-hand.
2. ALSO, there are complaint procedures to follow, at least in the better cities and towns where people can file charges against a police officer. Again, it depends on the town and how it handles things.
If YOUR town or city doesn't HAVE procedures to complain about a bad cop then your town or city SHOULD have them. SHAME on them.
3. Most encounters with the police ARE the fautlt of the citizens.
*Believe it or not MOST cops don't cruise around looking to make trouble for no reason.
**MOST cops stop drivers because the drivers broke the law.
***MOST cops come to your home because someone complained about you or someone IN THE HOME called them. They don't show up randomly at a random citizen's home for NO reason. They REALLY have more important things to do.
****EVERY officer who stops a vehicle or person, or goes to answer a call HAS to file a report on what s/he did and what the outcome was. Again, this is for cities and towns that have their act together.
BAD guys often cruise working class neighborhoods to check out the homes that are empty all day long.
We had a couple (black man, white woman) who did that in OUR neighborhood. They knocked at the house next door--our neighbor was home. Our kitchen window faces his front door. They came to OUR home next and I answered the door. We had a gate. They gave some phony-baloney story about looking for Mr. So-and-So. Naturally I told them they were mistaken. They DID burgle some other house up the street.
The cops came by the next day to question the neighbors. I was able to describe them. A few days later I went to the main police station and identified their photos. They were eventually caught.
4. The ratio of police on patrol to citizens is amazingly small. But that is because, for the most part, we are citizens who generally respect the law. There are countries that are almost lawless. Afghanistan is one of them.
MOST citizens here do what they are supposed to do MOST of the time. When they don't...one option is to call the cops. People "call the cops" ALL THE TIME.
From my knowledge the calls that ALL police loathe, deplore, abhor, detest and HATE to answer are the DOMESTIC VIOLENCE calls.
--They are usually no-win as batterers do it ALL THE TIME.
--Also, their spouses, women OR men (There ARE gay male AND female batterers.) always refuse to press charges or DROP the charges.
--The battered wife/girlfriend, husband (Yes, there are women who batter their husbands.) or SAME-GENDER person WILL NOT leave the batterer.
They will NOT leave.
IMHO, THEY need the shrink as much as the batterer does.
“1. There are bad cops in this country...not many but there are some.”
I think this is just naive. There wouldn’t be nearly so many cases of abuse and corruption if what you think is true, and the cases we know about are only the tip of the iceberg, because it is so easy for police to cover up their misdeeds.
Also, for all those cases that don’t come to light, they are kept quiet because all the “good” police officers refuse to do their jobs and turn in their fellow officers for misconduct. Which means most of those “good” cops are criminals as well, because they are accomplices after the fact. I’ll buy the argument about “a few bad apples” when I start seeing those “good” cops turning in the corrupt and abusive ones instead of covering for them.