I have a question about bad cop behavior in general. Is it mostly urban law enforcement that perpetrates such atrocities on the public or do rural sheriff deputies act equally poorly?
I need to advise that I make a distinction between rural area sheriff depts and urban or metro area sheriff depts. Having grown up in a rural area that is now overrun with urban cockroaches, I make a very big distinction between the two.
I've generally noticed two things:
1) Rural departments in general, whether county sheriff or municipality, tend to avoid this sort of thing. Probably because rural areas tend to offer less ability for bad cops to hide in the weeds, so to speak.
2) Sheriff's departments tend to have less of this sort of thing going on. Probably has to do with the fact that in most counties, the sheriff faces elections, and if the deputies did this sort of thing, and it didn't get dealt with, the sheriff would pay for it at the polls. The rumour in my county is that the sheriff has told the deputies not to even give out traffic tickets for routine stuff, so as to not hurt his re-election chances.
They ALL suck! Someday these wonderful people will be coming for our guns, and the folks who disagree that they all suck will change their minds.
In the 1970s the Fallbrook/Vista area outside of San Diego, only had sheriffs and the jail was an hour drive away. The sheriffs were much friendlier and seemed more local than city cops, even when arresting someone the sheriffs would joke and be friendly about it, and even apologize occasionally (and so would the arrested).
Those sheriffs were more isolated, and they depended on the community's cooperation and good will, that even applied to the wild guys of the area that accounted for most of the arrests, an arrest was generally an agreed upon event, like a game between friends, and the loser and winner were both gracious.
Drunk or not - I just can’t see any reason for the over-the-top aggression by the cops. The Denver force is way out of control. The Justice Dept. needs to take a good long look.
And why are those cops still on the payroll? Oh - another “victory” for unions...