Can you name one of those 'good' agencies? - All I can think of are Thugs, like FBI, CIA, and park police.
I had an uncle whose high school trades courses were in printshop, back in the days when that meant printing presses and ink on your hands, not just a computer editing program. Later, he paid his own way through college with the GI Bill and after-school work at a job printers, it was a trade he enjoyed as much as some folks do their hobbies. Accordingly, he was a natural to work with the Secret Service on investigations of counterfeit printing operations, particularly counterfeit money. He had little interest in the USSS executive protection role, though was frequently *borrowed* for such assignments, as he was both an excellent shot and one of those large, tall fellas just right for performing duties as a human shield for those he was assigned to protect. But his heart was really in the other side of his agency's work.
When I went off to the Army in the mid-1960s, we spent most of a week together on a fishing trip, and he told me a few stories that made clear his very real pride he felt in his agency and those he worked with [though his opinion of Mr. Hoover's feebies was not favourable.] He made me the suggestion that after my four years with the military, if not inclined toward a military career, I might follow the course he'd taken, if not to the same agency, since my interests were different from his. So I asked him which ones he might have chosen, had he not gone the route he did.
He said there were only two that met his standards. One was the Postal Inspection Service, now another federal joke, but then one of the real success stories within the federal system. The other was the Border Patrol, again, now a slight shadow of what it once was, but in his time, those who wore that badge were often the only thing representing the law of the United States for a hundred miles of where they stood. It was different in his day, and I'm glad he didn't live to see the disrepute the agencies he tried so hard to be worthy of become something he would have despised.
He was at my dad's funeral when my old man's best friend, the local sheriff, told me I had a job waiting with his department when I got out of the Army. I believe my uncle Denny was prouder of me that day than he ever was of his own two sons, who did not follow his life's path.
I hold cops, federal and otherwise, to the same standards that I learned from him. There are not many who can stand up to that comparison, but those who do deserve the respect and admiration they've earned the hard way.
-archy-/-
You're right. - I know that I shot my mouth off there, but there seems to be little that they do right anymore.