Well, I’m skeptical of the gross injustice you allege–indefensible if true–but consider, who does the police work for? The government. Who do you think will solve all our problems? The government. Perhaps you should consider that all power corrupts, and the power of Exxon or Microsoft is nothing compared to the Federal Government within the USA.

I too dislike coercion, but I’m more inclined to think those with armies and police forces (eg, governments) are more coercive than rich people or businesses.

It was relatively simple with Julia living with the illusion, mostly true, that cops would generally be better to have around under man circumstances. Those days are past.

If this was just a matter of me seeing a bunch of news stories and reacting to that, this might be reactionary and even an example of conformation bias. But that is not the whole story. The last time we called the cops here, being helpful by reporting a crime we witnessed but that did not affect us, they showed up very late but in the manner of storm troopers — slow moving storm troopers — and insisted that the people in my household, on my property, prove who they were. I sent them packing because I know my rights. I have numerous friends who have had similar experiences a large percentage of the time they’ve interacted with cops, and over recent years, and the also regard this as new behavior.

There is a general gestalt that I also find worrying. Example: the other day, there was a fender bender in front of my house. The cops closed the two main streets in the area, shutting down the neighborhood to traffic for about an hour or more, not because there was even the slightest need to do so but because they happened to park their cruisers in the middle of the streets. That was not a situation of the cops showing up and being dangerous, but it was a clear demonstration that they have no idea what their role in society is any more. It seems to be mainly to show force and occasionally use force. And no, there were no crazy arab terrorists or meth dealers at the fender bender, just an old lady who had the sun in her eyes and a guy who was driving his pickup a bit slowly ahead of her.

I personally know cops as well, some of my best friends are cops of one sort or another, and there are plenty of good cops. But if one in 100 dogs bit randomly, I’d avoid all dogs I don’t know.

This is all made worse by numerous cases where cops did something most people agreed was wrong or at least highly questionable and getting cleared because their actions were determined to be proper. I’m not talking about random news reports which, as you suggest and I’ve already said, can be confirmation bias. I’m talking about the preponderance of events in the region where I live and pay attention, so we’re looking at a pretty complete sample.

I’ll throw this in as well: The origins of my cynicism about cops started back when the GOP had their convention here. Dozens of members of a community I personally overlap with were summarily harassed, rounded up, arrested, spent piles of time in jail, and were charged with the kinds of crimes that would have put them away for decades. The chief of police and the mayor of the city fully backed the cops. But these kids (mostly kids) ended up with some good lawyers. Eventually they were cleared, and they sued the police dept, and they won the law suit. They were totally innocent, and spent years under the boot because these cops all thought they were Rambo and this was a police state they ran.

No, I’m not teaching Huxley what I taught Julia. However, I don’t know what I’m going to teach him yet.

This is really irresponsible, alarmist and reactionary. I personally know a lot of cops who would gladly put their lives in danger for the citizens they protect. They will openly admit that cops are human, some make poor decisions and sometimes the work they do isn’t as black and white as a 3 minute video might make it seem. Posting on science blogs I guess I expect you to know what’s wrong with conflating a couple of incidences over the hundreds of 911/cop related incidences that go off everyday without a hitch. Not to mention the dozens of videos I could be posting of cops being attacked by seemingly unarmed and co-operative individuals.

When Sandy was hired by APD, the department said he would be a civilian employee and he wouldn’t have a gun or a badge. However, Sandy quickly rose through the department, landing on the ROPE Team, which goes after repeat offenders or some of the city’s most dangerous criminals.”

http://krqe.com/2014/03/21/apd-officer-involved-shooting-was-justified/

In case you didn’t know, arresting someone in need of mental services might require lethal force. And a press conference.

“The press conference ended abruptly Friday without reporters being able to ask all of the questions they wanted. After taking questions for four minutes, an APD spokeswoman attempted to stop the press conference but Chief Eden took questions for two more minutes. After that, Chief Eden walked off, thanking reporters and saying “we’re good.””