I agree that you've put such violations of trust in a better context than I did, though I think comparing publicized incidents to total arrests probably understates the magnitude of the problem. Given human nature, and the fact that the opportunity to wield power over others is provided by law enforcement, lots of bullies and psychopaths are going to want to be cops. Most of them are probably weeded out in the hiring process, but some are bound to get through. My guess would be that the percentage of bad apples would be in the 1% to 5% range, varying due to a number of factors such as location, rigor of hiring practices, agency, required qualifications, and the attitude of command. At the low end that would give a member of the public about a 1 in 100 chance of having a bad encounter with law enforcement.srothstein wrote:All of what you posted does happen, but the above quote is an important part of the problem. Remember that for something to be newsworthy, it must be rare, different, AND unusual. The old saw about a dog biting a man not being news but a man biting a dog is news.VMI77 wrote:Not rare at all....I'm referring to the very frequent cases where the police report or claim one thing, up to arresting and falsifying charges on someone they abused, and a video they didn't know about surfaces and proves that they were lying (or some other evidence comes out or gets leaked). Seems like some incident like this comes out about once a week.
Consider how many cases one officer in a big city makes. In San Antonio, I averaged probably around 15 calls per day. Lower it to just the arrests for a more reasonable number. I averaged arrests around once per day. Multiply it by the number of officers on the department on patrol. For San Antonio, I estimate it was about 700 back then. 700 arrests per day times seven days per week = 4900 arrests per week. One incident per week like you describe is still a rare event, percentage wise. And remember, the news will report it from anywhere in the states, not just the one city. It is even rarer than the one out of 4900.
I agree that even one out of 700 is way too many. But, Jbarn is correct that the police in general do a very good job. There are a lot of problems in law enforcement these days, and their image is very tarnished. There are even more problems with government in general. There are times I am very embarrassed to have ever been associated with law enforcement. But I know, deep down in my heart and academically in my brain, that most of the cops are doing a great job under difficult circumstances and that these incidents are very rare. And I know we still need to do more to eliminate them completely if we can.
There is no way these kinds of incidents can be eliminated as it is a system populated and run by human beings. They can be minimized by various measures, but the most important measure is appropriate punishment for violation of the law and of the public trust.