Good analysis! And if I could add on to a little bit. It's not just the police unions that defend brutal cops. Generally, it's the police hierarchy too.
Within the last few years, an entire cottage industry has risen up of citizens who are publishing police body-cam footage along with their own footage. They often file Freedom of Information Act requests after witnessing and filming abusive police interactions.
Most of these interactions never come to national attention, but still, many of them receive millions of views on YouTube and other social media. New videos of police brutality pop up many times a day, and I watch a lot of them myself.
When I say brutality, I mean anything from unnecessarily hostile, aggressive behavior to over-the-top physical violence. Much of this is directed toward people of color, but not all of it.
These videos that pop up everyday vividly expose typical police culture, which is disdainful toward the public. Which has practically no "protect and serve" built in.
But the point I'm trying to make is about police hierarchy, and what I want to say is that it's not just the unions that defend these aggressive aggressive, rude, violent cops. It's their bosses. From small town police chiefs, to county sheriffs, to big city department supervisors.
In response to outrage over a million people seeing a cop behaving with cruelty and violence, the answer from the hierarchy almost always comes back like this: we reviewed the evidence and found no violations of policy or law.
Just to put it in perspective, I'm thinking about one particular incident in which an elderly man was hit by a car while riding a bicycle in the parking lot of a crowded grocery store.
Somebody called 911, probably because they were worried that the man was badly injured. It turned out that he wasn't, but he sure became badly injured after the cops showed up.
For whatever reason, he was unwilling to provide photo ID, and one of the cops then picked him up and threw him on his head. (This came after interacting with him in the rudest, most aggressive way imaginable.)
The interaction left the elderly unconscious and in need of an ambulance. He was admitted to the hospital, where he died a couple months later. The blow to his head was a contributing factor, though not the primary cause of death.
His daughter wants to know how anyone can justify throwing an old man onto the ground with enough force to knock him unconscious.
Don't ask the local police chief, because he reviewed the interaction videos and concluded that no violations of law or policy had taken place. The officer was not disciplined.
This is what I mean about the unions not being the only problem when it comes to protecting the bad apples.
Because the corruption and the moral rot extends up into the senior ranks as well. The culture is pervasively rotten from top to bottom.
