Rotten apples or rotten barrel? - Why police forces are magnets for the wrong kind of men
Rotten apples or rotten barrel? - Why police forces are magnets for the wrong kind of men
Why are police forces a magnet for men who want to rape women? And what should we do about it?
The article focuses on sexual abuse, but being a police officer offers many paths to abuse and lawbreaking, and a group of people who will back your bullshit until it starts to affect their privilege. It's not hard to figure why police act with disregard for the law: It's rarely applied to them, and not to the extent it's applied to non-police people.
correct on all points
Full disclosure: I am neither ACAB nor a bootlicker. I hold LEOs to the same ethical/behavioral standards as everyone else, neither higher nor lower.
Why are police forces a magnet for men who want to rape women?
Sexual violence is a subset of the larger problem: policing attracts aggressive, suspicious, sociopathic candidates. Same problem as political office attracting liars and grifters. Same as CEO positions attracting aggressive sociopaths. Plato warned us long ago that those that seek power are the last ones that should wield it.
IMO he police adverse selection is made worse when PDs go out of their way to hire recent combat vets, actively weed out those of above-average intelligence, and adopt increasingly-militarized tactics and culture.
Things will change when PDs start recruiting a different kinds of cop. PDs will do that when citizens demand a different kind of cop. Unfortunately, the citizens will tolerate (and even celebrate) bad cops as long as they are only abusing Those People.<tm>.
LEOs can use lethal force on top of holding anyone in custody at any time for any reason. They should be held to a higher standard than almost everyone else, and not holding them to a high standard contributes to their rates of malicious behavior.
There is no separate law of deadly force for LEOs and citizenry, which is why the "f33red for muh life!!!!!" defense is so common among LEOs.
not holding them to a high standard contributes to their rates of malicious behavior.
I respectfully disagree. IMO a higher standard just incentivizes them to hide misconduct rather than owning up to it. Again back to the Classics: "Plato taught that, however laudable justice may be, one cannot expect prodigies of virtue from ordinary people." <-- two Plato quotes in one day is not my usual method of discourse!
Thank you for sharing this!