I grew up very comfortably, and in general the police have never given me grief. They've always been helpful. However, throughout my life, I've spoken to those who have had less favorable interactions with the police, who, as far as I can tell, were not doing anything to be worthy of the treatment they received. These stories have been so plentiful and consistently bad that I can not possibly believe that the police are an overall force for good. At this point, you can turn on the news and the evidence is right there. Maybe I was primed to draw these conclusions from the news from my prior conversations, I don't know. Either way, there are so many people in this thread who are convinced that this is a good thing and that it won't be cynically abused, and that these abuses will not be supported by the criminal justice system. There are a handful of threads that terminate in "well if that's the case, then we've got a bigger problem." What do you mean "if?" is my feeling.

I just don't understand it. If you see the abuses and think "well, they deserved it" or "ah it's a few bad apples" I'm not trying to speak to you. I don't think we'd really ever find common ground. I'm really trying to ask such questions to those of you out there who still seem surprised when the police do something bad, or those who just claim to be unaware. Do you or do you not talk to people who claim police are abusive? If you do talk to them, do you just not believe them? How many of such people have you talked to, and after talking to this many people, how many more people would have to confirm such abuses before you believed them? When you hear such stories, how do you discount them, or otherwise minimize them to the degree that your beliefs are not swayed?