The police bear a responsibility to confront the "thin blue line" mentality and challenge the bad actors among their ranks, to internally enforce standards of behavior that de-escalate situations instead of employing attack dog mentality in interactions with the public.
The public can then reciprocate by supporting the officers' attempts to thin their herd of racists and unfit members and acknowledge that of course not ALL police are bad, just as not ALL police are not good either.
I have a real problem with the concept of automatic benefit of the doubt to anyone.
There are officers who deserve praise and respect for their daily sacrifices and impeccable service records and bravery above and beyond the call of duty. There are also officers that should be stripped of their badge and gun and imprisoned for conduct unbecoming a mafia button man. Somewhere in between, and hopefully skewed FAR to the former and away from the latter, lies the majority of police. Good men and women dealing with a difficult job, underpaid and underappreciated by a society obsessed with praising the wealthy and material. The stress and grind of the job are beyond my comprehension, but I see something in the behavior of police - like the ones in St. Paul refusing to work security at the Minnesota Lynx game because the players dared to show solidarity with BLM and ALL of the tragically deceased last week - that speaks volumes of their collective mindset that must change.
There cannot be progress though as long as the unwritten rule in policing is that the police are always right and no officers should make it easier to weed out the problems from their own ranks. If the police continue to protect their own through lax investigations and minimal punishment for misdeeds and misconduct, then there cannot be a true period of healing. The first step to correcting a problem is admitting there IS a problem to address.
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