Another reason is that they aren't "bad cops" - their attitudes and behaviors are within the normal range of tolerance, there is nothing to cover up.
You know, there was this cop. Just another cop. Some are good, some are bad. Some days it's hard to tell the difference.
Apparently, once upon a time he was fired for stealing from his boss, a sheriff's department. He landed in a rural area, ended up running a drug sting.
Nobody's quite sure who did what, because there was no physical evidence. There were not notes or photographs or fingerprints. There were no recordings, no scraps in the supsects' handwriting.
There were no drugs. Cop used 'em all. There was no drug money. If there ever was, cop spent it on more drugs. That we wouldn't know existed because he allegedly used 'em all. But then he went on an arrest spree trying to take down the town's black population, and got away with it long enough to see people convicted and sentenced, so that reluctant courts had to take years to repair what damage they could.
I don't know. Random thought, I guess.
Oh, hey, you know, there was this cop. Just another cop. Some are good, some are bad. Some days it's hard to tell the difference. Then again, some days it's such a mess that a town fires and disbands its entire police department. Which in turn makes a guy the perfect hire for a big city. And, you know, it turns out the police department and state withheld evidence in their kangaroo court exonerating the officer after he shot a black man to death under circumstances that have never quite made sense.
Sorry. My mind must be in the gutter.
But, you know, there was this cop. It's hard to explain what happened, but it does stsart with miscommunication. Woman calls for assistance because a car has illegally parked in her driveway. Eventually, it turns out that police are apparently on a robbery call, and the circumstance wraps up near her home. Unaware of the robbery incident, the woman emerges from her home intending to plead with the officer; she just wanted a towtruck, and nobody needs to be arrested, do they? So the cop strangles her and beats her. Nobody's quite sure
why he did it, but, you know, he's a cop, and this is well enough with the department that he is on duty in order to be the wheelman when his partner kills a twelve year-old black boy in one of the most ridiculous police shootings ever caught on camera.
It's a maudlin kind of feeling.
Sssssomebody stop me, or something like that.
Because, you know, there was this cop. And how the hell was he a cop? He failed a written exam for a county sheriff's department, and was rejected by a mid-sized and two smaller city departments. One small town that hired him allowed him to resign six months later after he demonstrated problematic behavior during firearms training. And, you know that wheelman? Yeah, this guy went on to be the cop who shot the twelve year-old black boy.
What
is a bad cop, anyway? Which comes back 'round. Maybe, having a recommmendation to part ways because the department did not believe the officer would be able to overcome the deficiencies in his performance, including his psychological state during firearms training, a department should have fired an officer instead of simply allowing him to resign.
It's one thing to say these were bad cops, but ... well ... how did they have jobs as cops?
Not every cop who makes a bad decision is a fundamentally bad cop, but we
are talking about a very high-stakes notion of corruption, so, sure, we can imagine some pushback: A good commish can only do so much good.
Except, yeah, there are a bunch of little decisions along the way. Because a few bad seeds and a prosecutor willing to throw down hard to convict a suspect is all it really takes. It's a tough score in the courts. It's easy to say the blue wall has to come down, and each cop can make that decision unto themselves. But, yeah, it's high-stakes corruption with known repercussions, and, you know, there was this prosecutor.
No, she's not dead, but the excuses for the shooting of a homeless man were just that bad; if we wish to imagine a dynastic prosecutor just another cog in the machine, she had no real choice because this time it was just that flaming obvious, and she just couldn't do her friends in the police department any favors. Turns out she effectively declared war on the police department. Not that she specifically intended to, but, you know, that's just what happens when the prosecutors turn their trade against the police.
What
is a good cop, anyway? Reality must be more frail than we humans, or, at least, those among us who wear the badge. There is a difference between acknowledging the fact of human frailty and relying upon it for perpetual justification.