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The “moral panic” isn’t just about ignorance, though for many people ignorance of policing conditions no doubt plays a role. It’s also about a severe lack of accountability for the police who do abuse their positions of authority. When police who steal money are awarded immunity from both government prosecution and private lawsuits, or when police officers who shoot unarmed suspects, charge them with resisting arrest, and publicly lie about the whole thing are told “no biggie,” people reasonably get pretty upset. It’s one thing when a cop abuses his position—that’s bad, but you’ll never get a force that’s made up of 100% moral, upstanding officers. It’s quite another thing when a cop abuses his position—and his department, the local prosecutor, and the courts all protect him from punishment. That’s the sort of thing that reduces public support of cops, no different than how the Catholic sex abuse coverup led to greatly reduced trust in bishops and priests. Every time a cop abuses his position and gets a nice paid vacation out of it, protected from any legal or personal financial harm, while the taxpayer pays to settle lawsuits on his behalf, people look at it and say, “The system is broken.” They don’t need to have ever ridden in a squad car to know that.
But what about all of the times when a Cop abuses his power and is absolutely punished for it?
What about all of the times a case falls apart at trial for what are really, really minor technical errors usually in evidentiary handling? If I see the killer of my husband go free because there was "reasonable doubt" about how the pistol recovered from the trunk was found, do I get the same level of sympathy as these "taxpayers paying to settle lawsuits."?
More importantly - what if the truly heinous abuses of police power represent <1% of all cops while the other 99% are just trying to get home safe and not fuck up their cases.
(Side note: You cited Catholic clergy sex abuses and the up-the-chain indictment of Bishops and Cardinals. Do you feel the same way about public school teachers and administrators where the sexual abuse rate is multiple times of the general public (which, itself, was multiple times of that in the Catholic church)?)
You're making kind of a wild argument - Cops should be incredibly close to perfection and, if they fail, we should feel justified in indicting the entire system of policing for multiple years at a time. How do you expect positive changes to be made?
If I'm a police Commissioner and I discover real malfeasance, hold a press conference and say "Yeah, I'm totally going after these crooked cops" but then you stand up and say "It happened on your watch. You should resign, maybe be prosecuted. This whole department is suspect" .... when does corrective change actually occur? Everyone seems to be too busy indicting the entire system into oblivion .... despite it's working so incredibly well most of the time.
But I suppose you have history and precedent on your side. This all ends with "defund the police" which has resulted in a murder rate among the most vulnerable demographics skyrocketing.
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