A friend of mine is a cop & a nice guy. I asked him why the hell he became a cop of all things & he said "this way, I know there's at least one cop in existence who's not a racist asshole."

I countered with "Oh, so you're just a regular asshole, then?" An he said "No sir; I am an ass hat. An asshole is an ass the whole time. If people are cool, I'm cool with them, but if someone wants to be an ass, I can put my ass hat on to match their energy."

I can respect that.

One of my friends was a rural police officer, which I didn't know. Dude is super friendly and queer. Unfortunately he had a lot of terribly sad stories of AD&D and DUIs. He finally called it quits when one woman rode up an industrial garage door to impress her friend and got lethally caught in it. Found her friend holding her legs to try and save her. Too many terrible things happened to nice but terribly misguided (or drunk) people.

I think that job hurt his heart.

It’s not the premise that they are all inherently bad. It’s that there are plenty of bad ones and the good ones do nothing about them or actively protect them.

i agree with you.

My best friend is ex-police. My brother is police.

They're not saints but they're good people, certainly not exploring or abusing anyone.

Then again, we're not in the USA so I can't comment on what it's like there.

I have cops in my family. They're actually all really great people and weirdly positive parents.