Originally posted by: XanBcoo
Just so this one doesn't go any farther off topic.

It was an interesting discussion and I'd like to keep it up. Considering Institutional racism (or just being dipshits), are cops assholes for doing their job?
To further drive the discussion, I feel that a distinction ought to be made here. We might talk about three categories of cops: the dipshits who abuse their power, the good ones who do their jobs well but look the other way when a dipshit acts like a dipshit (these correspond roughly to the "institutionally racist" group), and the good ones who actually do something about the dipshits. It tends to be big news when a cop squeals on his fellow cops, and it doesn't make it to the news much, so I think we can assume that the third category is rather small. Correct me if you have any evidence either way.

The first group -- the dipshits -- obviously deserve our contempt. I presume you wouldn't respect a fireman or teacher or minister who harrasses innocent people for no reason. Teachers, firemen, and ministers (as a whole) do good things for society, but that doesn't mean that we ought to give the one's who abuse their status the respect their peers deserve.

The third group -- the stoolies -- clearly deserve our utmost respect for acting with professionalism and doing their job to protect the public from their peers.

The second group -- the good cops who turn a blind eye -- should be held morally responsible for not stopping their peers. They act professionally, so they are not as bad as the dipshits, but they are not doing their jobs. Keep in mind: the police is here to protect and to serve. These guys are failing to protect the public from their dipshit peers.

BOARD_of_command made an observation that bears on these distinctions:

Originally posted by: BOARD_of_command
I'm not saying police are right for the things they do. When you work in a specilized field like law enforcement, generalizations begin to take place in your mind.
I agree with this observation, and I think it makes the distinctions I've made a little less clear. In particular, it blurs the line between the dipshits and the good cops. We might call the people who knowingly abuse their authority the "real dipshits," the people who, because of institutional pressures unknownly abuse their authority (that is, don't realize they're discriminating against black people, for instance) the "kind of dipshits", and the good cops who do their jobs and squeal on everyone else. I have no evidence to back this up, but I think you'll find that the kind of dipshit cops look upon the good cops as traitors for not falling in line and turning a peer in. This is understandable, since the sort of dipshits don't see themselves as abusing their power.

Now, I've given facts and figures and so forth in previous posts. It's clear that there are not many of the good cops, since this sort of thing would be news worthy. So most cops are either real dipshits or sort of dipshits. I will even grant the assumption that there are very few real dipshit cops. As it stands, most cops are kind of dipshits.

Where does this leave us morally? Should we respect them?

I say no.

Respecting such a person would be like respecting a teacher who "accidentally forgot" to teach her black students fractions.