Too many cops *enjoy* giving orders while their hands rest on their gun butts. I find that despicable, even when they use that power to do mostly good deeds (which, is, indeed, what the “good cops” — a majority — do.)

I have. They don’t choose “ordering people around at gunpoint” for their careers. In fact they go through psychological testing to weed out that sort of people.

Most of the cops I’ve met are caring people who want to help. They risk their lives every time they go to work. When they’re involved in violence it’s almost invariably because somebody attacked them or because somebody was committing a violent crime.

Most of them spend their working hours being nervous, if not scared, that violence will be directed against them. ALL of them want, more than anything else, to go home to their families at the end of the shift.

I suggest that you attend a citizen police academy in your area. They’re fun, they’re interesting, you learn a lot about what police work is really about, and you meet a lot of very nice people who happen to be certified peace officers.

Of course there are good cops … to the extent it’s possible for anybody to be good who chooses “ordering people around at gunpoint” for their career.

In fact, for the most part, they ARE benevolent and trustworthy –and they’re highly trained, too. The reason for the increasing use of video cameras is to protect the citizen from the rare bad cop, and to protect the police from the all-too-frequent bad citizen.