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Maybe you heard wrong, and most police officers and public justice employees are actually generally good people, who just want justice to be served and for the

• alphabettsy 8y ago
  I think you’re probably right, but even these people seem to be driven by efficiency or complacency. I’m not sure how else we end up with so many of these cases of negligence or misconduct and it never seems to be the system itself correcting these injustices, it’s always media attention, lawyer or organizations. I do understand there is probably a large confirmation bias on my part, but the lack of transparency in these organizations leave external sources as the only information available.
• danso 8y ago
  I think individuals want to be good and do the right thing, but the system may incentivize them to ultimately act against that. For example, the pressure to close a case for stat purposes can incentivize a detective to de-prioritize a lead (throwing away the MetroCard would seemingly be over the line, though).
• teddyh 8y ago
  And once they get a conviction, the person they caught is, by definition, not an innocent. See how easy that was? Police can only keep their personal sense of self-worth, justice and fairness by… arrogantly sticking to their guns and forcing a conviction onto whoever they initially fingered as being guilty.
• frogpelt 8y ago
  I don't disagree but the problem is when the lines are very gray. Like when you have Jason Jones in custody and he's be in trouble for 6 other things and "he probably killed this guy". That's when the generally good people tend to, maybe, cut corners a bit.
• cascom 8y ago
  “Generally” just doesn’t cut it when the stakes are that high.