4 ms·
I hear the "bad apple" thing a lot when it comes to discussions of bad cops, and it's usually in the context you're using it, e.g., "sure, there are some bad ap
by chipotle_coyote 5y ago
I hear the "bad apple" thing a lot when it comes to discussions of bad cops, and it's usually in the context you're using it, e.g., "sure, there are some bad apples, but you can't hold everyone responsible for them."
Yet the actual old folk wisdom was "one bad apple can spoil the barrel," or as Benjamin Franklin rephrased it in Poor Richard's Almanack, "the rotten apple spoils his companion." The entire point is that we don't get to just say "it's one bad apple." A barrel with one bad apple in it quickly becomes a barrel of bad apples.
The uproar we've seen isn't just about example after example of police brutality, poor treatment of minorities, and abuse of power. It's about the overwhelming resistance among the police to change, to accountability, even to self-examination. It's about how the reaction, by and large, to "bad apples" isn't to say "we need to get rid of that one," but rather to say "we need to protect our own."
We don't treat police as second-class citizens; we entrust them with extraordinary power and latitude. In return, shouldn't we be holding them to an extraordinarily high standard?
- goldcd 5y agoI'd agree. What seems to be missing is the populist support on both sides. Imagine you're a police officer standing next to a 'bad apple' - you should be put in a situation where helping to prosecute the 'bad apple' is the easiest option for you to take. I don't think it's that easy. I've had plenty of jobs where I was working with an arseshole, but I've never taken it to HR. Maybe most I've ever done, is just ensured I don't have to work near them - solves my problem.
- krapp 5y agoIn the US you don't have populism, you have Red Team Populism and Blue Team Populism. Police reform has been tagged Blue Team populism, so Red Team populists oppose it on principle.
- chipotle_coyote 5y agoI think that's true, but I also think there's unique, or at least highly specific, aspects to police culture which also come in here. It's come out that a lot of police training is very explicitly "us vs. them" in its approach -- reinforcing the message that every call you go out on could be your last, every person you interact with could be a dangerous criminal, you should be prepared to do whatever it takes to get the bad guys and other officers are your only line of defense. So it's not as much "if I take this guy's misconduct to HR, they won't do anything anyway" as "if I take this guy's misconduct to HR, I will have betrayed my fellow officer." And it's that, that "thin blue line" mentality, that really needs to be tackled.