If you’re not asking as a gotcha, “good police” stories are a dime a dozen. You can routinely catch them on the evening news, and they frequently rise to nation

If you’re not asking as a gotcha, “good police” stories are a dime a dozen. You can routinely catch them on the evening news, and they frequently rise to national news as well. Practically no other profession gets such exceedingly positive and prolific press for doing the most charitable version of their job description. You never see stories like “trash collector relieves neighborhood of unwanted refuse without crushing anyone in the compactor”, even though their job is more dangerous and much less controversially beneficial to society. The reason there’s even an appetite for “stories about good police officers” is specifically as a counterpoint to the continuous story of cops behaving badly, either by their direct action or pointed inaction, or by their collective activity to protect other cops from scrutiny when they directly do harm. If cops want a better rep, they could be more deserving by not doing bad things and protecting other cops who do the same. If they don’t want to do that professionally (understandably! actually good cops are afraid of retaliation, or become afraid when they exercise their principles and find out what the consequences entail), they are always welcome to leave the profession. Admittedly there should be a better support system for cops who want to change careers for these reasons. But there isn’t a lot of demand for that so