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The history of police departments in small towns would like a word.

• btilly 3y ago
  That's a fallacy. There are good and bad police departments in small towns. Most of what is notable enough to show up in that history are the bad ones. That doesn't mean that all departments are bad, or even most of them. It just means that there are bad ones, and they are newsworthy. Back when the Ferguson riots happened, I ran across a good article about this. In something like 10% of small towns, Ferguson included, police were seen as revenue generators. And, of course, the more fines that they handed out, the more money they made. For obvious political reasons the police prefer handing out questionable fines out to those with the least political power, which in Ferguson meant blacks. Which is why the local black population was ready to explode when FPD officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown. The problems that exploded into the first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement were important. The incident was historic. But when you focus on them, you miss the fact that most small towns did not do that.