Selectively paying attention...
You forgot that reality.
You forgot that reality.
Really? That's all you have?
Some of us have been actually paying attention for quite a while now, and not making excuses for bad actors when they show up in the news just because they are police. We can readily see what is happening in the news, and make judgements for ourselves about the personal interactions we may have.
Personally, I think the police are generally walking down a road that they can ill afford to travel, because it is much more difficult to re-establish trust once the perception that it has been broken sets in. As tension mounts between police and your average citizens, they find that it greatly affects their ability to do their jobs. Right now, working as a cop in some areas can be difficult because of that lack of trust that exists, for whatever historical reasons. Extrapolate that to the entire population, and you have a real problem. Those who will make any excuse for cops behaving badly are really doing them no favors at all.
We already see gross examples of how "justice" is administered differently to cops than it is to anyone else. The article referenced in this thread is an excellent example of this. If you think that your average Joe Citizen would just walk after threatening someone with a firearm and then assaulting them, you are delusional. At the very least, he'd be charged with assault, and have to deal with the entire legal process that surrounds that. He might possibly beat the rap, but wouldn't be able to beat the ride.
It is this exact kind of circumstance that leads to people to see that "some animals are more equal than others", and they resent it. Justifiably so. Many of us understand the concept that with great power comes great responsibility. What we are seeing, howerver is that there is no accountability for your actions if you're a part of one of the protected classes, like cops, politicians, or other agent of the state.
Acton was wrong when he said that "power corrupts". What is corrupting is power without accountability. This idea can be traced back to the Magna Carta. We reject the nothing that the King and his men are above the law. In fact, they should be held to even higher standards because of the power they are granted. Sadly, this Rrepublic has devolved way past those ideals. Instead, we have unaccountable politicians surrounded by unaccountable bureaucrats, all being protected by an unaccountable law enforcement and legal establishment.
Someday, and it might not even be all that far off, the wheels are going to come off this train y'all have been driving and it's not going to be very pretty for anyone.