I am so glad for the prevalence of phones with cameras now. People who have not lived in an area with corrupt and/or biased, overly-thuggish cops have no idea what goes on. Sadly, many will still take the side of police automatically, even with video evidence.
Where I grew up, the cops were brutish and corrupt, and would think NOTHING of roughing folks up at the slightest excuse. And of course we didnt have smart phones with cameras then. Once I saw was a friend of mine who got the pulp beat out of him when he was found urinating in public (ok, not the best thing to do, but it's a 17 year old kid, in a clump of trees, and have you seen what port-a-potties at the city fair look like on a Saturday night? :what: ). This was a decent kid, doing nothing harmful to anyone, but he ended up with a cut up face, black eye, had his head slammed onto the hood of the police car multiple times in front of a group of us kids, because he "dared" ask what the big deal was. The kicker? They charged him with resisting arrest. :furious:
I won't even go into the random stop-and-frisks of people for no other reason than that they were guilty of nothing other than being black or Hispanic and standing somewhere.
If you live in such an environment, day in, day out, all your life, it is very hard to trust LE, or give them the benefit of the doubt. This ends up hurting everyone, because who wants to deal with corrupt cops? No one wants to even talk to them, even if they are brave enough to overcome the rest of snitching on real criminals.
