I think leading with distrust is the right way to go about it until you see evidence otherwise. Most everyone except elitists are at least nervous when they first encounter one.

@Lauren I have always assumed the best can happen in new situations..... but I confess to growing up in a white family business serving the general public.... lucky to have a black kindergarten teacher I rebelled against my racist religious parents age 5 sixtyfive years ago .... choosing love set by her examples ..... but by age 11 seeing JFK murdered radicalized my view of anyone with guns gawds or bombs undoing elections and going to the moon .... it must be horrifying to be a woman in a rapist dominated religious culture .... so I keep singing peace songs and always voting for Green jobs to end religious greedy polluter wars

@SeaGreenEyez Oh, ffs! What terrorists they are. Why the hell were they involved to begin with? We probably should have named it something differently, but this is exactly why we need to defund the police. Sadly, the authoritarian white males are still strongly embedded in our society ... and they're well-armed.

@SeaGreenEyez what horrible people to put both you and your mother through that experience. The trauma that little children endure enrages me daily, and even though our experiences were horrible, imagine the trauma in children now!

Since many cops are bullies, and psychological tells us most bullies are cowardly deep down, they are definitely in the wrong profession, if said profession is to serve and protect.

@Beowulfsfriend I've heard that many officers are ex-military.

@Betty Higher than the national average of many jobs, about 20%. Some police departments take 18 year olds. Being ex military is no guarantee of good or bad.

@Beowulfsfriend With different levels of mental health issues including PTSD, I wonder what the vetting process is?

@Betty And they tend to be the worst cops!!

@Redheadedgammy There is also the "Blue Code". Police will protect and back each other even when it is wrong to do so.

@Betty Yes! I don’t understand the guys who are halfway decent covering for the bad cops!

@Betty I'm pretty sure that outside of some state police and feds, and, possibly, some larger cities, vetting is a basic clearance check and little eles, aside from who your Daddy is/was.

@Betty Yep. I knew a few guys who quit policing because: a) they honestly thought they could help, and that isn't the job b) they saw corruption and they weren't getting involved.

@Beowulfsfriend Don't you think that's irresponsible as well as sad?

@Beowulfsfriend Seems to be backwards to me. Shouldn't the good ones be the hero and weed out the bad ones? I remember watching shows as a kid and the good guys always cleaned up corruption. Don't you feel lied to?

@Betty It is sad, but I understand that few people are ready or willing to face shit daily from their coworkers in order to make improvements that may never come. I don't judge them for leaving one career for another. I was a teacher for 20 years, and by all accounts pretty good at it. Stull, one really really shitty administrator and I left. I changed careers; I fought him long enough; there was some satisfaction that the board canned him (I may have influenced that more than a little), but, I admitted to insubordination and I wasn't going to publicly apologize. My insubordination was best for the students and the board recognized that. Still, I had enough.

@Beowulfsfriend I understand but it also means the corrupt ones get away with it and they seem to multiply.