Not everyone is an asshole, or on a power trip. But there has been enough instances of cop brutality. The more people you add, the more the number of bad apples increase. Having more people might dilute the percentage of bad apples, but it still increases the number of bad apples. And as another commenter pointed out, when there are lot of cops on the street, and there are no conventional bad guys, the definition of bad guy extends. I certainly won't want to be arrested for jaywalking.
Right. 6 people in your anecdotal experience is a good rebuttal when compared with thousands of years of world history where there have been no problems finding people to do awful things. For the most obvious example, go to Germany in WWII.
>6 people in your anecdotal experience is a good rebuttal //
No, it's not and we all know that. That's why I phrased it that way. However it does falsify the [apparent] claim of it being a universal truth, for me - obviously you'd need to weigh my trustworthiness as an observer+reporter for it to count as evidence.
Specific to my statement and your rebuttal. I only know about the current UK police's history. What's the earliest police force and how do we know they hired sadistic sociopaths?
I don't think the point was that every policeman was a jackass, or even a majority. The point is, that throughout history, anyone with power has been able to convince a lot of people to do their dirty work. Likely many of these people weren't even bad people, they just didn't have the courage to stand up for what is right.
It doesn't falsify anything, and I have no reason to believe you aren't trustworthy. I just need to be able to provide lots of examples where the opposite is true, and I can. It's trivial.
I don't for a second believe that every German soldier in WWII was as bad a person as Hitler made them be. I do believe they were willing to go well past what most people would admit to doing, likely because they were afraid they'd die if they didn't. But millions of jews were slaughtered because it wasn't that hard to convince people to do it.
