"Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men."
Police are often the highest paid employees on a government's payroll. They get to retire with a full pension after only 20 years of working, and they often make as much as, or more than, software engineers do. The strong-arm of the state needs to be held to a high standard.
On the flip side, I had a friend who was a homicide cop in NYC.
By the time he retired, he was broken by the things he'd seen and dealt with that nobody should ever see or deal with. He got a nice pension, but he earned it.
My grandfather was a detective. He never once talk about his day as a cop to us the grandchildren. He was very cynical and suspicious of other people too. I guess this is what happened when you had to deal with the worst of society on daily basis.
Once there was an offhand comment about Soylent Green, and he said, "I've seen the stuff." It was in a bottle that the murderer kept in his fridge. If the police hadn't thought to do a DNA test on the liquid, they wouldn't have realized what it was.
Every Spring NYC has "floaters". These are people who died and were thrown into the river. Often with weights attached. As the water warms slightly, the body starts decomposing and eventually bloat from the gas makes it buoyant so it comes to the surface.
He once commented, "I don't think that there is a way that one human can kill another that I haven't seen." He then began giving a long list.
> In my opinion, police should be held to the highest standard. It seems like they're held to the lowest.
That's a bit harsh. Standards (and holding to them) varies considerably by jurisdiction (and sometimes by precinct).
And before anyone accuses me of making a "Not All Police" argument or anything similar, I'll point out that, generally speaking, poor enforcement of such standards (and harsher responses by officers) seem to be associated with communities that are poorer or have more minorities.
There are also issues with 'problem officers' getting shuffled off to departments in other cities or states without adequate record keeping or sufficient scrutiny, which can result in them tending to collect or concentrate in certain places (and predictably, that makes it more likely that such officers will have like-minded colleagues that are willing to cover for them).
