Originally Posted by
David A. Rowe
Because they're not made by the academy. Society makes them. Families make them. They make themselves. Reading the book Ordinary Men was helpful in realizing that we all hold the potential to be the worst of humanity. I've reflected on this quite a bit, and while I still maintain that, at least in the US, many law enforcement officers don't get paid enough and there needs to be a reform of law and policy in many areas... it seems that all areas of our society find themselves with a truly dangerous endemic threat: a severe lack of individual responsibility, useful education, and a moral fiber robust enough to withstand evil against motives both external and internal.
The amount of people completely ignorant of how laws, law enforcement, and basic civics function has been staggering. I was somewhat guilty of this, but I certainly never called the police several times a week to tell my neighbors to turn their music down, to deal with all of the homeless/mentally ill (it's not illegal to be crazy), or demanded people be arrested with no more evidence than a verbal statement. I would never imagine that, on top of law enforcement and traffic control, people so ubiquitously expect the police to also provide mental health counseling, social conformity enforcement, identify intoxication with all manner of drugs/controlled substances/alcohol, administration of naloxene, trauma care, first aid, child services and be experts in the complete spectrum of use of force -- all with the added expectation of baseline perfection in high-stress situations with little training. Society has relied on police, government, the medical community and so many other institutions to figuratively wipe its ass for decades now, though it's gotten especially bad in the past twenty years.