My local PD recently sent a guy home for 10 days WITHOUT pay for merely getting mad at his son's football game and throwing a helmet.

It was unbecoming of their professional standards (even off-duty) and he's representing the community. It even made the news (how I heard about it).

So remember, there are plenty of good cops and good forces out there. It's just the shit ones never get held accountable.

I hear these stories and on one hand I am sad for the good cops and forces out there. On the other I think we do have to focus on the bad ones because we need to fix it. Stories like this are still valuable because they remind us that it is possible to hold your police force to an appropriate standard.

At issue is that the public at large have lost faith that "good" cops and forces will do anything about "bad" cops, that don't "make the news".

to be fair it only takes one bad Apple to ruin a bunch..

People and cops are not "good" or "bad".

People who work in retail who grow to hate customers are not bad. Most probably want to yell at or strangle certain customers but they don't.

Giving people power without accountability is the problem.

Yeah, and I just demonstrated that my local PD is (generally) accountable.

Meanwhile, when I went to college ~100 miles away, man, the PD was horrific. They even lied on a police report I tried to file when I was robbed and said to my face (when I confronted them) "I'm not filing that report for you."

Just firing? How is that not a crime punishable by jailtime?