The police have plenty of options for being nasty to you, short of by-the-technical-definition "torture".

Data point: I tried Googling for "police misconduct"...but by the time I'd typed "police miscon", Google was already suggesting half a dozen search strings - all of which amounted to "find a nearly lawyer to help you with your police misconduct case". Sounds like a booming business, eh?

The police are more than happy to have you sit outside in the cold/bake on the pavement/shine excessively bright lights into your eyes/scream un-followable directives at you/deny you the use of bathroom facilities, etc... while 'conducting an investigation'. The internet is RIFE with videos of beat cops using tactics that could certainly qualify as informal psychological or physical torture, or in some cases, literal formal torture (look up Rankin County Goon Squad).

You make a fair point[1], but I'd still like to know about the prevalence of this. Not saying I don't believe there's a problem, but I think that media reporting is skewed towards sensationalism, and any kind of misconduct makes for clickable news.

In a country with more than 300 million people, there's bound to be bad ones, and some of those will become cops. I'd be happy if you could point out some comparative studies between countries, that take this into account, but I guess that's something I could just search for online

[1]: so do the other replies