"I'm a black ex-cop & this is the real truth about race and policing" (spoiler: it's the leadership)

[uhnope]

He says 15% of police officers are always good, 15% are always bad, and the 70% will just go with the way their police department is run. So in an atmosphere that condones brutality, 85% are potentially brutalizers. In a police department that is run professionally, that 85% will be professional (but there will still be the 15% bad apples).

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer
I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

by Redditt Hudson on May 28, 2015

On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.

That's a theory from my friend K.L. Williams, who has trained thousands of officers around the country in use of force. Based on what I experienced as a black man serving in the St. Louis Police Department for five years, I agree with him. I worked with men and women who became cops for all the right reasons — they really wanted to help make their communities better. And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, "I can't believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!" He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law.

That remaining 70 percent of officers are highly susceptible to the culture in a given department. In the absence of any real effort to challenge department cultures, they become part of the problem. If their command ranks are racist or allow institutional racism to persist, or if a number of officers in their department are racist, they may end up doing terrible things.