[anigbrowl]

It's a really awkward problem. I've worked with both the SFPD and Oakland PD (on IT stuff) and known some senior officers and trainers. One observed to me that the psychological profile of police officers is very similar to that of gang members. Ironically, the same officer got into a minor scrape with the motor pool for seizing the engine of a police cruiser after taking me on a high-speed joyride at 3am...

There's no easy answer. It's depressing to hear adult police officers behaving like high-schoolers in the locker room, talking smack about the public and so forth; then again it's not so different from hackers having a laugh at userland's expense. Policing in many places is a scary and dangerous job, and good officers are frequently insulted or blamed for the actions of some others in the same uniform.

I got a first hand taste of this by accident a few years ago. I was working on a film which was being shot in a recently decommissioned jail in Oakland, and one of the actors in a small part became unavailable. I had approximately the right look and was asked to fill in for the part in between my tech duties, so I spent the day in a police costume - movie uniforms are deliberately incorrect to avoid impersonation, but not so much that it's obvious. So between setups I was out on the street a few times to smoke or whatever, and boy did I get an earful from passers-by - and from the opposite folk you'd expect, if you went by stereotypes. A few people wanted to enter the jail to visit friends or relatives who had been arrested, and I would tell them the jail had been shut down and which number to call at City Hall for information. One irate person expressed the hope that someone would drive by and shut me down too. I stayed inside after that one.