[mlinhares]

Dude, I paid to have stickers and "sheriff cards" to make it less likely cops are going to stop me cos i'm a "friend of the police".

Its wild to read cops in the US are not corrupt, did people just not read modern US history? Prohibition? Civil rights? Union busting? The Pinkertons?

[korse]

Funny story about the Pinkertons if you don't already know... if you skateboard or do similar shenanigans involving parking structures or industrial wasteland, you've probably been chased by their direct descendants.

[1] https://www.securitas.com/en/newsroom/press-releases_list/se...

[Volundr]

Hey! I resemble that remark!

I worked as a security guard through college. Never chased a skateboarder, but I did ask them nicely to leave at least once a week.

[FireBeyond]

> Dude, I paid to have stickers and "sheriff cards" to make it less likely cops are going to stop me cos i'm a "friend of the police".

In many states the FOP stickers and cards are almost like "registration". You get the sticker to put on your card and just like vehicle registration, a year to show you're current. The FOP will say that's just to "show your ongoing support", but it's rather hard not to see it as "are you paid up? you don't get to get a sticker ten years ago...".

Various FOPs have also sued or done eBay take downs of people selling the "year sticker".

[potato3732842]

They're not literally corrupt. There's just a huge amount of conflict of interests, bad incentives and bad behavior.

People play fast and loose with the word "corrupt" the same way they do with "conspiracy".

[mlinhares]

You could try searching "police corruption in the US" before saying they're not literally corrupt.

They will literally grab a cop that was prosecuted and found guilty, hide the records and have them hired in some other police force in a nearby town. There's a whole mafia setup going on, organized by their unions, we're not far from having "police controlled neighborhoods" like in many LATAM countries.

[potato3732842]

Yeah, corruption happens but it's not endemic nor is it accessible to the everyman.

Yeah they'll bend the law for their buddies but we cannot just shove money in their face to make them be reasonable when they bother us like you can in Mexico. Instead we have to shove 10x as much into all manner of rent seeking systems to maintain an air of legitimacy (this last part is a gripe I have with most government stuff here, not just law enforcement related).

[heavyset_go]

I don't know what you'd call literal police gangs that kill people for initiation rites, kill their own whistleblowers, etc other than corruption.

https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...

[AlexandrB]

"least corrupt" != "not corrupt"

What you're describing is bad but also pretty mild by international standards.