[diminoten]

Why so convoluted? If we're going to make up completely unsubstantiated stories, let's go with a simple one.

Bill gets shot in the head because the cop doesn't like him.

The end.

You greatly overestimate how complicated corruption has to be.

[lotsofmangos]

Life is often convoluted as much as it is simple, also that story details an example of parallel construction which is a technique that has been shown to be in current use, while yours seems more of a description of a movie you saw while too drunk to be really paying attention.

[diminoten]

Do you really need me to link to all the times cops shot people they didn't like, for no reason other than the cop didn't like that person?

Bad cops shoot people for no reason all the time, relatively speaking, so this story has plenty of precedence, unlike the above story, which is pure conjecture.

[lotsofmangos]

Both stories have plenty of precedence, I just thought the first was perhaps slightly more illuminating considering the context.

Someone killing someone they don't like, purely because they do not like them, and then getting away with it because they hold a position of influence or power of course happens, and is nothing to do really with whether or not anyone involved is a cop. That situation has been playing out a lot longer than there have been cops in existence and also has very little to do with the current discussion.

edit -

also, in the simple version of your story, where 'a cop shoots someone they don't like, the end', the story is actually too simple to be about corruption.

You need the rest of the story to know if that particular cop is corrupt. As it stands it is just plain murder.

Now if the cop doesn't then hand themselves in and starts planning on how to get away with the killing, then you are into corruption, but also the story gets more convoluted.

[diminoten]

Both stories do not have plenty of precedence. The original story is conjecture - as told, it's never happened. My story (we can add, "and was not punished in any way", for clarity's sake - I thought that was implied), however, has happened many, many times.

[lotsofmangos]

Both stories as told never happened, the first invents a character who is then killed to make a point in the second.

Both stories are about things that occur in the real world, however one is about the subject of privacy and surveillance and one isn't, so given the thread I think the one on topic is possibly more constructive.

[diminoten]

My story actually has happened, multiple times. Happens fairly often, in fact. During the civil rights movement, all sorts of injustices were actually happening to blacks (not just non-consequential murder), for example.

Yet there are no examples of the story being told in the above comments. It's literally fiction, and it hurts the conversation.

[epmatsw]

No need to be a jerk. I think the "shot in the head" story seems much more plausible out of those two scenarios.

[lotsofmangos]

Is not a contest for which story could happen more often though.

[r00fus]

> Bill gets shot in the head because the cop doesn't like him.

I assume that cops while having great leeway in how they frame their story, still have to explain such incidents and have a risk to their career if they don't do a good job of it.

So at the very least the cop has to hate Bill enough to go through the pain of explaining away Bill's death and dealing with any administrative consequences.