Police/Sheriff powers are a bit over that thin blue line.

Why Are There So Many Power Hungry Police Officers?

21 hours ago

calaber24p72 in life

I want to preface this by saying that I don’t think that every cop is power hungry and I am actually friends with a few that are very nice people. That being said, the profession like many other professions attracts a certain type of person and I want to talk about the potential reasons why. Everyone knows at least one power hungry cop who you never want to run into. Either they go beyond their duty to make trouble for people, or take advantage of their stature for their own gain. There is a reasonable explanation why.

Much like there are many CEOs and industry leaders that are psychopaths, the very job of a police officer is appealing to a subset of the population. Many people who are enrolling in the police academy might be doing so because for the greater part of their life they lack the respect or status they want. Becoming a cop is a way to gain that instant status symbol because people are afraid of getting into legal trouble. Since becoming a cop isn’t exactly the hardest process in the world to do, people don’t get weeded out for certain issues. Many who join the police force might have signs that they are going to be corrupt or power hungry, but in small towns around the country the amount of cops is rising and they need to fill positions.
There is also a great appeal to being a cop in a small town versus a large city where there is most likely far less accountability.

In a small town most of the work youll be doing is traffic stops, ticketing and petty work like noise violations ect. There are occasionally more serious crimes, but in many smaller towns they happen maybe once or twice annually. Because of this many cops simply just become bored with the monotony and the only way to stand out to get a promotion is to issue more tickets or search for problems where there aren’t any.

There also might be another explanation in the form of where many cops are recruited from, which is ex military personnel. Many people after they exit the military, look for similar jobs and one of those happens to be a police officer. So many use prior military experience to segway into a police officer position. The problem with this is that the military is a very different organization than the police force. While the military on foreign soil mostly works overseeing the population and restricting what people can and cant do, the police force should be protecting the population with what they are legally entitled to. Sometimes the line between the two becomes blurred and you end up restricting your own citizens.

Like I said in the beginning there are many reasons why so many cops can be power hungry or corrupt, but I think these are just a few and perhaps a few of the more important ones. There are many good cops and in my opinion being one is more of a hands off job, but many people, especially in this age see ndiffretly. What are your opinions?