AS a Detroit native and long-time resident of southern Michigan I can tell you that there IS a sort ofinstitutionalised racism that goes along with being a patrol cop. Several of my family also worked in the cj system in one capacity or another and it wasnt unusual for racial slurs to come up at family gatherings. When my older sister married a decent black dude and raised a family, it sort of mellowed that scene out.
Call it what you will, deny it or blame the party involved, but overt racism does exist along with other prejudices in the patrol vehicle... Perhaps in the enlightened NW this is not so. If that is the case I hand it to you for solving one of the oppressing social issues of our day.
I've known several very liberal buddys become cops and I've seen this as well. I wonder if it's because African-Americans only make up a small percentage of the population (13% of the US currently) however, yet strangely they commit over 50% of the violent crimes. We (civilians) don't see it (hopefully ever), but cops are forced deal with the true reality daily OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER....BLAH BLAH.... And they often get in trouble for making a necessary and critical judgement call with much less than 1 second to do it. I'm not excusing bad cops, but the huge percentage are trying their best (OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER ALL DAY LONG) and deserve our support.
