I keep needing to remind myself of something: I have liked every cop I’ve ever known.  The number’s not large, mind you; four, perhaps five people,  one of whom’s faces I can remember clearly but whose name has escaped me.  At least one is a Facebook friend who may read this.  Alternate universe me actually is a police officer; if you Google search my real name most of the results you’ll get are for the other guy since I’m as diligent as I can be about keeping my name off the Web.

But as much as I want to generalize, I keep having to remind myself: I know cops.  I am friends, or at least cordial acquaintances, with two of them.  They aren’t all bad people, as much as it frequently seems like they are.  They’re just embedded in a system that encourages them to be bad people, and if…