Elitist? All of you live in the United States and I don't. To me it sounds factual.
I'm actually not all that bothered that the police almost always protect their own. It's a job that doesn't pay very well, and you have to put up with who knows what sort of abuse from all sorts of lowlifes. And of course it can be extremely dangerous. So it makes sense that they form a protective fraternity the way they seem to. What bothers me is that legally police officers are able to murder citizens in cold blood and almost invariably walk away from it with no punishment other than occasionally losing their job. That to me is completely insane. But, again, I recognize that there's nothing I can do about it and rather than sweat out every traffic stop wondering whether this flat topped redneck will have had one Red Bull too many I just got tf out of there and will let you guys sort it out.
I have interactions with the police here far more than I ever would in the US. For one thing, they often set up checkpoints in my neighborhood in the city. I would say that maybe once in every ten passes they'll ask me to produce my license. Otherwise they just waive me through. There are plenty of foot patrols around here, too. And there are lots of traffic police on the highway. They occasionally jump out and waive me over and accuse me of speeding. Sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't. If I was I laugh with them and most of the time they let me go. If I wasn't I usually jump out and start yelling at them and usually we end up laughing and they let me go. The point is, I have never, ever wondered if a police officer here was going to decide he needed (or wanted) to shoot me. In the US I have that possibility in the back of my mind during every encounter. And let's just say that I don't exactly have a "wide-set nose."
The above is of course purely anecdotal, but in ten years here I know of a single case of an innocent citizen being shot by the police. The car they were in matched the car of a group of bad guys and some police officer reacted in a regrettable way and bad things happened. In the US virtually every day there is a new example of an officer shooting an unarmed suspect, a suspect who was fleeing on foot, a child, an unarmed child, etc. It is an epidemic and it is a disgrace to the society that anyone who is actively working to curb this violence is widely decried as some sort of modern day afro-radical or, worse, a social justice warrior.
Finally - and I'm not going to spend much time on this - but if you really think that the place where my family and I live is some sort of shithole, well, as usual, you could not be more mistaken.
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