Cops Running Over My Friends

So a couple guys I know have both had run-ins with the police in the last few days and now I gotta vent. One guy was riding his bike in a parking lot and was hit from behind by a cop, busting up his bike a little; it's a pretty expensive bike, like $700, but he only asked for $300 because it wasn't that messed up. This cop then says that it's a crime to try to scam a policeman, and he calls for backup and the cop who comes obviously sides with him and says the cop isn't at fault. My friend can try to get $300 bucks out of the cop, but while he can prove how much his bike is worth, he didn't have any witnesses to corroborate his side of the story, and the insurance company will probably take the cops' word over my friends. The other run-in was when my friend was walking through a quiet intersection with stop signs and 25-mph signs and a cop came buzzing by at like 50-60 mph, not only without his lights on, and not only nearly clipping my friend, but even honking his horn at my friend after he was almost hit.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: cops have to face harsher rules than civilians, not lighter. If they do anything outside of a very strict and narrow band of specifically-provided things, I want them to feel the pain big time. They're the only people in our society who have a legitimate monopoly on force, and while that can be good when cops follow the rules and use their power to bust bad guys, it can also foster a feeling that they are the law and that they can bend or even break rules that civilians have to follow. Well screw that.

The cop that almost ran over my friend was going 50 in a 25mph zone; I want his ass handed to him, I want him to sit in jail or be fined so that he can't afford to eat for a week. If he'd been going 30 in a 25-mph zone, he should still have been penalized. Hell, if he'd been going 26, if he'd been consistently driving only one mile per hour faster than the law allows, I'd still want him fined or put on leave or otherwise completely owned, because he needs to know that he is not the law, that he is above nothing, that he is our servant and that he is paid at our expense. I want him to worry that if he does anything illegal or extralegal, even accidentally, that he will need to find himself a new occupation; I want him to constantly worry about that. Did you go into the wrong house to serve a warrant? Great, why don't you take the week off, and I'm not talking with pay.

In choosing to enter the realm of law enforcement, cops chose to leave behind the freedoms and leisurely attitude toward the law that most civilians enjoy; they chose to make their living upholding the law, and for them to have any opportunity to disregard it, by lax (or no) penalties for breaking the law, by being able to take advantage of the law's usual protections, or by any other means, well, that's just a retarded policy choice.