[tylerhwillis]

I share a lot of the sentiment here, but I also think our generation is conditioned from a decade of hearing about all the newsworthy corner cases.

As an example: cops don't always make it worse, 95+% of the time they are helpful and create better outcomes for society. That said, all we've heard for the last ten years are the news stories that you mentioned - so we think of them as a negative force.

I think this same problem applies, in some capacity, to all the institutions listed here. That said, every single one of these institutions needs a massive overhaul to be a functioning member of the future (except cops, I really think you're wrong on that, they may need new priorities from the government -- but their organizational structure and methods seem to work pretty well).

[angersock]

I'll answer this directly before going home.

The problem is that departments are too underfunded to maintain a large presence (the beat cop chilling on your street in your neighborhoods substation), and the construction of cities (especially suburbs) is such that they cruise around in cop cars most of the day, except when they're actually engaged in an incident.

That means that, to the normal person, the sudden appearance of a cop is that of an alien "other"--and I would suspect a similar sense of detachment from their side of the fence.

This also means that when they get involved, they have to use standardized practices, which over time snowball into the impersonal human-crushing machinery we have today.

While it might work for society at large, for the percentage of folks who get caught in the gears it can be pretty terrible--especially because the cops (by which I also include prosecuting attorneys, judges, and the other apparatchik of the judicial and executive branch) have no reason to be lenient or reasonable. They simply dispense the law, as written.

The cases where the cops aren't bad news bears? Those, I suggest, are the exception rather then the rule--modern policing is quite reactionary in nature.

[Zigurd]

> * 95+% of the time they are helpful and create better outcomes for society.*

That's "one 9." If you are black, that service level is practically a guarantee you will experience a catastrophic failure.

[sliverstorm]

The irony is your parent calls out a lack of trust in the news, and yet doesn't seem to recognize the places the news has shaped his/her other opinions.