Every time some crazed bastard on the police force uses excessive force to make an arrest, and every time a police officer uses perfectly reasonable force to make an arrest but the arrestee has a better public relations guy, we get a thread where people talk about how much police officers suck. OK, so there are a-holes on the force. There are also a-holes in politics, law, medicine, the education system, and this message board. That doesn't mean that all cops are crazed maniacs who want to tazer little puppies and kittens while laughing madly and firing AKs into the air. And when somebody is waving a gun around a bunch of cops and yelling about killing them all, he deserves to get shot.

Overall, cops do us all a great service by making our lives safer. Of course, the thousands of arrests that go perfectly smoothly and put deadly criminals behind bars are never reported, but when a cop shoots a gundealer because he looked like he pulled out a gun, we're all morrally outraged.

Why can't we all recognize the great service 99.9% of cops do us, and realize that the other cops are the exception, not the norm?

Seriously... I bet if any of the "Cops are evil incarnations of Darth Vader elder evils" were being chaced by a knife-wielding maniac, they'd suddenly love to see a cop go a little trigger-happy.