Good Cop/Bad Cop

As a white woman, I have the privilege of knowing (believing) that if a crime is committed against me, the police will come, fairly promptly. With my own privilege in mind everything we've read this semester seems to unveil the anti-privilege: police not showing up, taking people into the public sphere to arrest them for a petty offense, police brutality, and that if I commit a crime, I'm probably not going to suffer from it.
The criminal justice system is terrible. In addition to creating a fictitious case against people, the cases often have juries whose own prejudices force them to convict an innocent person. Moskos writes of how the courts, "reasoned that the drugs are not a threat to the officer's safety." Unfortunately, in Memphis over the holiday break a police officer was killed in a drug bust.This officer had worked with the police force for a long time, had 4 children, a bad relationship with her husband, and was about to get a divorce, finally. With the loss of her life, a reasonable, good police officer by everything heard about Officer Martoiya Lang and what the media portrays, her family now faces a life of poverty and fear. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a parent, and especially not losing a parent whose job was to protect community. While one honorable police officer was shot, two others killed a man who had a gun permit and was not apparently doing anything too wrong (unless the officers are honest that he was pointing his gun at them):
This is a more recent article addressing the one that Professor Jamerson posted last week with some more of the consequences at hand. Even my assumption that this officer, who was under previous "radar" for weird behavior, was lying shows that there are prejudices everywhere and the police is under a terrifying lens, that may just encourage trying to get away with as much as possible to boost arrest numbers.
The Flyer article also mentions an officer who is going to jail for 84 months because of 10 kilos of cocaine possession.
Good Cop/Bad Cop "The Wire"
While I feel being a police officer should be a job that changes lives for the better, protects others and the community, it seems as though police have lost their clout with communities but detrimentally kept their authority, creating an imbalanced system for communities and a fear of the people who are supposed to protect. On the other hand, we have the Smith article that addresses have former street citizens going to work for their communities by using their respect from their former lives with the code to keep neighborhoods safe. These patrols manage to use their former lives as ways to bolster others like them out of harmful situations and help the people patrolling to fill themselves with something beneficial rather than crime. Maybe the police, need police, which is a ridiculous concept, but if it works for the streets to have street people, maybe?

Even the good guys can be affected to do bad things, but the bad guys, through these crime patrol programs occasionally. Anything can be abused, and unfortunately, it's often power.