"Simply because a person is given a badge, a gun, and the authority to enforce the law by the state does not make that person a moral agent."

Who Polices the Police? by Aaron Ginn:

"I have a cousin who works for the Mesa, Arizona Police Department. In October of 2002, Dan Lovelace, an officer who works for the Chandler, Arizona Police Department gunned down a woman who attempted to pass a fake prescription at a local Walgreens. Lovelace claimed the woman attempted to run him down as she sped away from the scene, and he shot her in self-defense. Forensic and eyewitness evidence contradicted his testimony. Despite this, Lovelace was acquitted of all charges against him.

At the time, I asked my cousin what he thought of the verdict. He simply stated that he would never question a fellow officer in the line of duty. 'And besides, she was a felon. A drughead,' he exclaimed. In his view, an officer should never be questioned. His (or her) authority is absolute out in the field. From what I’ve been able to discern, this attitude is systemic in police officers. The force is a fraternity. They stick together and watch each others’ backs.

I recalled this exchange in light of an undercover investigation conducted by a Miami local news crew that aired last month in which an investigator attempted to perform a seemingly simple task: to obtain a form to file a complaint against a police officer. The investigator went to 38 separate departments in South Florida in an attempt to obtain such a form. He walked out of 35 of them empty-handed. But the worst part of the story was the reactions he received from several officers when he asked for the form. Some of the reactions included asking for his personal information in a threatening manner, threatened citations, lewd comments about his wife, asking if he was on medications, etc. One officer went so far as to chase the man out of the office and down the street, at one point putting his hand on his gun in a threatening manner."