Generalized Police Bashing Needs to Stop

[MrBig]

This is my first original post on DU. I've lurked here for quite awhile making the occasional post here and there, but I haven't been so disgusted by anything as much as I have by the complete generalized bashing of all law enforcement officers here.

It's important for all of you cop bashers/haters to keep in mind:

• I don't doubt that you've had some terrible interactions with the police, and it might even be based on the racist/prejudicial beliefs of said officer(s). This does NOT, however, mean that ALL police officers are racist/prejudice. All of your interactions with police officers combined does not come close to equaling "most" or "all" police officers.
  
  
• The generalizations that you are making about police officers are the same ones that led you to distrust police in the first place. Saying "all police are bad" is not true. Saying "most" police are bad isn't true unless you can show that there are at least 400,000 police officers that are bad. This is no different than saying "most poor people are lazy" or "most Muslims are terrorists". These are generalizations.
  
  
• It is NOT progressive to generalize a group of people.
  
  
• I don't know what happened with Mr. Gates and Officer Crowley. I'll even say I believe Officer Crowley overreacted. I don't believe there were any racial motivations on the part of Officer Crowley, but even if there were you cannot take that attribute and put it on most or all police officers. It's simply wrong.
  

I just needed to get that off my chest. Hopefully we can have better discourse on the subject than has been seen recently.