Most occupations would have better recruits to choose from if they offered better pay, less work and earlier retirement. But would they really be better, or just more plentiful?

Of course police officers have an inherently dangerous job, and there's no doubt that society requires that we have them. We need them. Yet, the qualifications are relatively low -- instead of requiring higher and continuing education, intensive training and regular psychological reviews, we accept a bare minimum from the people to whom we give maximum authority. It's the officers on the street who make the biggest difference, good or bad. But the ones with the best qualifications and experience are usually behind a desk due to a higher rank. It seems backwards ... shouldn't the officer with the most public interaction - not to mention the most to lose - be the most prepared?

If a black guy had written a column as wishy washy and as little researched as this he would have been handcuffed and possibly waterboarded.

Recent data show that there are relatively small numbers of cops who turn in most of the "resisting arrest" reports in NYPD. Five percent of cops generate 40% of arrest resisters. Sixty percent don't have any. Brooks uses sources as far back as 2000 and doesn't mention the skewed numbers for the 5% which were published recently.

Thus the entire column---i.e., "police forces" is silly. Concentrate on the 5% and at least point us toward an understanding of that segment first.

I would bet a Christmas Starbucks latte that the Garner cop is in that 5% segment. These are logically the interactions which can turn deadly. Why don't we start there  

I get the thinness of the thin blue line. And as you say Michael, "we" get it too.

Who that "we" gets to be has certainly been under discussion. 

The Brooks angle addresses only the "we" he cares about. To some extent, he is just another shout out from an interested party. It is not an absurd point of view. But it doesn't accept responsibility for what is happening.

What is happening? There are the people who become dramatic symbols of the failures of the system but the failures of the system are a hard thing to look at for long. Brooks has not been hitting the keyboard railing against the inequities of the penal system as a whole.

The Brooks point of view is exquisitely cynical. As if to say:

You will forget this awful thing because it is only just like those other awful things you have already agreed to accept as an unavoidable term of the social contract.

There are times when you will do your job really well but will be treated with contempt. A lot of the moments that aren't dangerous or exciting are tedious.

The thing is, we get it.

Well, that all depends upon who the "we" refers to, doesn't it?

We don't need David Brooks or anyone, for that matter, telling us how hard it is to be a police officer.  That knowledge is embedded in our culture and our legal system.  People so well understand how difficult and dangerous the job is that they have extended benefit of the doubt beyond its reasonable boundaries. 

There are two problems with that reasoning. First, the fact that institutions grant a group favor doesn't necessarily imply that people look upon that group favorably. The two may be completely unrelated. I'd argue that at least where the federal government is concerned, elected officials are hyper-empowered and still loathed by ordinary citizens. Second, while the majority of people may feel sympathetic towards the police, your "we" excludes some people who plainly do not. Recently, I've both heard and read comments from people which indicate that they hold the police in contempt. Originally, I assumed that this sort of comment shouldn't be taken at face value, that they were was really only meant to apply to the handful of cops who're bad actors rather than to police officers generally. When I've asked, I've been told that they meant exactly what they said, which has included assertions that most people who become cops do because they crave the authority to legally dominate people and that it's harder to find a cop who isn't racist than one who is. I honestly don't know if this is just an emotional reaction to recent events which will naturally dissipate over time, or if it's really a long held conviction that's been given voice as a result of all the attention focused on police misconduct of late. I hope it's the former.

In response to the George Kelling angle:

His insistence that the people doing the job have to work outside of stated parameters excludes one obvious alternative; develop a protocol that is not so much at odds with the actual work.

Like other risky work, protecting the people doing it has to be a primary principle of organization. Kelling's argument assumes that principle is at odds with the requirements of the law. Other people doing dangerous work don't accept such abject resignation to failure in their work. They change the methods. They get on with it.

The issue of cop behavior has become a perfect storm of conflation. It touches upon how the inequities of our society are preserved. It touches upon laws that cannot be truly enforced. It asks how much force is needed to keep the peace in any particular place. None of the above are the same thing.