Police abuse and false charges: two words you will frequently find coming out of the mouths of news anchors and plastered on the headlines of news articles. Why does it happen? .
Response .
One Google search on police abuse or corruption yields thousands of results. There are numerous websites specializing on police abuse and misconduct and all the thousands of articles and horror stories. Police not doing their job is so often seen that there are no widespread statistics on exactly how much is going on. All that is known is that there is a lot of misconduct. I myself have been the subject of police misconduct after an officer pulled me over early in the morning for having a "suspicious vehicle. " The officer claimed he smelled marijuana and took me out of my vehicle and put me in another officer's car and ransacked through my vehicle, damaging several of my personal belongings. After subsequently pulling me over for nothing, damaging my personal items ($300 glass aquarium among one of the items), and finding absolutely nothing illegal, he let me go, claiming the smell came from a wild marijuana plant. I was pulled over in a parking lot of my fitness center in an area that was surrounded by businesses and parking lots. I have zero criminal record, do not smoke marijuana, and had gotten my car detailed the day before, putting in five "new car " scents. Why did this happen to me? In The Power Trip by Jonah Lehrer he goes on to explain how "when you give people power, they basically start acting like fools. "(646) Why does power sometimes lead police to do illegal things? Well, according to psychologists, "one of the main problems with authority is that it makes us less sympathetic to the concerns and emotions of others. For instance, several studies have found that people in positions of authority are more likely to rely on stereotypes and generalizations when judging people.
