What makes a Good Cop? What constitutes a Fair Deal? You tell me!

Let's see if I can comment in a fashion that conveys what I really feel about the proper function of police in a decent society. In a decent society, the police are there to protect ALL the people from the predators, from the most incurably pathological who will, sad to say, always reside among us. However, America is most decidedly not a decent society - it is probably the most stratified society on Earth, with respect to economic inequality, just to begin with. We highly literate folks, who were we to be honest, probably count ourselves among the relatively unscathed, really shouldn't be TOO surprised when people who have been confined to absolutely APPALLING social conditions resort to "street crime." It logically follows that the real, de-facto function of American police agencies is to protect the strong from the weak, in economic terms. The Madison Police Department's TRUE and primary function, as is true of all US police agencies, is to keep our most affluent residents safe and secure, free from potential threats posed by the vast majority of the population, who are actually quite poor by contrast. Put simply, if you're Black, lower-income Hispanic or White, or merely just homeless-looking, you already KNOW you have no business walking the streets of Palm Beach, Whitefish Bay, Madison's "Highlands" or "Upper Maple Bluff." You may have the "right" to walk there, even after dark; but as a practical matter, you'd be well-advised to stay out. In a social system that locks up two million of its citizens, the great preponderance for non-violent "crimes," one can expect a certain degree of bitterness from the denizens and ex-denizens of our barbaric jails and prisons. Prison guards must remain ever vigilant to ensure that those prisoners, most of whom will eventually be released, are carefully monitored, confined, set up against each other along racial lines, even tortured and/or killed. Police agencies routinely profile, harass, injure or kill such people after their incarceration; ex-cons, especially those on probation, are "natural born victims" here in the USA. Put simply, if you're "on paper," you'd better watch your back and mind your P's and Q's. In a social system wherein most workplaces are run in a literally fascist manner, with a totally top-down, hierarchical employee vs. management structure, another main function of the police is to be prepared to fight to the DEATH, in order to maintain that top-down structure, against all those who seek, by hook or by crook, to implement a more equitable arrangement. Unfortunately, the police are also obligated to combat psychotic individuals who go on workplace rampages; though it should be noted a number of such psychos went over the edge at least partially as a result of being on the receiving end of a multitude of workplace abuses. The police officer is essentially here to "protect disorder," as the late Mayor Richard M. Daley said. Chicago's most famous "Boss" may have uttered a malapropism, but he was spot-on, just in a dramatically different way than he intended. American society prefers, for the most part, a Laissez Faire economy in which the winners take all, and social disorder on a massive scale is inevitable. A more just and systematic approach to organizing our economy would go a LONG way towards reducing social strife in our cities, blue-collar suburbs and impoverished rural areas. The implementation of a more sane and compassionate "Justice System" would make the cop's job more viable, less brutal and unyielding. Maybe that would ameliorate the cops' typically demented ideas as to what constitutes ethical and acceptable conduct. We need to overthrow American Capitalism and replace it with a more just social system. Call it Socialism, call it what you will - but we will NEVER have Justice under the corporate hegemony that rules "our" country. If we as a people diligently endeavored to change the system, we would at least be on the road to recovery; perhaps there would be fewer shootings by cops AND less PCP use and violent behavior committed by "street criminals." But I've concluded that most Americans who even entertain ideas concerning the redistribution of wealth would rather keep things the way they are - after all, they desperately cling to their (mostly forlorn hopes) that THEY may become the next Mark Zuckerberg. And so, most of us will continue to fervently support a fundamentally violent, racially and socially unfair status quo, in which the police can only be expected to function as a "necessary evil." To act as the unthinking brutes so many of them are. But a different world is possible; in a different world, the idea of what a public safety officer should be would HOPEFULLY undergo a profound change. Have you any ideas to that effect?