No bad apples, just apples. I know it sounds like I'm blaming police. I'm not. I'm blaming the institution of policing in America. You can take a perfectly ethical, trained, and non-cognitively biased individual, feed him or her into the policing system and produce an executioner. Not out of outright malice but out of a fear.
This is the misconception.
We're actively creating environments that JUSTIFY the suspicion of deadly threats as a nation. And lets be honest here - we then thrust low-skill labor individuals to police those areas having a) a deficiency of education and training themselves, b) wide jurisdiction authority to act with deadly force, c) little to no oversight, d) litigative protection and outright impunity, and e) no tangible investment in the communities they serve.
Policing in America needs to be dismantled. It needs to be rebuilt from the root up with the same level of investment we've reserved for the military. It's a racist system designed to insulate the wealthy from potential harm. It's a system built on fears both rational and irrational with far too much military proliferation in terms of tactics and arms.
The police in America are NOT an extension of a free country. Because America is NOT a free country. America is a police state.