Stop being a dick about the police already

You see it occasionally, perhaps in the form of an obnoxious meme of Facebook:

Or perhaps you heard it from a friend, coworker, or talk show segment where a talking head who has never had a legal problem in their life gets all high and mighty about people getting abused by the police.

Perhaps you are tempted to hold the opinion yourself, after all, the police only go after people who break the law right? If folks would just not do that, then there wouldn't be any problem.

You might be an idiot then, and knowingly or otherwise supporting a culture of racism and toxic masculinity that directly contributes to nearly every social and political problem we have in this country today.

First, the police are not to be trusted under nearly any circumstance, unless you are both rich an white, you are not important or threatening enough to be treated with respect by law enforcement in this country, don't believe me? Ask any black person who drives in the south, or anybody poor who has had their property literally taken away from them by the cops without charges being filed. You don't need to be doing anything wrong to be treated poorly by the police, and avoiding breaking the law will not actually help if you are a vulnerable person and a cop decides they want to take advantage of that.

Second, you understand we actually have a legal system right? With laws governing what sort of punishment is appropriate for a crime? It's an interesting, and seemingly little known fact that shoplifting does not carry the death penalty under the laws of any state in America, and yet...
The link there is of a civilian, but the point remains, we don't live in the ruined wasteland of the future quite yet, Judge Dredd is not the law of the land, and in fact was intended as a parody of that kind of policing, not a fucking example to be emulated.
Teenagers don't deserve to be beaten into a concussion for disrupting class, Michael Brown didn't deserve to be shot dead for, what, jaywalking? Shoplifting? Either way there are actual punishments on the books for those crimes, and none of them include being shot in the street.

When you support the police blindly, and holding an opinion like the picture above has is doing exactly that, you are supporting summary executions by both official and unofficial bodies for crimes that would normally garner a fine or a short jail sentence, you are also supporting a system that inordinately punishes those with the least representation, poor and minorities, you are part of the problem, it is bad and you should feel bad.

Fortunately there is something you can do! Just... stop, that's all, just stop telling people they deserved to have their rights taken away with little or no cause. You don't have to start liking minorities, the poor, or criminals, you don't have to start fearing the police(though you should), you don't even have to get up and say anything when abuses of power happen, you just have to stop defending the bastards who think that death, bodily harm, or long term imprisonment under inhuman conditions are the appropriate responses to minor violations, that's all.

It's the minimum possible, you could do more if you wanted, it's cool if that's the case, but if you can't muster up the energy to even be outraged on the internet will you please at least stop supporting a police state?