Blame the media? No, blame the prosecutors and others in charge for not prosecuting the bad cops.

I read this the other day and it sums it up quite nicely.

"Cops aren't all bad. It's just a few bad apples!"

And I totally agree. However: Farmers throw the bad apples away! They don't give it paid time off then put it back in the bushel. The other apples don't close rank around the bad apple saying it's actually a great apple and you must just hate all apples if you don't agree.

The rot from a rotten apple spreads to the good ones if you don't throw it away. That's why bad apples get thrown the fuck out.

Would you trust apples if the rotten ones got passed off as good? Would you happily take a bite of a big red apple if there was a one in ten chance its filled with wormy rot?

Or to make the stakes higher: If every once in a while one of these apples is so rotten its poisonous and can actually kill you, would you be happy to be handed an apple? Knowing MOST apples are good but there's a small chance this one could kill you because the rotten ones don't get thrown out?

No, you'd understandably be nervous as fuck. you'd be like "Hey farmers start throwing away the bad apples! It's making me trust ALL apples a whole lot less."