I recognize your dilemma, mostly, I really do. I also appreciate almost everything you've said in your above comments. So I hope you don't think this post is anything directed at you personally, you seem to be a thoughtful person, and to me, thoughtful is about the most rad thing a person can be.
You mentioned what police can do on an indivual level and I think my personal anecdote is applicable, I think it illustrates at least part of what is happening in the US right now. You may actually appreciate this as I see you're tagged as University Police.
A number of years ago, the university I was attending had won a pretty big hockey game. After the game, people piled out into the streets to celebrate. Now I'm not a sports fan, at all, but my friends and I were partying at a house that just so happened to be in the thick of it all, so we went out on the streets to join the celebrations.
All was peaceful, for the most part, normal drunken college kids acting like drunk college kids do, annoyingly loud, singing, etc... Well, about 15 minutes go by and the riot police showed up and the mood in the air just shifted, it was immediate, and it was real. The tension just suddenly appeared.
The police were asking everyone to leave and the kids weren't moving fast enough, so the police started being a little more aggressive.
It only took a matter of like 10 minutes before the whole scene just descended into police lines facing student lines.
We decided to just stand on my friends porch and watch, ya know, just get out of the way. Please keep in mind, at the time I wasn't really into protesting and I certainly wasn't going to challenge a riot police line lol.
Well, as the police line started to pass us, we're talking with an acquaintance who standing at the base of the porch stairs, and suddenly this cop walks up and starts wailing on the kid with his club, the kid was bleeding all over, it was fucking terrible -- this was a good kid, typical cliche of a computer nerd lol, shy, opposite of aggressive. My friend, she walked off the porch to help the kid up, the cop turned around, walked like 15 feet back towards us and started hitting my friend. She did nothing wrong except go to help this kid up.
The look on that cops face, it shifted my whole future and my whole belief system.
I was the furthest thing in the world from a radical at the time, I thought most protesters were kind of moonbatty, I had no real interest in politics at all. The minute I saw that cop swing on the kid, and then my friend, I changed. My beliefs shifted dramatically.
With the dozens of police who were there, if only one of the officers had lifted a finger to stop that abusive cop, I would not have changed. I would have assumed it was one crooked cop who would eventually get himself fired or something. But, not a single cop did anything to protect those two from being beaten.
Up until that moment, I literally always believed the police were there to protect us. They kept us safe ya know? The shock and feeling of helplessness I felt then... *shiver*
The police who did nothing changed me, and at times, I resent them for it.
Now I'm a radical, not a radical in the Let's have a bloody revolution sense. I still don't believe in violence against people. But I'm a radical in the take it to the streets Occupy style and fuckin take what is ours. I regularly attend street demonstrations and I have a severe distrust of police.
It only took one incident to shift me, and I didn't even really know the kid who got hit initially. I can't imagine how radical I would be if I was uneducated, if I didn't have a great job, and I routinely saw the police disrespect, harass, beat, or worse.
So when I hear a police officer say there isn't much they can do as individuals, I have to respectfully disagree and say: Stop the bad police. Protect the individuals. Let us see you do it. It will make more difference than you realize.
Those police who did nothing changed me, and I guarantee they are changing many others.