I spent thirty years in America.

I'm a white guy with an English accent and short hair who wears jackets. Police officers treat me better than the average.

I never saw such a group of incompetent, violent, corrupt people in my life.

I have seen police take bribes - I mean literally a stack of bills. I've seen them beat people into unconsciousness just for talking back. Over and over and over again I've seen them refuse to respond to citizens in distress. My friend got punched in the face by some drunken crazy, he was dripping blood, there were scores of witnesses, and the cops were, "What am I supposed to do?" The guy who did it just laughed and walked away. He won.

I twice interacted with detectives, who were competent and intelligent. But in thirty years, I can't remember even one good experience with beat cops.

Moving to the Netherlands, I discovered competent policing again.

I remember once years ago, I was carrying literally 100 pounds of gear, and I was walking toward a subway turnstile where two cops were leaning, chatting. I said, "Excuse me!" very cheerfully, and one of the cops whipped around with an expression of rage on his face. "GO! AROUND!"

I had the same interaction with a cop here in the Netherlands where I asked him, "Can I go around?" and he laughed and said, "You can if you can!"

(He was making a joke about my Dutch. In Dutch "can" only refers to your ability to do something.)

I used to live next door to a cocaine club that started up at midnight and went till dawn. I would repeatedly go to the station to complain, and each time I was told that this place had been closed years before, and no one had complained about it before, including me - even though the cops were there four nights a week, breaking up fights.)

One day at 5AM there was screaming and crashing. I opened the door to see a guy covered in blood running away. The police showed up and I said, "Why can't you close these guys down?"

One of them said, "Well, they have a liquor license."

I said, "It's 5AM! Bars have to close before 4AM! And they sell cocaine right over the bar!"

I was some tired citizen in his underwear. They couldn't be angry with me. But they wouldn't respond to me, nor look me in the eye.

US policing is a travesty. Police officers kill over one thousand American citizens a year. America has over two million of its own citizens incarcerated.