You did it too!
SOME individual policemen dehumanize criminals, of course. But ‘police’ encompasses far too many individuals for that sort of blanket statement to be anything other than a little risky. And categorizing a whole group like that does a huge disservice to quite a few of them, who are decent and sometimes awesome human beings who have real lives, just like ours.
I know there are some policemen who’ve demonstrated horrible behavior, but the moment we give somebody a negative association because of a group they belong to that’s not definitively valid, we set us all up for failure.
I’m not saying it’s not a very common, socially acceptable trait in our culture. I’m saying it’s a very bad trait and the moment we try to impose any sort of will on a dehumanized group is the moment we become assholes ourselves.
