Why I feel the police are currently the biggest threat to me

This post builds on ideas from my G20 braindump. There may be some repetition.

Let's brainstorm. What bad things could happen to me in normal everyday life?

I could be attacked. I could be sexually assaulted. I could be robbed. I could be abducted.

The police attacked people - there are bruises to show for it. There are reports of the police sexually assaulting people. There are reports of people getting their personal effects confiscated and not getting them back. Plainclothes police grabbed people off the street and threw them in vans and detained them for 36 hours.

Now you're thinking "Yeah, sure, 'there are reports'. We weren't there, we don't know the whole story, we just have someone else's word" That's true. That's also the case where these things are done by non-police perps. I have never witnessed anyone being attacked, sexually assaulted, robbed, or abducted. I've just heard tell about it. But it still needs to be considered a credible threat.

But the difference between regular bad guys doing bad things and the police doing bad things is that it's easier to stop regular bad guys. If some random attacks me while, a passer-by who intervenes would be a hero. If police attack me, a passer-by who intervenes would be charged with obstructing justice. (To say nothing of the fact that many passers-by would assume I'm a bad guy by virtue of the very fact that I'm being attacked by police, whereas being attacked by a random automatically makes me a damsel in distress.) Plus, yes, there is the fact that if a bad guy grabs me and takes me away, the police might try to find me, whereas if the police detain me there's nothing much anyone can do.

Now you're thinking "Exactly! The police are the ones who try to find you when a bad guy abducts you! That's why you should trust them." But that, too, is the case with non-police perps. There are all kinds of not-purely-trustworthy characters out there who might help you when you face a bigger risk. For example, I was once riding on a subway late at night when a drunk guy got on and started verbally harassing people (including me). Another man, a rather shady-looking character, intervened and got rid of the drunken harasser. (He was rather clever about it, too. When we pulled into the next station, he said to the drunk guy "Hey man, this is your stop." The drunk guy replied "Thanks, man!" and got off.) But that doesn't mean I should inherently trust shady-looking men on the subway late at night. They're still a credible threat unless proven otherwise.

Analogy: Some, and maybe even most, strange men on subways are actually nice guys who will protect a damsel in distress. But imagine if there were reports of a number of men who, whenever they saw a woman being harassed in public, would grab her, throw her in their van against her will, and lock her in their basement for a couple of days for safekeeping. Then, just to be safe, they go back out and grab every other woman they can find and do the same. Suddenly, all strange men are threats, even if they are purportedly trying to protect us.

Understand, I'm a law-abiding citizen. I've never been in any sort of trouble, never even had a ticket. If the police have any record of me whatsoever, all it will show is the police checks that I've passed for my job so I can be entrusted with confidential and personal information.

But the police can hurt me as badly as anyone else can, while making it harder for others to help me than if I were being hurt by a civilian bad guy. And based on what we saw during the G20, I cannot trust that the fact that I'm doing nothing wrong will be enough to make them not want to hurt me. So they are a credible threat unless proven otherwise.