Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading your law enforcement stories This is exactly the problem. You read the stories , that is, the exceptional cases. Don't extrapolate from exceptions.
I expected this comment and I phrased it specifically to get this reaction. Let me ask you this: Are you sure these cases are exceptional, not systemic? Naming something exceptional usually means that the system can be left alone. This might be the case, but I'm worried that you people are in a frog-in-boiling-pot situation. So, let me rephrase: do you have trustable statistics showing that police brutality is not sy…
I agree with the implicit assumption in your question. When trying to evaluate whether there is a serious problem, in any area, we should rely on data. These stories, heartbreaking as they are, are just anecdotes. Thus, lacking proper data, I can't tell whether there is a systemic problem with police brutality in the US: I can't answer your question. I'm sure such statistics do exist, but since I'm not from the US, it's not exactly something I tend to pick up on.
However, I am somewhat familiar with the dynamics involved with issues like this. There are usually some few exceptions that stand out enough to be picked up in the media, but most don't. I'd guess that there are an order of magnitude more cases that are either not severe enough to be reported on, or too common to be interesting, but are still beyond what a society would consider ideal, were they to come to light.