Why the US military usually punishes misconduct but police often close ranks
It doesn&#x27;t seem to actually explain anything.  I was in the military and have some cop friends so maybe I can explain the divergent sociology:<p>Post police academy, AFAIK police never experience collective punishment.  In the army its normal if someone loses a weapon to have everyone doing a few pushups.  When you saw your squadmate without a rifle, why didn&#x27;t you ask them wtf they&#x27;re doing?  From large to small scale cops experience punishment alone and military suffers as a group.  Small crime breeds large crime and (pardon the pun) military simply self-polices more than cops as a leadership style.<p>I can&#x27;t blame cops too much as they have to deal with demographics where saving face is important and one cop dropping another cop for pushups because they lost their summons-writing pen is impractical.  Which brings up sociological difference where the enemy for cops is 40% to 100% of their daily interactions and is up close and personal, so screw these guys I&#x27;m breaking bad, whereas 100% of human interactions in the military is with buddies and the bad guys don&#x27;t speak our language and the firefights are at 25 or more yards in a very abstract sense.  Essentially cops spend most of their time with people who hate them so &quot;getting even&quot; makes more sense, whereas military spends nearly 100% of their time with friends and why would you want to screw over your buddy?<p>The military bakes corporate style reorganization into the cake, you can expect a PCS move around the world every two or so years, its very unusual to have TV or Movie style old timers who&#x27;ve been in the unit forever.  Even in the Reserves if you are in long enough to get E-5 or E-6 you&#x27;re almost certainly going to have to move to get that next promotion and higher level leadership always rotates even in the reserves.  Noobs don&#x27;t even know HOW to be corrupt for the first quarter of their time on station.  Its a valuable learning experience and filters out people who can&#x27;t learn quickly on the job, which for military is good.  Cops on the other hand will have some old sgt who&#x27;s been sitting on the same desk for 25 years and the good ole boys network of questionable activities formed decades ago and ...<p>The military is highly paid; civilians don&#x27;t understand that when I got out (a quarter century ago) the current pay rate for me would be just under $3K&#x2F;month, but that&#x27;s not before tax like civilians, that&#x27;s after getting housing, food, insurance, essentially all I have to pay for $3K&#x2F;mo would be bar bill and car expenses.  Cops on the other hand get paid approximately as much as public school teachers aka F-all not much in a pyramid scheme where people scream about the top of the pyramid making $100K but realize the top of the pyramid is incredibly small (like pro sports salaries) and the base of the pyramid is an immense number of people making $50K&#x2F;yr or often far less.  Speaking of pyramids, in the military every 5-yr experience E-4 makes the same $3K&#x2F;mo after all expenses are paid, whereas with both cops and teachers its a pyramid where everyone has to compete to get up to that $100K&#x2F;yr contract, there&#x27;s a different attitude when you&#x27;re competing vs when you all get the same paycheck.<p>Edited to add another important sociological point:  Cops usually work alone or in a very small group like two people.  Two people can keep a secret, even three.  The smallest &quot;working group&quot; I can think of in the military would be special forces teams with at least 4 people, but the rank and file work in groups who can&#x27;t keep secrets.  You can&#x27;t expect to catch a cop who works alone or with a buddy, so things get worse and worse until they make the news in a big way; whereas the first time someone screws up in the military they generally get caught and kicked out so things rarely get worse over time.<p>Note that outsiders think the military to cop pipeline is smooth.  It CERTAINLY is NOT, and my buddies complain a lot about the sociological differences mentioned above along with others.  Outsiders think they just wear a different uniform, but its really a wild cultural shift to go from military to being a cop.  Maybe its the smallest shift to go from MP to civie police compared to other vocations, but its still a big shift in an absolute sense.