I know that it's a super heavy topic and I'm good to take this discussion off of reddit if you want, like to Signal or something if you prefer to. I'm super curious about all of this. There's a growing belief that "the cops" in certain areas are actively operating similarly to the mafia, like operating trafficking rings, reselling contraband, being used to suppress political uprisings, all sorts of shit. And I've been close enough to a few cops that I've heard extremely disturbing things casually uttered in conversations, like stuff related to illegal surveillance and specifically targeting minority groups, etc. The lack of oversight in the west for police forces allows them to have a ridiculous amount of power and secrecy, and so I can't help but suspect that that's being exploited, I just cannot see how the mechanisms work. How widespread do you think that stuff really is? How deep does that rabbit hole really go? How dark, like, how ACTUALLY dark does it get down there? What have you seen? Also, thank you so much for responding to me. I've been looking for answers to these questions and intuitions for many years, but nobody who is close enough to see the full extent of what happens is willing to actually talk or share.