this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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In most European countries you need a 4 year university degree in criminology to become a cop. They have the same standards for average police officers as we in North America have for Federal law enforcement. So while it's certainly true that some European countries have shitty cops, the ones with stricter barriers to entry have slightly less shitty cops.
Here's an interactive map although it does seem to be missing a fair bit of data for Europe. The USA has the most abysmal Police training time at just 500 hours of training between being a civilian and being a Police officer.
edit: lol whoops I never actually posted the link earlier. Here it is: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-training-requirements-by-country
Also, in Europe, police are considered to be a part of civilian society. Here, "civilian" means "not part of the military". Police officers are civilians.
That depends, the gendarmerie in France is part of the military, but there is also regular police which isn't. European cops aren't perfect, but it varies a lot by division and country and overall I'd say that your typical every day police you encounter as a normal citizen is fine, they're usually at least somewhat polite and won't shoot you or your dog for no reason. Some of them might go on ego trips now and then with some youth or something.
Where you see more issues is with riot police which is starting to look like a RoboCop army in some countries just smashing into protesters, or some other anti-crime divisions where they act like cowboys and leads to some events where some kids get killed or something like that, but it's much more rare than in the US.
In some countries like in the Netherlands they are next level and you basically don't see them or when you do they're always super nice and polite, using positive tactics and just generally doing public service work which is what all police should be.