Do you Hate the Police?

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I do not like the Police, and I no longer trust them. The way they treat people, even innocent people, changed my mind about them. I used to think the police only treated criminals badly, but I found out first hand that if they think someone is guilty, they mistreat that person AND his family and friends in their effort to get an arrest and move up the career ladder. This incident occurred about 8 years ago, but it took me years to get over. (I'm still not over it completely.) When I first moved here, my brother offered us his rental property to live in (it had been vacant for a while). My partner and I had just moved in together and my child was 5 at the time. We'd lived in the rental for about a month when one morning I was awakened by pounding on the door. I stumbled out of bed in a rush to answer the urgent banging on the door. Upon opening the door, a man in a marshall's coat shoved a piece of paper in my face and said he was looking for my brother. When I told him that my brother didn't live there, he said that he had to look around inside to make sure. Thinking the document he shoved in my face was a warrant to search, I backed up and allowed him and his partner (?) to come in. He told me that I had to show him the rooms (he was very forceful and mean as though I had done something wrong), so I led him to my daughter's room. He walked in, looked around then turned to me and said go on to the next room. My daughter was asleep, but he didn't bother to keep his voice down, and generally acted like I was a criminal and he was disgusted with me. I turned to go to the other side of the house to take him to the room where my partner slept, and he stopped and asked me what was up there (there was a little alcove room past my daughter's room). I told him it was just a little alcove and no one was in there. He went up there anyway and looked around. Then they followed me into my bedroom where my partner slept. As I was walking toward her to wake her up he shouted at her, "What is your name?" She sat up and told him her name. He asked her, "Are you a man or a woman?" "Show me your id." I went to the dresser to get her id and she opened it, then showed her license. I was very upset by this point, but felt too intimidated to say anything. I had never dealt with the police before and had always believed that they were trustworthy, decent people. I always felt that the cops wouldn't mistreat anyone who was a law-abiding citizen. I held my feelings in, but I felt humiliated that he had treated my partner like that. How dare they come into my home, in my bedroom, wake my partner up by shouting at her, and treat us like we had done something wrong? The marshalls followed me back into the living room and proceeded to browbeat me for 20 minutes. Threatening me and telling me that I had to tell them where my brother was or I was going to end up in jail. I told them that I didn't know where my brother was. They asked me where I had last seen him, and I said that it had been at my sister's house. I wanted them out of my house, but I didn't know I could just tell them to leave. I was ready to cry, but I didn't want to tell them where my brother was. I didn't want them mistreating my disabled sister (he was at my sister's house). But I wasn't good at lying, and I told them the truth. They left and I called my sister to tell my brother what happened. The marshalls went to my sister's house and jerked my brother around, threw him on the floor and handcuffed him. He hadn't resisted. I found out later that the marshalls did not have a warrant to search the rental I was living in, they had a warrant for my brother's arrest. They had no right to search that house. The marshalls also told my brother that I told them where he was, and picked on him that his sister had "given him up." The warrant had been for something my brother did years prior (he had brought his gun to the campgrounds where he was camping - it was a state-owned park - and people had complained that he was waving the gun around. I don't know the whole story.) Evidently the marshalls went to the rental every few years looking for him. They had heard that someone was living at his property so they decided to scare the sh*t out of us so they could get a notch on their belts for the arrest. (The case was pled out or something and my brother didn't even go to jail because of it.) This incident not only changed my view of the police, it made me realize just how un-safe we all really are. It's not just the bad guys we have to watch out for, it's the cops too.