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The original was posted on /r/nostupidquestions by /u/IJustDontEvenKnow88 on 2023-10-06 16:20:02.

Original Title: When I was a kid in the early 90’s, my parents would tell me “you can always trust the police, they’re you’re friends and they want to help you.” Has something changed, or have parents always said that despite knowing it isn’t true?

For context, my parents were drug addicts and had been arrested multiple times, so they could have easily told me F*** the police, but instead they made sure I didn’t hate or fear them. But as an adult, I’ve never seen any reason to trust them, and have seen plenty of reasons to fear them. I’ve never committed a crime, never even gotten a speeding ticket, but even as an innocent, law-abiding citizen I feel afraid to even look at a cop the wrong way.

Has it always been this way, or has something changed since the 90’s? Were cops as brutal, dishonest, and trigger-happy then as they are now and my parents just didn’t want me to be afraid of them regardless? Do parents today still tell their kids that the police are their friends and that they can trust them?