How do you like them bad apples?

Actually, "bad apples" are indeed part of the problem with policing.

Whenever a shocking incident of police brutality is caught on video, everyone rushes to their twitter account to make the same sneering comment about how crooked cops are just a few “bad apples.”

And my response is…that’s kind of the perfect analogy, isn’t it? The whole saying is, “a few bad apples spoils the whole barrel.” It’s literally about how the rot might start with one person but, if he’s not quickly removed, the whole organization is corrupted and tainted by association.

At least, that’s how people understood it until 1971, when this happened:

Heavy metal pioneers. Seriously.

The Osmonds’ chart-topping Jackson 5 knockoff included the line “one bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl,” and while the song is mostly forgotten outside of 70s on 7, it appears many people in 2023 think that’s the original saying.

So, there. Something else we can blame on the seventies.

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Getting back to “bad apples” in law enforcement, I think that the killing of Tyre Nichols is an all too perfect example of how the rot spreads throughout the entire barrel.

Five of the officers who “attended to” Nichols have been fired and charged with second degree murder. But if you could bring yourself to watch the videos, you undoubtedly noticed several other officers on the scene, none of whom did a darned thing to intervene as a man was killed in front of them.