Sounds familiar. Keeping things vague, but I know a US cop. Out and proud about voting for the convicted felon rather than the district attorney, not that he could possibly think of it that way.

His kids are grown and I've seen evidence they don't share his views. At least one of those kids is a woman. I take solace in the fact that their votes cancelled his out, even if things have gone his way.

I wouldn't say he's a friend, but he's definitely friend of a friend territory and I've "spoken" with him a few times. Carefully. It's been almost pleasant. Even the ones with their heads on wrong can be personable. Until you get on their bad side.

Because of mutual friends, I can't avoid him all the time, but if I can, I do.

I'm not saying which country I live in, but I've only ever had good experiences with cops. They were polite to me and also helpful. It is a profession which can and does attract bad actors and the extent to which people are vetted differs between locations, but not everyone is going to be like that. There are genuinely nice and caring people out there who want to help and protect people!

Some people just have shitty jobs. That's not a necessarily a judgement of them as an individual, it just a fact that they have a shitty job.

Never talk about the things you know you shouldn't. My cousin and I are exactly as before. EXCEPT politics. It's a brotherhood. You could grow up together for decades but they're gonna believe whatever they hear from the guys purporting they'd take bullets for them.

Every perfect rule has only 1 exception.

If you meet another "good one" know that one of em is lying to you.

I've lived in mostly rural areas, so ACAB doesn't apply nearly as much, but one of my two best friends took law classes and became one of those officers that goes door-to-door checking on people. I technically would assume it's like a probation officer type of position, but she's so unathletic and overall physically outside the expectations you'd place on a cop that either A) she's not a parole officer B) they hired her simply because she can run fast or C) they hired her because she's the last person to fulfill the ACAB stereotype on account of how unintimidating she is, and even if I were one of those ACAB types of people, I would never in a million years visualize her as fulfilling anything except the exception to the rule.

How did I react to the news? I just shrugged. If anything, it gave me some comfort that I had a cop friend which would help certain conflicts I could end up in. From a certain point of view, if you're so scared of cops, having a cop friend could be seen as increasing your chances of having the benefit of the doubt should something happen. Wouldn't you want to be friends with the people in power?

One of my cousins is a cop, but I don't believe ACA literally B so given he's generally a good guy I'd like to assume he's a force for good in the department.

I have cops that are friends and they aren't bad as far as I know.

Those of you who know me here know I have an interest in sovereign citizens. I'm in a make fun of sovcits group on Facebook, and this one guy I talked to a lot added me as a friend, no big deal, but then he messaged me to tell me he's a cop in Australia and that he runs into them while working a lot. I think Australian police are likely of higher quality than American police, but I'm still using filters on FB posts.

My brother is a cop, and we're still close despite a mutual understanding that we will become lethal opponents should relevant violence break out in our area (civil war/insurrection/significant rioting).

I think our willingness to do that allows us to overlook our differences until that situation were to arise. I imagine we'd both see that as a defining opportunity for the other to 'defect' and, until then, we can look past associating with a BagGuy^TM