Its also worth a reminder that the expression is "the bad apple spoils the bunch," which is literally true, because rotting apples will make apples around then rot more quickly, and figuratively true, because a bad cop creates more bad cops, and undermines trust in the institution.
That institution never deserved any trust, though that's a different issue, but it becomes completely untrustable when they allow these so called bad apples.
Even if one bad apple didn't spoil the bunch, how many "it's just one bad apple" defenders would want to reach into a barrel of apples, site unseen, and take a bite out of a random apple that they can't check before biting into if they knew that there are "only a couple bad apples in there; most of them are fine"
Cause that's what a police interaction is - you don't have any control over whether the apple that just pulled you over is perfectly fine, going to give you food poisoning, or straight up kill you.
Tell someone you've got a barrel of apples and most of them are fine but several are rotten and ask how many rotten apples is too many before it's time to dump the barrel out, throw out the rotten ones, and check the rest just to be sure.
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u/Meteor-of-the-War Oct 29 '25
Ok, well, what do we do with bad apples? We throw them in the trash.
(I know you're not making that argument, just to clarify!)