no, it's whitewashing. if police bought pitiable shoplifters cartons of eggs at the rate of one every 28 hours, maybe I'd have some sympathy. but this behavior is atypical, that's why it's "news". one good apple doesn't cure the barrel, but if you pull it out and show it to someone you might be able to trick them into buying your rot.
There are some decent cops but you are right one apple doesn't cure the barrel. Figure that about 5% of police are exceptional human beings who are really trying to help their fellow citizens. 50% are just tying to get to the end of the day and would prefer to do as little policing as possible but are going to try and do their jobs as well as most everybody tries to do their job well. 25% are just completely apathetic, hate their jobs, hate criminals, hate everyone they have to deal with from their Sargent to the homeless but are still going to have shitty bare minimum work and social ethics so they don't stick out and can get to their retirement. 20% are totally unsuited to the work they are doing, they are dumb and/or vicious, they let most situations spin out of control and generally act like little despots. What kind of employee are you? Do you steal from your work? Do you hate customers? Are you trying to serve your employer well or are you just trying to get a paycheck and dick around? A cop here got called to a domestic, a mom and a kid fighting. Checked the situation out and realized that this kid had no bed to sleep on, only had a few changes of cloths, had shoes that didn't fit and so on. Cop went to his church and what not got some money together and bought this kid everything that a kid that age should have to live a bare minimum decent life, was something like two grand or so. Think they got the kid in some mentoring program or what not. It was the minister or a social worker who called the newspaper, the cop was pretty low key talking about the whole thing. I've know more than one person who was on the road, got picked up for shoplifting and the cop just took them out to get a bite to eat. I know people who got picked up by the rail road bulls, taken to the bulls house for dinner and dropped off at a convenient place to catch the next train. And oh yea, I know lots more horrible shit that should earn the cop a public flogging, dismissal from the force and the eternal disapproval of their fellow man. To say it's whitewashing is bullshit. I got no problem hearing a positive story about police. The police in this country are out of control, exist mostly to preserve wealth and power and I doubt things will change till their blood runs down the streets in little streams but it doesn't mean that it's not nice to see that they aren't all dumb heartless bastards.
Yes, it is atypical which is why it is worth pointing out. I think only an idiot would read this and think, "oh good, everything is okay now." It is also worth pointing out that there are people in this country that need to steal eggs. I guess we would have to have a discussion about how many of those apples in that barrel are rotten and how many aren't. My guess is that the answer varies from barrel to barrel.
I stole eggs yesterday, among other things. I took great care to not encounter any police officers. if we're debating how many rotten apples are acceptable, we've already lost, because the original point of the metaphor is that even one is too many. "spoils the bunch", so to speak.
When we are able to highlight the good, along with the bad, it helps provide a goal, a vision of where we'd like to be. People need encouragement when they're doing the right thing, it helps to propagate good behavior and make it the norm.