I appreciate the link to the Wikipedia article, but I don't see anything about statistics indicating a majority. Did I miss something in my perusing of the article?

Edit: I was able to pull this citation from a previous discussion regarding police and perjury:

Myron W. Orfield, Jr., Deterrence, Perjury, and the Heater Factor, supra note 13, at 83:

> Respondents, including prosecutors, estimate that police commit perjury between 20% and 50% of the time they testify on Fourth Amendment issues.

It should also be noted that many of these respondents did not consider lying at a suppression hearing perjury, infra text accompanying note 47, which would have the effect of artificially deflating these percentages.

This is one of those cases where absence of evidence is evidence, to some extent. We do know that police brutality and abuse of power happens regularly, because it gets recorded and prosecuted. But when you look at those prosecutions, the initial evidence rarely comes from other police officers, even though the offending actions are committed around them. If most cops are good cops, you'd expect most such prosecutions to be due to the perpetrators being reported by their colleagues.

We can also look at what happens to cops who do become whistleblowers - it does happen, after all. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any case that ended well for the whistleblower long-term - best case, they get cold shoulder and silent treatment until they resign; and worst case is something like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft

Note, by the way, that in this story, it was basically the entire precinct involved one way or the other to gang up on the whistleblower, including his entire management chain. And if you believe Adrian, then manager involvement went all the way up to NYPD Commissioner. I think at that point, it's not unreasonable to assume that in NYPD, at least, on the balance of probabilities (i.e. more likely than not), "the vast majority of police turn a blind eye" is correct, just based on this one case.

If a majority of police are in fact suppressing evidence of wrongdoing, then it would be difficult to prove, because statistics that rely on police reporting are going to be rather suspect.

It's possible the police forces are a body of people who have a strong us-vs-them culture. On the one hand it probably helps them execute their sometimes dangerous job, on the other hand it bleeds into symptoms like the blue wall of silence.