I served on a jury once where the case boiled down to whether we believed the defendant's story or the officer's. Very little evidence and only one unreliable victim/witness who could only describe the perpetrator as a "Black male, with dreads, wearing a white t shirt".

There was actually one old white woman juror who stated up front "Well, this is open and shut. If the officer said he did it, he did it". Mind you , both the officer and defendant were black so it wasn't solely a race thing. She was just (to me) fully invested in the idea of police being infallible good guys.

But to get to why people say things like "Why didn't he just comply?", I think it's partially the sometimes unsupported belief that certain rules are in place for good reason and, therefore, the people enforcing the rules are justified in whatever they do.

It's also partially a fear of confrontation. We're really like sheep in this way... we'll follow the barking dog's orders out of fear of facing it's teeth.

It's all backwards. That belief in the rules and rule enforcers being just and the fear of confrontation makes someone that questions authority look like a dangerous rebel. But the onus should always be on the enforcers to sufficiently justify what they do.

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