Concerning Fictional Law Enforcement

So, I disagree with you, but I think you do mean well, so I'm going to try and explain why "let's combat the bad cops in real life by making good cops in fiction" is the exact wrong way to go about this.

There are no good cops. There may be kind, compassionate people in our law enforcement agencies, but there are no good cops. Law enforcement, as a profession, encourages cruelty, selfishness, and numbness among its members. Kindness and compassion are liabilities and often result in kind and compassionate people getting washed out of law enforcement.

You can see that in much of the law enforcement industry's response to the last two weeks. By and large, they are not concerned with the abuses that police have been inflicting to peaceful posters. They're trying to pass blame. To avoid scrutiny. To say 'no, we're the good cops, we promise'. I've seen police departments hem and haw when their own cops have been recorded abusing protestors. I've seen police unions being annoyed that their cops aren't allowed to use more vicious anti-riot weapons against largely peaceful protesters. The message is clear: the cops care less about their communities than they do about their fellow cops. This isn't a recent phenomenon. Cops have, by and large, supported and profited off of laws and regulations that protect them from culpability and put money in their wallets, often at the expense of the civilians they're meant to protect. Every police department, no matter how seemingly just, has benefitted off of qualified immunity. There are no good cops, just cruel ones and complicit ones.

So why do many people believe in the concept of good cops? Because that's what we've been taught. Not just by the school systems and the government, but by media. So many shows give us friendly, likeable police officers. So many shows give us gun-toting anti-heroes who we root for because they're the only defense against violent criminals and corrupt politicians. So many shows cast internal affairs agents and civilians who know their rights as adversaries who are preventing the cops from doing their job and catching the bad guys.

And I get it. I like some fictional cops too. Heck, one of my favorite superheroes is Batman, who is, when discussing the portrayal of justice and law enforcement in fiction, often worse than most fictional cops. But good fictional cops are often not free of the traits that plague minorities in real cops, and using them as a tool to handle real oppression is set to fail. I'll use Discworld's Sam Vimes as a character, because Thud! is still a very, very good book (spoilers for Thud later on). Vimes is one of the best characters in Discworld, and Pratchett uses him and his department to deliver multiple points about justice, leadership and doing the right thing. He's a perfect example of what you'd want out of the upcoming Paizo AP; his squad is even diverse. Vimes also breaks regulations constantly. Vimes also has no issue with roughing people up if they get in his way, though he stops short at outright murdering someone without a trial. Vimes is also a self-described racist (well, speciesist), and while he's practical enough to hire and work with nonhumans, that's not a trait he entirely grows out of. By the end of Thud, Vimes literally has an entity of vengeance trapped in his soul. In fiction, that's all reasonable. The schtick with Vimes is that he always wins over his worst impulses in the end, and that his indiscretions are necessary to navigate Ankh-Morpork. We get that. But try and apply Vimes to actual law enforcement and you get a cop with a truncheon and repressed racist philosophies who is liable to go on a rampage if he loses control, with his employment justified as 'what this city needs to protect it from criminals'. As a black person, that's...not a great look.

So while, theoretically, Paizo could create a cop-centered AP that's thoughtful and well-mediated enough to serve as a tool for modeling better behavior in law enforcement...it won't. Law enforcement in fiction is, by nature, removed from the realities of law enforcement. It wants to present a world where most people you encounter could be criminals, when most people are just...humans, trying to muddle through life same as you. It wants to present dramatic action sequences as essential to being a cop, when most cop work should be protecting and building a community (actions that battle-based RPGs like DnD and Pathfinder are often horrible at modeling). It wants to present a world where the corrupt politicians are adversaries to be brought down, not enablers. If Paizo really wants to show support for BLM, it'd squash the cop AP and move that effort to something else.