Police
The Intercept managed to get (and publish) training documents for the NYPD's goon squad (SRG).
There seem to be similarities in terms of officer recruitment to what we see in secret police forces in autocracies (second link, Sharpf's research also looks at other cases like the Stasi), with underachievers/violent individuals selecting into SRG duty for reasons of career advancement.
I think there's even enough public data to test this.
https://theintercept.com/2021/04/07/nypd-strategic-response-unit-george-floyd-protests/
Police
@Cyborgneticz Both NYPD and the supposedly independent oversight group publish abuse complaints against officers (the database is a bit of a mess), so it would be pretty straight forward to track complaints with officer promotions/assignments and get at causal inference using matching.
Police
@mplouffe very tempting
Police
@mplouffe The Shield TV series 20 years ago was all about this very thing. The protagonists weren't the good guys, dammit!
Police
@mplouffe I Need this test to happen