Believe it or not but most cops aren’t as virtuous as Stabler and don’t have a pretty blonde DA around to challenge them over what they would be willing to do to seek justice. And a “good” attorney can often work around that.

But also, that doesn’t change anything. From skimming the article, it sounds like he wasn’t being interrogated without a lawyer. He was just being left to languish in confinement. Which… is how the us legal system “works”.

This is less “ice are bad” and more “all cops are bastards”