> Especially since every case makes it’s way in front of a judge.
This is not at all true, at least in the sense that it provides a major check on police mistakes or abuse.
You can spend a great deal of time in jail, literally decades in extreme cases, just by being charged with a crime -- no conviction needed. Criminal penalties in the US are so extreme, and conviction rates so high, that there is a huge risk in going to trial. Even if a person is innocent and/or the evidence is weak, the incentives often push them to accept a plea deal; and that's exactly what we see. The vast majority of cases reach a plea deal and never come to trial.
A case eventually making its way to a judge isn't really a counter-argument to how much power police have.
Things like asset forfeiture, qualified immunity, etc. are all pretty strong arguments that police have too much power. Not to mention all of the cases where someone innocent is killed by police, where the victim doesn't get to go in front of a judge because they are dead.
To expand on this, plea deals are most common for poor defendants. The police convince a magistrate to set cash bail the defendant can't pay, and the defendant has the choice of taking a guilty plea for a "lesser charge" or sitting in jail for months until the case can be tried, at which point they are defended by an overworked, overwhelmed public defender.
In many cases, the potential sentence for these cases is exceeded by the time they would actually spend in jail waiting for the trial; even being found guilty would result in time served. In these cases, the plea deal is literally a lesser sentence than being found not guilty.
