Considering you haven't given the actual excerpts, some help would be that direct characterization is as simple as saying "The man is wearing a broad-brimmed hat". It is literally "direct", straight to the point. Hope this helps.
It seems right that a person that it's supposed to be helping us feel safe and that his main job is protect and serve, when we can prove of his wrongdoings, receives a harsher sentence that a person that doesn't work as a police officer. A criminal often times does it out of neccesity, because he'd grown up in a type of environment that he doesn't know any better. His chances at succeding in life are often limited by the same place and community that he grew up in. While it may seems true for a police officer to come from a bad neighborhood, it's also true that he went through training and education where he knows what's right or wrong, he doesn't have the need to steal because he has a steady job.
It depicts the collective society as a destructive force that represses the independent thinker.
Looking at the excerpt, you can see that even with the warnings they did not heed because of the few who did so. They went with the majority even if they were wrong. These independent thinkers, perished along with them as a result.
