Essentially cops spend most of their time with people who hate them
How much of policing is actually responding to violent crime vs traffic infractions or minor spats between neighbors?
That the general populace is afraid of cops is largely of the cops own doing. If they weren't power-hungry thugs, even when executing traffic enforcement, they wouldn't have this problem.
Imagine walking up to a group of people at work as your job.
If you're a cop, 99% certain someone in that group, if not the entire group, is VERY unhappy to meet you. Doesn't matter if you're shooting a bank robber in progress or handing out speeding tickets or infinite domestic violence cases, nobody likes you. Most folks can take being universally hated for an entire career plus or minus alcoholism and such, but a microscopic minority will fight back leading to massive unrest and social problems.
If you're in the military, with microscopic career field exceptions, every group you walk up to is your buddies you work and party with, who wanna hang out and have fun with you.
One job field is going to have occasional fatal anger issues, and the other job field is going to have DUI/party-hard issues.
Well they are certainly working hard to make it 99% certain that a member of every group hates them... It isn’t anywhere near that bad though; people come to the police for help. There are suburban and small town police that probably go days without actually interacting with civilians in an official capacity regularly. Maybe some sort of rotation system at the state or county level would help.
A stark difference is respect. The command of it, the teaching of it, really everything. OCS tends to not fuck around when drilling proper bearing in to potential officers. Enlisted salute officers, period. know them or not? It doesn't matter, they are an officer and you show that respect. Police arm themselves to demand that respect and authority, granted they are sometimes in hostile situations and need that but generally they really don’t.
I’m disgusted that unarmed people end up dead at the rate they do during interactions with the police. I will ask why we as a society didn’t care that much until now, it’s a deep culture that formed. Another gigantic difference between police and military is that there are safety valves and “turning on the military” to solve an issue is a major fuck deal, it’s a war fighting machine. The police are sort of like society’s janitor; they get called when a home owner doesn’t want a homeless camp in the park near their home. The police, generally, don’t have that many tools for dealing with homeless, mentally unstable, drug addicted, and otherwise marginalized people. There is supposed to be a crime to lock people up, we don’t fund mental hospitals, etc. if you watch some of the videos it looks like they’ve become very good at fabricating crimes to justify force and arrest which are effectively the only tools they readily have.
Police arm themselves to demand that respect and authority, granted they are sometimes in hostile situations and need that but generally they really don’t.
I've often thought that police should leave their firearms locked in the trunk (or locked in a safe installed in the center console area). If they're chasing a violent criminal, get it. Making a traffic stop, wellness check, or something else, leave it in the car.
How much of policing is actually responding to violent crime vs traffic infractions or minor spats between neighbors?
That the general populace is afraid of cops is largely of the cops own doing. If they weren't power-hungry thugs, even when executing traffic enforcement, they wouldn't have this problem.