Excellent Post!!
Beyond what you have said, take a good look at retired LEOs. They have such a twisted view of life and people that they are almost like a dog trained for war. They don’t have many friends who are not other LEOs for the most part and they still view anyone who is not a cop or a retired cop with abject suspicion. We tried to have a continuing social relationship with a friend of my wife’s when she married a retired local senior LE “official.” It turned out to be a bridge too far!
Yeah, that's at the core of it. I see that sometimes in even the best of them. I believe in my heart that some cops, the really good cops, are born cops the same way about 70 percent of truly good nurses are born nurses, in that they knew they were going to grow up to be a nurse when they were 6 years old.
A wonderful guy I know not born to be a cop but who weathered a great career as a big city cop, had that "twisted view" you so accurately pinpoint, but for all he was a good cop because he was at heart a compassionate moral man. The sad thing is that people like that, who have to harden their hearts, then equate compassion and tolerance with "liberalism" and "commie."
The born cops seem to be the types, always men, who know how to read people and who take the time to do it if they can before resolving whatever situation they face. All the great anecdotes they've shared around me, the shootings they avoided or were engaged in, whatever, they don't even realize that they're not thinking so much terms of battle, but of dealing with human drama.
Just musing ...